Paul Abrams trotted out one of the favorite progressive arguments for virtually unlimited federal power in a March 9  Huffington Post article.

The good ole’ “general welfare” clause.

Abrams brings quite an academic pedigree to the party. Yale educated, summa cum laude, multiple advanced degrees…which goes to show an Ivy League education doesn’t necessarily guarantee a student will actually graduate knowing anything.

OK, perhaps that’s a bit harsh. He may be a fine lawyer and an excellent medical doctor, but a constitutional scholar – not so much.

Abrams’ argument goes like this.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 grants the United States government the unqualified and unlimited power to raise and spend money, for example, to: provide healthcare for the elderly (or for everyone); provide old-age pension; build roads, bridges, train tracks, airports, electric grids, libraries, swimming pools, housing; educate our children, re-train the unemployed, provide pre-school and day care; fund public health projects; invest in and conduct basic research; provide subsidies for agriculture; save the auto industry; create internets; and, yes, Tea Party Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), even provide emergency aid from natural disasters, and so forth. All subsumed under the authority to spend for the general welfare.

This raises a couple of interesting questions.

First off, if the very first clause of Article 1 Sec. 8 grants unlimited and unqualified authority for the federal government to do any damn thing it wants, why did the framers bother to waste ink enumerating all of those other powers? I mean, they were handwriting the thing for goodness sake. Seems to me an economy of words would have definitely been in order.

Secondly, how in the world can you square Abrams’ view of “general welfare” with James Madison’s assertion in Federalist 45 that the powers granted to the federal government are “few and defined”?

Oh yeah, you can’t.

And Madison didn’t.

In fact, the “Father of the Constitution” actually addressed this very argument.

“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”

You can look to the ratifying conventions for those proofs. In fact, the “anti-federalists” feared that people like Abrams would come along and make the very arguments he advances. The pro-constitutionalists assured them this wouldn’t happen – that the government powers were in fact limited and defined. The states ratified the Constitution based on these assurances.

Heck, even Alexander Hamilton, who was most hostile to the concept of limiting federal power, conceded as much.

“This specification of particulars [the 18 enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8] evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd as well as useless if a general authority was intended.”

Thanks for answering that first question for me, Alex.

Abrams’ runs into trouble because he doesn’t understand what the framers meant by “general welfare” and “common defense”. The first words of those two phrases hold the key. General and common. The phrase simply means that any tax collected must be collected to the benefit of the United States as a whole, not for partial or sectional (ie. special) interests. You know, swimming pools, health care for the elderly, and internets. (I don’t know what internets are. Ask Abrams.)

The power to pursue the things Abrams advocates lies with the states. As Madison put it:

The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.

After Abrams wields the “general welfare” clause like a sword, slashing through the ignorant misconception that the framers actually intended a federal government with limited powers, he pulls out the “necessary and proper” clause for good measure.

Otherwise known as the “necessary and proper clause”, the 18th power makes it as clear as the Supreme Court Justice’s financial disclosure rules that the Congress has the authority to enact any law to spend money in pursuit of the general welfare.

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Perhaps it’s due to my lack of an Ivy League education, but I have absolutely no idea what exactly Abrams means by this sentence, or how he arrived at his conclusion. But I do know that Thomas Jefferson made it clear enumerated powers also constrain the meaning and scope of the necessary and proper clause.

“The Constitution allows only the means which are ‘necessary,’ not those which are merely ‘convenient,’ for effecting the enumerated powers. If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to every one, for there is not one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience in some instance or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers. It would swallow up all the delegated powers, and reduce the whole to one power, as before observed”

If nothing else, Abrams vividly illustrates Jefferson’s point. For what he may lack in understanding of the original Constitution he certainly makes up for in using his ingenuity to torture into a convenience many instances.

In a recent piece at the Huffington Post, columnist David Sirota attempted to advance a somewhat tortured political theory, one he called “Progressive Federalism,” that demonstrated two important things; neither of which were likely what he intended.

First, despite the ignorant vitriol against “tenthers,” the state sovereignty movement is alive, well, and continuing to gain much-needed penetration into the national political discussion.

And second, when it comes to advancing statism, some members of the so-called media elite either utterly lack knowledge of history or have no regard whatsoever for the meaning of words.

Sirota’s article starts out innocently enough, quoting the New York Times‘ definition of Progressive Federalism as an ideology whereby “governors and activist state attorneys general [are allowed to] lead the way on environmental initiatives, consumer protection and other issues.”

States setting their own environmental and consumer protection standards? So far so good.

In fact, one might be forgiven for confusing Sirota’s Progressive Federalism with the good old fashioned Jeffersonian kind that was codified in our Constitution.

But then, showing his ignorance of the history behind both federalism and state sovereignty, Sirota follows up with this gem:

[I]n order for Progressive Federalism to happen, the federal government has to be supportive of floors, not ceilings — that is, oriented toward setting minimum progressive regulatory standards that states must at least comply with, not maximum regulatory ceilings that states are not allowed to go above and beyond.

In other words, “governors and activist state attorneys general” may foist as much progressive policy onto voters as they can get away with, but no less than the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. determine is necessary for their own power lust.

Heads they win, tails you lose.

Experimenting with 50 laboratories of progressivism may sound like a great idea to some, but a wasteful, corrupt political class holding sway over the entire country sounds like a nightmare to me. Which is why the point of federalism was not to institutionalize Sirota’s brand of liberal self-righteousness, but rather to divide power so that no ideological camp could gain control over a central authority and so assert their agenda by force.

Contrary to the prevailing attitude in politics and the media today, the words of our founders do still have meaning for many Americans. They value both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, and, as its Tenth Amendment underscores, that document intentionally placed each state on coequal footing with the federal government, which the sovereign states themselves created.

In no place other than the very minimal, very enumerated powers delegated to the federal government, did the states surrender any sovereignty at all. Which means that, quite simply, the states don’t need permission to exercise any of the countless rights left to their individual discretion.

If progressives like David Sirota wish to claim that the power of the federal government over their own lives has always been unlimited, simply because its three branches now act as if it is, they are certainly free to do so. Just as we who fear and detest centralized power are free to point out the historical errors in that logic.

But Sirota’s misunderstanding of history (willful or otherwise) is no excuse for allowing him to repackage his paternalistic fantasies as federalism. Intellectual honesty demands that our opponents not justify their incessant drive toward absolutism by perverting the meaning and intent of a constitutional system designed explicitly to abolish it.

Josh is a freelance writer and journalist originally from the Washington D.C. area. He is a cynically optimistic and unrepentant news junkie. His work has been published locally and in Charleston, SC. Email Josh.