Here is a well-written message from "real" America

[ladelfina]

Helping With a Sick Child

This was the part that struck me and resonated with me, as an American:

The Constitution has a wonderful phrase in its preamble: "promote the general Welfare." It is one of the six stated purposes for establishing the Constitution, the one which follows after to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, and provide for the common defence, and just before the last stated purpose, to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. Each purpose is reliant upon each of the others. One cannot have liberty without justice, for example, nor can one insure domestic tranquility unless we both provide for the common defence and promote the general welfare. These are not mutually exclusive strands of an argument, but are cohesive parts of a whole, woven together to form a community of purposes for these United States of America.

Perhaps more than anything else right now, we need to restore our country's emphasis on promoting the general welfare. We have seen the results when the welfare of all is ignored, even debased, at the expense of the welfare of the few. Our nation, and our Constitution, our form of government, was not established to provide a feeding frenzy for the most rapacious among us, nor was it intended provide a test case for the maxim "survival of the fittest." We have always been a nation which saw itself as series of communities. Indeed, in one respect you could say we fought a civil war in large part over the correct way to organize ourselves as a community. Our laws have always looked to the future as much as they have to the past. Our great social movements have been created to convince the nation that this community of citizens needed to go in a different direction, needed to aspire to higher ideals, and needed to work toward the achievement of goals that previously had been maligned or denied.

This is meant to be an antidote to the "I, Pencil" post.

[dex]

Can you state how what you posted is a antidote to the "I, Pencil" post? I do not understand.

[Midpack]

Also from your link, and a premise to what you quoted: Our country has been living a nightmare, not so much because we lost our communities, but because one political faction decided to tear them down and rip them apart, fragmenting them into smaller and smaller pieces. One faction which chose to raise the values of greed and individualism and "the one true religion" above all others. To actively exclude people from our national community and our national discourse, and not only to exclude them but to shun them, demonize them, scapegoat them make them seem less than human. It was toxic, it was divisive, it was corrosive and it was demeaning to our nation and our people. Unfortunately, for far too long it has been a winning political strategy.

No question the financial community and CEO's have gotten completely out of line, it's a big part of the problem, and it will take years if not a generation to fix - we agree there completely. I am not defending either.

But collectively at least, the "middle-class" or mainstream population spent the last twenty years knowingly (or should have known) they were living far beyond their means. They did their part by buying big, inefficient (utilities) homes they knew they could not afford, buying high end cars and gas guzzling SUV's they knew they could not afford and running up credit card balances without thinking about how they would ever pay. 100% home mortgage financing on an inflated appraised value, and the homeowner bears no responsibility? If you view the mainstream as innocent bystanders in all this, there is little hope for us all.

And it's not clear to me which "faction" "chose to raise the values of greed and individualism." I assume you mean conservatives, I would suggest that liberals have contributed in equal measure. Two examples; who promoted and even strong armed lenders to write home loans to people who could not afford them by any previously applied loan qualification standards? Would the mortgage crisis be anywhere near as acute had we stuck with more sensible loan qualifications? And who ignored and fought the warnings about Fannie & Freddie in 2005, which might have at least modulated this train wreck?

It's pointless to argue who or how this got started. And I am not suggesting this is solely the fault of liberals, it's the fault of conservatives along with a very willing mainstream population. No one with any common sense could have believed we could go on as a society like we were forever. A politician who told us the truth before we got into this mess, could never get on a ballot much less be elected no matter how charasmatic or gifted an orator - cue voters and our beloved media.

Based on past posts, I would expect you to provide loads of very real and convincing evidence of conservatives compliance in all this. And it will be real. But I challenge you for once, to examine your 'faction' instead of conveniently overlooking their role. The link you reference seems to blame one 'faction' and then suggesting we work together. Huh?

We get what we deserve...

[youbet]

Originally Posted by dex

Can you state how what you posted is a antidote to the "I, Pencil" post? I do not understand.

I think ladelfina meant to say "This is meant to be an" enforcement "to the "I, Pencil" post"

[NW-Bound]

Originally Posted by Midpack

A politician who told us the truth before we got into this mess, could never get on a ballot much less be elected no matter how charasmatic or gifted an orator - cue voters and our beloved media.

...

We get what we deserve...

I couldn't agree more with the excepts above. In my view, the candidates we had were truly the best from their respective parties. They probably would be better leaders, if they were not enslaved to their respective constituents.

If you think these politicians are bad, you have not looked at the people who voted them into power!!! People will not admit that we do truly have a government from the people.

When was the last time you see any citizen around you who would acknowledge "mea culpa"? We blame our government for meddling in the Middle East, then we whine about the war cost, or how expensive it is to fill up our stupendous SUV.

Excuse my rant, but at work I once had to slam a coworker who was ranting about oil companies making record profits in the billions of dollars. I asked him if he knew how many employees these companies employ, what their total revenues were, and what was their profit margin compared to other industries. I asked him why the US should pay less for oil than the Chinese who have much lower per-capita income than us. He could not answer any of the above. And this man was in his mid 50, with a PhD degree in engineering! I won't tell you his political inclination, because it really does not matter.

The real problem is that we are stuck with a two-party system, which does not allow a third choice that may better reflect the preference of the reasonable man.

[ladelfina]

dex, that the gov. have a role in "promoting the general Welfare" is anathema to Objectivists. Altruism is not just to be avoided, but is downright evil.

[FinanceDude]

Originally Posted by ladelfina

Helping With a Sick Child

This was the part that struck me and resonated with me, as an American:



This is meant to be an antidote to the "I, Pencil" post.

"Promoting the general welfare" didn't mean creating a nanny-state and large government, it was a general guideline.

[ERD50]

Originally Posted by ladelfina

dex, that the gov. have a role in "promoting the general Welfare" is anathema to Objectivists. Altruism is not just to be avoided, but is downright evil.

Strawman.

Who on this forum has expressed that view (in 250 words or less )?

-ERD50

[FinanceDude]

Originally Posted by ERD50

Strawman.

Who on this forum has expressed that view (in 250 words or less )?

-ERD50

So now I am an "Objectivist"...........

[dex]

I think people are using the term "Promote the general welfare" incorrectly. The constitution is generally about limiting the powers of the central government.

Using the term as a way to advocate social welfare programs is incorrect and more of a indication as to lack of knowledge about the constitution.

Constitutional Topic: The Preamble - The U.S. Constitution Online - USConstitution.net
promote the general Welfare
This, and the next part of the Preamble, are the culmination of everything that came before it - the whole point of having tranquility, justice, and defense was to promote the general welfare - to allow every state and every citizen of those states to benefit from what the government could provide. The framers looked forward to the expansion of land holdings, industry, and investment, and they knew that a strong national government would be the beginning of that.


WikiAnswers - What does promote the general welfare mean
Promote the general welfare is a legal term used to describe in non-specific terms how the powers of a government should be exercised. The Preamble to the US Constitution states that this is one of the reasons why the Constitution was established, i.e. that all powers set forth in the Constitution shall be exercised for the general welfare of the country. Sometimes the phrase is used as a limiting definition, meaning that the Constitution should be read as permitting the powers in it to be used only in such a way that no law would be valid if it does not in some way promote the general welfare of the country. This is a very general term and easily complied with.

[Frugality_of_Apathy]

"Promote the general welfare," can only be misconstrued to mean providing welfare programs and social safety nets if you only read that phrase out of context.

The entire preamble is one sentence. It does not grant the government any powers, and the verb in each phrase says how the government is supposed to do something. Promote does not mean provide, they even use provide earlier in the sentence when talking about defense.

Promoting the general welfare is done through things like the surgeon general and every other function of the government.

Also, since it is only in the preamble that anything close to that appears it cannot be used to justify any power to create programs not granted in the rest of the constitution.

[ziggy29]

The problem is that the preamble wasn't enumerating specific powers of government or saying that anything that is done in the spirit of the goals specified in the preamble is acceptable. It merely indicates what the enumerated powers listed in the body of the document were intended to do.

Interestingly enough, the preamble to the Confederate constitution was almost identical to the U.S. federal constitution, with the one main difference: the "general welfare" clause was missing.

[ladelfina]

ziggy, interesting! So while we can discuss how best that this concept may be expressed, someone DID feel there was a difference between addressing it and not addressing it.

The framers left a lot of stuff open for future interpretation.