Thursday, October 21, 2010

Commerce and Liberty

"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty." --Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson's quote is a pretty good indication of the original intention of the commerce clause. The word "regulate" is not necessarily a word that means "restrict" or "control" in the manner that big government politicians view it. If one was to regulate the flow of water in your hose, to ensure that it flowed easily, you would turn it on full blast. The Founding Fathers desired that commerce between the states flow, because it was being hindered by high tariffs and disagreements between the states. The commerce clause was intended to alleviate the problems, placing the federal government as the mediator so as to get commerce flowing full blast. However, the statists have used it to control and restrict commerce, placing just about anything they can under their definition of what commerce is. One must ask, if the Founding Fathers intended the federal government to be an entity restrained by limiting principles, then why would they write a commerce clause to mean what the liberal left says it means? The answer is, "They didn't." The liberals have manipulated the original intent, and has used their warped interpretation to enable them to circumvent the true meaning of the clause, and to subvert the rest of the Constitution. The liberal interpretation of the Commerce Clause literally takes away liberty.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

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