Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.

We need to get rid of most if not all of Congress as soon as we can!

ever seen this in print anywhere:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

see above.  no ifs about it; our government is mandated to promote the general welfare. 

Ah, but there are 'ands' & 'buts' - those are the words of the preamble, first of all, and nothing in the preamble 'mandates' anything.  Neither does Article 1, Section 8.1, which is the only place within the body of the Constitution that the phrase 'promote the general welfare' appears.  And I suspect there are semester-long courses on parsing the meaning of those 4 little words.

I sure have, but you obviously have not seen this little tidbit.

It was written by the father of the Constitution, Mr. Madison to clarify the meaning of promote the general welfare. The above is a direct quote from him in the time the constitution was written. It would seem that you have not read the federalist papers or anything written around the constitution and its meaning. Taking stuff out of context is not a good thing and because of that does not make your point it only proves my point that the idiots in congress need to go! The purpose of the constitution was to protect the citizens from government and restrict what the government can do to prevent what is going on now and the last times the democrats had control of two of the three branches of government.

Just for the record, the title of this article was a quote from James Madison as well.

There are those (what shall we call them, since they like punchy little epithets such as 'Tenthers' - perhaps 'one8oners'?) who apparently believe those 4 words negate all the rest of the Constitution, that the rest might as well have never been written.  Government exists to promote the general welfare and that's it.  It can do anything, anything, in the discharge of that 'mandate' (which it ain't).

Worth reading: http://64.203.107.114/histdocs/crockett_not_yours_to_give.asp

It describes an incident Davy Crockett had as a Congressman in regards to using federal money to help someone in need.

It appears to have more than a greain of truth: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llrd&fileName=006/llrd006.db&recNum=308

Excellent story Zubaz!

Nice find, Zu.

But don't worry, Crockett was just another 'tenther'.

I had seen that story before. Someone else had posted something like it here. It's a great story, shame so many don't get it.

Yes it is.

For example, if it's not government's duty to make sure all children (not just those with well off parents) are able to have an education, whose is it?

Nobody but parents and state governments.  I don't believe it's a coincidence that the quality of education (as measured by the fund of knowledge of its graduates) began its nosedive about the time the federal Department of Education was created.  Billions of our dollars later, look where we are.

And, apparently Democrats believe it's not the federal government's duty either - just ask the parents of children denied access to charter schools in DC.

So it is (a) government's duty then!

I bet yuor father wanted to smack you around alot when you were in your teens.

You like to go right to the edge of logic and leap off so you can be technically correct while you laugh at people trying to remake their point that you obviously got. This time you missed. The discussion is the U.S. Constitution and the federal government not all governments, State Governments, have their own constitution because the states are not part of the federal government and can allow or disallow anything they want. It is still not the duty of each state government unless written into the state constitution to provide education. Prior to local governments taking over public education it was free and run by churches. Some towns got together and the people paid for the school teachers to teach the children of those that wanted an education. Until it became mandatory that every child have at least a third grade education now it is mandatory that each child have at least a high school education but since the schooling is so bad no one enforces this any more, they just take the federal dollars and move on.

You can try and play semantics if you want about different types of government (i.e. local/national), but ultimately they are both governing the population (one locally, one nationally), and hence are both governments. Combined, they typically (i.e. in you average developed country) are seen to have a duty to the people they govern which covers acts of charity such as giving education to children. Whether this is done at a national or a local level isn't really that important if the end result is the same (although it would make most sense to have the 'end-user' administration of education done at a local level at the very least). You may believe that children's education should be left to churches/charities, but fortunately the vast majority of people believe that it is the government's duty to ensure children can receive an education.

Well, wouldn't want facts or that nuisance of a Constitution to get in the way of 'semantics.'  The facts tell us that the end result isn't the same.  The quality of education has had an inverse relationship to the size and budget of the federal Department of Education ever since its founding.

The question is, is it the duty of government to prohibit all education except that which is federally-approved?

For me that'd depend on the specifics although I'd lean towards a no - my main desire would be to have a government (/combination of governments) that ensure children can get an education. Whether I'd prefer that to be done locally with national government having an oversight role, or a completely hands-off, or a very controlling approach would depend on the evidence in favour of the different approaches. My own initial thoughts on an ideal situation would be local government dealing with education  but with national government making sure it meets a basic minimum standard (so local governments are free to have different education systems, so long as the child is still getting a reasonable education).

Actually you are using semantics to justify your point. The federal U.S. Constitution does not allow for most of the crap the Congress has mandated, Local governments are not running the state the local constitution is written and amended by the people of each state. There is that little thing called states rights. What has been used over the last 50 years to get around states rights are federal dollars. If the state wants any federal dollars they have to accept federal mandates. i.e. the stimulus package that in part says that if you want federal dollars you have to spend it on what the Congress says you have to hire people in certain jobs and pay them with the federal dollars. Once the money is spent who pays for that person hired by the state? The state. If the state could not afford that person before the federal dollars came in how can they afford the person once the money is spent? They have to raise taxes or get more money from the state. To get more money from the state they have to obey the federal government and in doing so the state loses the right to do as it pleases.

This is not an act of charity, education is an act of self-preservation. A poorly educated population will make poor choices dooming the population. Look at the last election. We had a choice between two liberals that want to destroy our nation with stupid ideas. In electing either candidate the nation lost. Has the electorate been better educated on the facts and the U. S. Constitution neither candidate would have had a chance of election. The results of the stupid choices made by ignorant people caused our nation to lose its place as a world leader of innovation and growth. Unemployment has more than doubled in just 7 months of having the current idiot in chief, we are in debt up to our eyeballs with no way out without drastic changes and all of this because the last 50 years we had allowed poor choices in education at the federal level and no real participation from the local level.

Well, for 50 years we had it controlled at the national level and the end result are less educated children that are focused on things that have nothing to do with education or national survival. Instead we have people socially promoted that can’t read, write, or do simple math but know their feelings real well.  Who cares how one feels if they can’t earn a living? Are you then saying that its okay to starve to death while feeling good about yourself? Living on the public teat is better than standing on your own two feet and contribute to the local community and the national community because those are the only choices we have at this point. People on welfare drain the nation of growth. Giving the national wealth to people that produce nothing, hurts the nation as a whole. This has been done in other nations and after 50 years of socialism those nations are turning around and going capitalist because they are close to or past the 50% mark of people on some form of welfare or benefit package and there are not enough earners to support it any more no matter how high taxes are raised. It took the “enlightened” European nations 50 years to find out what we have know for 200 years, that if the nation stops producing and growing it dies.

I know that when the standards were strict we had high school students that knew how to read, right and do advanced math, now only AP students get that and if my employees can count to their age without using their fingers and toes I am lucky.

D, you bring up a great point here. What I have noticed was that if a person wants something outside of the public school system it is attacked by the federal government. Look at those kids in D.C. that lost out on the voucher system. The children were getting good grades from good schools and in order to support a failed system they were prohibited from taking the federal dollars to use in the way that was best for the children and the nation. When parents are taking their children out of school and teaching them at home and still paying their local school taxes we have a problem with the education system. When the system refuses to allow this we have a failure in the legislature, local and national.

Well that is nice, meaningless but nice. The children are currently not getting an education they are being warehoused, kept out of the way so the parents can go to work. If they get an education at all it is simply an accident.

Until the no child left behind legislation was put in place the evidence was easy to see. 50 years of government interference resulted in our children going from 1^st in the world to 39^th in education. That is what 4 trillion dollars of federal money bought. I don’t see that as money well spent. I remember each year we had civic pride week. We did things locally to help our community and our nation. This is not taught anymore. We don’t even teach civics anymore. Yes they have civics classes but what is taught is politics, liberal politics to indoctrinate the youth to continue voting for liberals and doing things that go against the nations best interests. If the parents disagree with this they have no recourse because they can’t take the children out of school, they can’t get rid of the teachers that are failing to teach, and the children are being taught to disrespect and disobey the parents so this slow march to ignorance can continue. Public education will not teach about the Hebrew religion or the Christian religion but the public schools will demand under the guise of diversity that my children learn about Islam, so far as to give the children Islamic names and teaching them to pray on a rug. Please tell me how this is good for the children or the nation?

I believe you are supporting the conservative point here. This was the basis of the no child left behind act. So we are not that far apart.