So, what IS the limit?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Radley Balko's a libertarian, yes - writes for Reason, has his blog, etc. He's also done great work on drug policy, and may have single-handedly gotten someone a retrial for a botched murder case.

Anyway, he posted this question on his blog tonight in response to the left wing responses to the health care reform lawsuit result yesterday, and I'm sharing it here because I am curious:

Putting aside what’s codified Bill of Rights, which was ratified after the main body of the Constitution, do you believe the Constitution puts any restrictions on the powers of the federal government?

If your answer is yes, what restrictions would those be? And what test would you use to determine what the federal government can and can’t do? I’ve written this before, but after Wickard, Raich, and now, if you support it, the health insurance mandate, it’s hard to see what’s left that would be off-limits.

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If your answer is no, that is, that the Constitution puts no real restraints on the federal government at all, why do you suppose they bothered writing and passing one in the first place?

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I guess to get at the meat of the disagreement, I should ask one more: Do you buy into the idea that the people delegate certain, limited powers to the government through the Constitution, or do you believe that the government can do whatever it wants, save for a few restrictions outlined in the Constitution?

I use my Tenther icon ironically right now, but I think it is a reasonable, rational question. I can get why people view the General Welfare clause expansively, even if they're wrong, for example, but I can't wrap my head around how people cannot see this as overly broad, or why anyone's really willing to dismiss certain Constitutional facts out of hand. I'm actually really curious here - if there's something I've been missing all this time, I'd genuinely love to hear it.

Comments

[penguin42.livejournal.com]

do you believe the Constitution puts any restrictions on the powers of the federal government?
If your answer is yes, what restrictions would those be?

I don't know about enumerating *all* restrictions, but how about starting with needing two separate houses of elected representatives, plus the elected head of the government's executive, to approve new laws via a specified system, before they can be carried out by the government? And then have a third, appointed group have the power to decide that actions carried out by the other two were improper?

Yeah I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek here, but honestly there are plenty of restrictions laid out in the constitution that most people seem to just take for granted nowadays. I think Balko's real question is "are there any restrictions as to the kinds of laws that congress can pass and the executive can carry out."

My 30-second answer? Yes, there are, but they're sufficiently vaguely defined in the actual text of the constitution that we're left to use the mechanisms of government we have to hash out exactly where to draw the line. Does that mean the line could change over time as ideologies shift? Sure. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.