James Madison: The Man, the Mind, the Magnitude of Constitutional Genius

In the following series, I will be commenting on quotable quotes from the Father of the Constitution, which will put to rest much of the made-up controversy about the Constitution, its meaning, its intent, its implications, and its legacy and growing import in a time when its sense and sensibility are so crucial, so easily maligned, and so easily misunderstood.

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

Madison made this statement in direct references to the appropriate made for French refugees from the Haitian Revolution.

Congress was never intended to be a grand piggy bank or purse for easy perusal of the public.

As a matter of principle, he refers to the Document he helped shepherd into ratification, demanding to know where it gives Congress authority to spend any money on any matter not clearly delineated in the Constitution.

The dangerous precedent, which Madison attacked so succinctly, is the very vice which has bled this nation dry with entitlement spending, annual deficits, and a crushing national debt, all of which are threatening the solvency and freedoms of this country.

It is both fitting and discomfiting to find that the chief Framer of the Constitution foresaw the fraudulent and foolishly fiduciary shenanigans that Congress would force upon the American People.

Another quote touching on extensive, read, indeterminate, read, interminable, federal spending:

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions. It is to be remarked that the phrase out of which this doctrine is elaborated, is copied from the old articles of Confederation, where it was always understood as nothing more than a general caption to the specified powers, and it is a fact that it was preferred in the new instrument for that very reason as less liable than any other to misconstruction."

A government that can spend tax revenue on whatever it wants will eventually be able to do whatever it wants, at the heinous expense of the freedom of the people, no less.

Is it too late for the United States to respectfully heed his foreboding warning?