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makingmusic476 on 21 April 2012
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sperrico87 said:
Mr Khan said:

Because where in the Constitution is the free market or economic liberty an enumerated power? The commerce clause is clearly there, but in this case there is nothing else in there to oppose the commerce clause. To state that we have a "right" to not be forced to buy anything is therefore false, as far as American jurisprudence should be concerned. The conservative justices will inject ideas of economic libertarianism into American jurisprudence that have no constitutional basis


 I suppose one could argue that the law may in fact be "Constitutional" under our current interpretation of what that actually means.  However, that is more a symptom of a systemic problem in the way we've interpreted the Constitution over the last 100 years or so.  In essence, as far as I can tell, there is almost nothing left that the Federal government can't do. 

It was my understanding, at least initially, that the Constitution was to be a document that clearly lays out exactly what the Federal government can do, (which is very little) and leaves all the rest up to the discretion of the individual states.  It seems to me we've lost our way almost entirely. 

The Constitution isn't something that we're supposed to check as an afterthought after a law's already been drafted and voted on.  It's original purpose was to keep politcians from doing the things that they ought not be doing.  If all the Constitution is nowadays is merely something we look to as an afterthought rather than a clear list of directives, then we've got a serious problem.

Even when the country was first created, we had politicians advocating for a very loose interpretation of the constitution.  Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists were the driving force behind that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Era

I have no idea where the idea that the founding fathers all supported a strict interpretation of the constitution came from.  Lines were drawn before the constitution was even ratified, with George Washington and Alexander Hamilton supporting a strong federal government and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison opposing such a strong central authority.  It's where the strict vs loose battle began.