There are a lot of folk out there, mainly from the right wing of the political spectrum, who tend to go on about the "original intent" of the Founders when it comes to United States Constitution. These "originalists" as these people like to call themselves, are for the most part wasting their time. It's not like the Constitution is the Ten Commandments, written in stone, and never changing. The Constitutional Convention was made up of a coalition of men, who in spite of what you've been told, were not all of one mind. They understood that not everyone in the Pennsylvania State House that hot summer of 1787 would be able to agree on how government should behave. In some cases they did agree, and so certain principles were set in stone, such as the separation of powers and the ability for those powers to check one another. In other cases they could not agree, and so they compromised, the most famous example being the Great Compromise. In still other cases they knew they would not be able to agree. In such cases, the Founders chose one of two strategies: they left the issue up to the States (the most infamous example being the issue of slavery), or they deliberately left things all murky-like. This had the effect of leaving the issue, and thus the Constitution open to interpretation and debate - and boy did it, right from the get go, and would very quickly lead to the birth of party politics in the 1790s. Is this a bad thing? Some of the Founders thought so, but the way I look at it, what we have with this loose, murky, wording, such as "promote the general Welfare," as found in the preamble, and the part in Section 8 which gives Congress the authority “ To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers…” is the ability to have a conversation on what the role and scope of government should be. What all of this DOES mean to all of the originalists out there is that if you are looking for a firm answer from the Constitution about what the role and scope of government is, YOU WILL NOT FIND IT. You are wasting your time. Now if you want to argue the role and scope of government on the basis of some economic theory of your choice, go right ahead, but don't look to the Constitution. I suppose then, that the only true originalist is one that argues that the Constitution is a living breathing framework for government, and nothing more.
