The real meaning of the Constitution

Carl R. Sadler, Las Vegas

Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009 | 2:03 a.m.

Regarding Stanley R. Goldfarb’s Monday letter to the editor in the Las Vegas Sun, headlined “Like it or not, we’re in this together”:

He quotes the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Very good. However, he fails to note that the general welfare is not to be provided, as is the case with the common defense. No, the general welfare is to be promoted, not provided — a very important difference.

Also, the preamble does not tell us our founders wanted to unify the states. They already were. It does not tell us they wanted to create a society, as this already existed.

What it does is spell out their reasons for the U.S. Constitution. It is most important to consider the first three words: “We the people.”

Our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution for the people. They did not write it for the government. They wrote it to protect the people from potential abuse by the government, which is why only certain powers or rights were given to the federal government. They intentionally left all others to the individual states.

Mr. Goldfarb quite correctly says freedom is not free. It often requires personal sacrifice, time and, of course, money. As both a veteran and a taxpayer, I fully understand this.

However, when we pay taxes to the federal government, they must be used to support the duties the federal government is charged with by the Constitution, such as common defense, the military. Pork spending is a different situation entirely.

The majority of pork spending is simply unconstitutional. There is nothing in our Constitution allowing the federal government to play Santa Claus with our taxes.

We are not a country that has been divided into states. We are individual states united into one country.