A popular editorial from Investors Business Daily.

Here is the question he wants to answer:

If one group of people prefers government control and management of people’s lives and another prefers liberty and a desire to be left alone, should they be required to fight, antagonize one another, risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences or should they be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways?

The problem is that the federal government is not supposed to tell the states what to do. Every state is supposed to decide how much to tax and what government programs to spend on for themselves.

He continues:

Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution lists the activities for which Congress is authorized to tax and spend. Nowhere on that list is authority for Congress to tax and spend for: prescription drugs, Social Security, public education, farm subsidies, bank and business bailouts, food stamps and other activities that represent roughly two-thirds of the federal budget.

[…]James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, explained in Federalist Paper No. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.

Williams ends by hoping for a restoration of respect for the Constitution. That would mean that the Democrats, (the party that advocates top-down control of other people’s lives), would have to be voted out of power.

Walter Williams is my second favorite living economist. Thomas Sowell is still number one, and he has the most popular post on National Review right now.