There was a time in America’s history when the Republican party stood for limited government.
No more.
The conservative Republican posterboy and architect of the “Contract with America” gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, where he “called on the secretary of defense to give a speech every year on the state of our schools.” Why would he call for such a thing? Because Newt Gingrich says that America’s schools are “a matter of national security.”
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| Homeschooled. |
He said he’d argue that point with any conservative.
This position is generally taken by liberals, which is the main reason I was so surprised to hear Gingrich say it. The argument goes as such: the education of children benefits all of society, and the better they are educated the stronger the country is; therefore, since the strength of the entire nation is fixed to the education of the children, the responsibility for such an important activity should fall on the federal government, and qualified employees sanctioned by the governing body.
There is some truth in there. The education of children does benefit all society. However, that does not result in the necessity of centralized control or oversight by the federal government. The federal government has no Constitutional authority over education. The Tenth Amendment therefore turns the power over to the states:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The education of America’s children, according to the Constitution, is a state responsibility.
Generally, when you mention the unconstitutionality of the Department of Education, a liberal will fall back on the ol’ standby: general welfare. The General Welfare clause was never meant to cover anything other than what was detailed in the Constitution. There are so many examples illustrating how the Founders defined the General Welfare:
- “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.” – James Madison, Letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792 _Madison_ 1865, I, page 546
- “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 constitutents.” – James Madison, regarding an appropriations bill for French refugees, 1794
- “With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” – James Madison, Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831 _Madison_ 1865, IV, pages 171-172
- “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” – Thomas Jefferson
- “If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress…. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.” – James Madison
It is very clear the Founder’s did not intend for the General Welfare clause to be used for anything other than what the Constitution mentioned. (By the way, I covered how we evolved from their vision to the mess we see today in the second podcast we ever did.)
Regardless of what Newt Gingrich says, there is no Constitutional role for the federal government in education. It is not mentioned in the powers given to the federal government, and the Founding Fathers had no intention of allowing the General Welfare clause to change the limited role of Washington.
The education of our children is of vital importance to the future of our country. A job that important should not be left up to the government. Homeschooling and private schools outperform public schools with less money, less danger and less indoctrination.
The farther away the federal government gets from our children’s education, the better for America.
