re we re from the government and we re here to help you in article apr infonode ingr com albeaj jima b d ingr com jim albea writes in article mar isc br isc br com steveh thor isc br com steve hendricks writes ouch now that really hurts i m being accused of no breadth nor depth to my historical knowledge because i m unwilling to agree that economic inequality leads to poverty and from there to social and political instability you go read your history again poverty is the main engine of social instability in this context we ll put aside religious turmoil mass migrations etc well the fact of the matter is that poverty is imperfectly related to social and political instability while economic inequality is much more strongly related in virtually all major revolutions including england the puritan revolution france russia and china the revolutions occurred as economies were undergoing substantial long term growth and poverty was declining what sets off revolutions is massive inequality coupled with a perception on the part of those at the bottom that social change is possible if poverty were the main engine of social instability this typical historical pattern would not hold in fact revolutions would have been far more typical before the nineteenth century than since that time much deleted gee jim if you ll check the constitution you ll find in order to promote the general welfare do ordain and establish this constitution i m surprised you missed it it s right there in the first paragraph i would have thought you would have made it at least through the preamble you almost got it right and it was a good try but you should follow your own advice the preamble to the constitution does read as you have quoted but let us not forget that after all it is only the preamble it is not a binding part of the constitution and carries no weight in the law that poor tortured paragraph has got to be one of the most unfortunate passages in the english language witness the legions of blowhards like yourself who think those vague flowery phrases are part of the law of the land do you really believe that a politician only has to give lip service to promoting the general welfare to be within the limits of the constitution sorry buddy but some other blowhards managed to include the general welfare in another portion of the constitution article i section the congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the united states i guess they wanted to make sure everyone understood they meant what they said in the preamble just to make sure you ve got the point let s do a little experiment what if the constitution read as follows preamble we the people to promote the general welfare do ordain and establish this constitution for the united states of america constitution the federal government shall have one function and one function only to provide for the defense of the nation but as noted above the constitution doesn t say that does it the government would not then have two functions defense and welfare but since it explicitly includes both the general welfare and defense in article i section i guess you ll grant that botha are constitutional functions right jsh steve hendricks domain steveh thor isc br com one thing about data it sure does cut uucp uunet isc br thor steveh the bulls t r hofferbert ma bell
