Dispelling ambiguity

July 4th’s We the People column in the Spokesman-Review portrayed the Constitution’s statement of federal authority to “regulate commerce” as ambiguous. Those who are ignorant of the historical context in which our founding documents were created, and the founders’ own documented commentaries and explanations of them, lack the tools to interpret them.

The author rightly cited the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to demonstrate the founders’ intentions to limit government, and their methods for doing so, but he provided little historical context to enlighten the reader of why the founders’ chose to limit the federal government by these methods, and what problems these methods were intended to solve.

The founders’ purpose, and the methods they implemented, were strongly influenced by the philosophies of such people as Cicero, de Montesquieu, Lock, and Smith. The philosophy of Natural Rights, which affirms that all people have personal agency, undergird the principles of limited government.

Lacking federal executive and judicial branches, the states’ unity fractured after the revolution was won, and contentions grew among them. The Constitution was thus created “in Order to form a more perfect Union.” Of the many problems of disunity, partisan commerce laws and practices were established by many of the states to favor one state over another. Authority for the federal government “to regulate Commerce … among the several States,” was to stop these divisive laws and practices, not to control private companies’ access to, and costs of, labor and property.

Honest efforts to learn our history dispels ambiguity.

Duncan Bean

Spokane Valley