What does “promote the general Welfare” in the preamble mean?
Remember that our Founding Fathers had appealed to King George III for ten years and summed up these appeals in their Declaration of Independence. When they cried:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” *
they were proclaiming that God is our provider, not the king or any form of government. In the Declaration of Independence, when they shared their grievances they were appealing to the king to let them once again be self-governed under God.
The king was preferring one set of people over another. The founders wanted every law to treat the welfare of all Americans equally, with no special treatment for a certain person, group, or area. The king was giving colonies to his pets and absolving the colonists’ self-government. The colonists were used to raising taxes themselves. He was insisting on taxing them and yet not letting them have any say in how those taxes would be raised.
Franklin wrote, “They have no idea that any people can act from any other principle but that of interest; and they believe that three pence on a pound of tea, of which one does not perhaps drink ten pounds in a year, is sufficient to overcome all the patriotism of an American.”**
Richard Frothingham explains, “They did not rise up against the paltry duty because they were poor and could not pay, but because they were free and would not submit to wrong… There was [then] the power of an intelligent public opinion behind the determination to baffle the attempt to establish the tea duty…”**
Can we rise up once again with principled taxation for the general welfare of all Americans? Help us, Almighty God!
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*Declaration of Independence
**The Rise of the Republic by Richard Frothingham
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“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1 NIV
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