Originally Posted by Senator Hatrack
To put it politely you are full of snit! You cannot accept the fact that you are wrong. A government whose powers are "few and defined" is a limited government. You are not the freaking expert know it all that you think you are! Whether or not you want to believe it our Constitution was written to limit the size of our government. Here is another quote from Madison that proves our Constitution created a limited government. "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."
Sometimes, my friend, you make me feel like a parent dutifully following their child around with a bucket and sponge to clean the crayon off the wall. I won't take the crayon away, because I fully support and encourage free expression. But, I can't put the bucket away, either...

I'll note first, that you have never cited your source for these Madison quotes. I know why, because I know where they come from - out of context and everything. You seem to think I don't follow links or read contrary opinions. I do it all the time, so I recognize the quotes and their source. I'll leave that to you.

As I said, Madison's views changed radically over the course of his lifetime and political career. When he co-wrote the Federalist papers with Hamilton, they were largely in accord. It was his design for a strong central government. It was later, under the influence of Jefferson and other "agrarian philosophers" that he changed his views to become quite restrictive, and oppositional to Hamilton. He changed his views again when he became President. He again became a proponent of a strong central government, and even presided over the creation of the Second Bank of the United States - something Hamilton had promoted and Jefferson had opposed.

There is a reason I don't claim to be wrong - I'm not. Contrary to your denigration, I am a "freaking expert know it all". This was a large part of my life's work. Moreover, I have the ability to distinguish between "size" and "purpose". The Constitution created, I readily acknowledge and have often stated, a central government of "enumerated powers". Nowhere, anywhere, in the Constitution does it say "but the government can only be so big." Where those powers are delegated to the federal government they are, largely, plenary. That is the point of the Supremacy clause. That very point was the central issue in the Civil War.

What you are also ignoring, deliberately I suspect, is that the tenor of the balance between State and federal authority changed substantially as a result of the Civil War and the Amendments enacted after it. The federal government gained a great deal of additional authority, and the State governments were consequently greatly constrained, thereafter. Much of what you are espousing follows, faithfully, the tenets of "Lost Cause" mythology. I don't know if that is deliberate, or just a consequence of being rabidly "conservative" in your viewpoint, but it is not realistic or consistent with where the country is, now, or has been for over a century.