Well, I was willing to just chalk it up to differences in opinion and leave it at that, but, since you asked...
I would love to give you "proof." But if I could do that, then certainly someone who is much more of a Constitutional authority than myself would have done so long ago and we would all interpret the Constitution in the exact same manner. Truth is, I can't "prove" it to you, any more than you can prove that your own interpretation is correct. The only thing I can do is provide evidence to support my claim, but I doubt that's going to prove it to you. And that's fine; politics would be pretty boring, if we all thought the same thing, right?
I have a lot of quotes from our Founders I could draw upon, but to be brief, here's just two:
"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that [quote of the 10th Amendment left out for brevity]. To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition." -Thomas Jefferson, 1791 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 19
"...the powers of the general government will be, and indeed must be, principally employed upon external objects, such as war, peace, negotiations with foreign powers, and foreign commerce. [...] The powers of the states, on the other hand, extend to all objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, and liberties, and property of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state." -Joseph Story, 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution
I would also reference the writings of James Madison in the Federalist Papers #41-46, as well as the quotes I specified in my response to your previous post above. Oh, and a bunch of other quotes by Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton. But, I don't have the space here to do so.
So, did I prove it to you? Yeah, I didn't think so. Oh well, you did ask.
I don't see how any of what you quoted has anything at all to do with what I said; nor do I see how it bolsters your claim that somehow the big difference between government intrusion on personal privacy vs "big government" in economic terms, is that the first one is in pursuit of constitutional ends while the second is outside the bounds of the constitution. That's utter, unadulterated claptrap. That supposed distinction between the two is complete nonsense.
If you want to argue about which powers are supposed to be left for the states vs. the federal government, fine - do it in another thread. It has nothing to do with what the proper role of "government" as a whole is. If all the "anti-big government" conservatives wanted to say is "the states need to provide all these services because the Constitution says the Federal government isn't allowed to", we'd be having some very different debates. That's not what it's a bout.
Note that I'm not even addressing whether you're right or wrong, or what my opinion is, on the specific matters at hand. Whether government should or shouldn't provide the kinds of services that conservatives call "big government". Whether government should or shouldn't intrude on our privacy, or how much, or whether or not that counts as "protecting us from invasion". I'm addressing one thing and one thing only: The supposed distinction between that two that you proposed, on constitutional grounds. It's intellectually vapid.
Hmmm, well, I wasn't trying to prove or disprove anything about economic terms vs. personal privacy; I personally left that whole topic behind about 10 replies ago. In fact, I never was trying to argue that point. In my original reply to Populism2008, I was just trying to point out that - in my opinion - that authorizing terrorist surveillance falls within the president's Constitutional powers, and therefore, the "big government" tag shouldn't apply.
My next reply was in response to your comments about the constitutionality of creating new bureaucracies, entitlements, services, etc.
As for taking it to a new thread, I was fine with letting this die a long time ago, but Pop08 pushed for the whole proof thing, so I obliged. And because I think the power to create all these new entitlements should be a power of the states and not the feds, I argued it the way I did.
So, sorry for the confusion and the thread creep. And now, I am just fine with letting this whole thing end here.
You're missing the very basic logic here. You said you don't consider intrusions on privacy to be "big government" because they're constitutionally permissible. Obviously we disagree on what privacy intrusions are contitutionally permissible or not, but that's not the point: the point is, the debate about big vs. small government is not and has never been about whether or not the constitution permits things. It's a debate about how much the government should do or not do, including a whole range of choices among things that are permissible.
Remember, the point you initially responded to was about the hypocrisy of opposing "big government" social services, but not opposing it when it comes to intrusion of privacy. You answered that it's not hypocrisy, because the constitution permits intrusion of privacy. Even if that were entirely true... the constitution permits social services too! The constitution restrict how much money government can spend or how many people it can hire or how many agencies it can create, it just creates a structure wherein those kinds of decisions can be made.
You presented a bunch of quotes that don't apply. First of all, they're not from the constitution, and you made no attempt to show how anything in the constitution relates to what you're claiming. Secondly, you concentrate a lot about where the separation between the role of federal and state governments should lie. There's a whole other debate to be had there, but it's a different debate! If you believe that "big government" should be entirely handled by state governments, say so, fine. We can disagree about that. But conservatives who oppose "big government" aren't saying "it's fine for the states to do as much of that stuff as they want, we just don't think the Federal government is allowed to do it". Maybe that's your opinion, personally, but it's not what public debate about big government is about at all. Conservatives who criticize "big government" social spending criticize it on philosophical grounds, and they do so at the state level just as on the federal level.
As a tangent, I should point out that the balance of federal vs. state power shifted fundamentally from 1860 - 1940, after a massive civil war proved the old deal was not successful, and a series of constitutional amendments were passed. So making claims about what the balance was before this big shift, or what people who founded the country intended for it to be, does not automatically give you moral superiority about claims for what that balance ought to be today. But, as I said, this is a tangent. It's an entirely separate debate from the one about conservative hypocrisy that this thread started out with.
1. It's not about what's constitutionally permitted, it's about what government should and should not do, even if it's allowed to.
2. It's not about the separation of roles between state and federal government, it's about the role of "government" in general, at all levels.
3. If there are any constitutional prohibitions that are relevant here, they're the ones that address civil liberties. The Constitution doesn't even hint at prohibiting social services, or defining the size of government.
