"[The general welfare] clause had caused the first and greatest controversy at the Constitutional Convention. James Madison successfully led the opposition to proposals which would have put Congress in the role of promoting the general welfare as Congress saw fit. Madison said:

‘If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.’" (Lawrence Patton McDonald, We Hold These Truths, pp. 45-46, ‘76 Press, 1976)

"The constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness, you have to catch it yourself." - Benjamin Franklin

"When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it -- without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud -- to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed...

"How is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime..." (Fredrick Bastiat, The Law, p. 21, 26)

"Assume for example, that we were farmers, and that we received a letter from the government telling us that we were going to get a thousand dollars this year for ploughed up acreage. But rather than the normal method of collection, we were to take this letter and collect $69.71 from Bill Brown, at such and such an address, and $82.47 from Henry Jones, $59.80 from a Bill Smith and so on down the line; that these men would make up our farm subsidy.

"Neither you nor I, nor would 99 percent of the farmers walk up and ring a man’s doorbell, hold out a hand and say, ‘Give me what you’ve earned even though I have not.’ We simply wouldn’t do it because we would be facing directly the violation of a moral law, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ In short, we would be held accountable for our actions." (James R. Evans, The Glorious Quest, 1848)