Democracy without constraint eventually leads to more socialism. We are well on our way.

1.)The Constitution is not a dictation of the rights of the people, it is a limitation of the powers of our Government. 2.)There was never a literal interpretation of the Constitution. This is a myth created by opponents of the strength of the 9th Amendment, which states, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Cannot be interpreted literally because of the intrinsic broadness of the statement. The Constitution itself states that we have more rights than the Constitution dictates. Therefore, to follow the Constitution literally is to understand that the constitution is not a statement of our rights, and the Constitution gives no ground to deny social programs, whether they be to provide charity, education, or a number of other things that the society as a whole benefits from. 3.)The Preamble to the Constitution, which states the reason and intent behind the formation of the Constitution states; " We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, [b]insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, [b]promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America A part of insuring domestic tranquility is providing housing assistance to help keep contributing citizens from becoming vagrants. A part of it is to provide food to those who might go hungry, to insure that they do not pursue criminal means to provide food for themselves, and for their family. Hunger is a basic instinct, law and order is a part of a social covenant. Promoting general welfare is achieved by a government that provides the road of Enlightenment to all people. We have expanded the voting franchise dramatically so that now almost all individuals who are of 18 years of age are able to participate in the direct representation of our nation. To promote the general welfare of a Democracy with Universal Suffrage, the government must provide education to all individuals. A body politic that is ignorant is not capable of selecting the best leaders for their own nation. Leaders should be more than popular individuals with pockets deep enough to run for office, they should also be individuals capable of deriving the best policies which means the voting bloc must be able to compare and contrast the best policies. Also, in the modern age where so few individuals are involved in day to day manual labor, an education which provides the basic ability to step into a white collar job is fundamental. Even farming, the way in which most of humanity sustained themselves for most of human history has gone from being a practice of labor to a practice of technology as even the simplest family farms now operate assets worth millions of dollars and participate in a global economy. 4.)Human nature is not defined by the path of least resistance. This is something that has been alleged by punditry on television, and likewise remains unsupported. Given that the path of least resistance would be to remain hunter gatherers, living off the land and putting forth little or no effort in agriculture and just taking what is provided. The very birth of civilization was only possible as people put effort into thing which initially they didn't have to do. Agriculture as opposed to gathering required the creation of tools, the development of pottery and other methods of storing the harvests, the development of olive presses, the time put forth to ferment early wines and beers to allow for long storing. The path of least resistance cannot explain the Inuit people of Canada's most northern reaches, as they continue their very tough lifestyle. Where their diets still consist almost completely of meat which is still eaten raw in the right circumstances. Ironically, the least effort in the modern age is typically put forth by the wealthiest individuals, not the poorest. To use wealth to make wealth by "investing" in funding someone else's efforts. While it does represent a risk, I am uncertain how it represents much effort. Yes, the lives of multi-millionaires and billionaires often include a full schedule, but much of their work doesn't represent much in the way of toil. 5.)Human nature is more actually defined by survival. We tend to do what we have to do to survive and maintain ourselves. This is why we're often self interested. Ironically we seldom look at all that we have and consider all of the ways in which we could survive even if we lose it. So, we see people worth millions of dollars acting as if a 2 or 3% tax increase is going to end their prosperity when they have never known hunger, or despair, and even with an 80% tax rate they'd still never know hunger or despair. What a terrible travesty it must be to take away someone's second vacation home. I don't know how that family could survive without their lake house. 6.)If you actually focus on a detailed study of the last two hundred years, the government is protecting the lower and middle class from the wealthy and their abuse of the government when they fund domestic programs to promote domestic tranquility and the general welfare. At the inception of the Republic and the adoption of our Constitution, the wage disparity between the poorest, and the richest was not as significant as it is today. A larger share of the nation's wealth was held by a much larger share of the nation, and one simply had to move west to escape debt, bondage, and to start fresh within the wilderness. (Again, if human nature were the path of least resistance, I doubt we'd have ever had colonies, or frontiers) To give you solid information expanding on the effects of this in just the last twenty years; http://sociology.ucsc.edu... To summarize that data, federal policies are saddling the lower and middle class with debt while handing the nations wealth to the richest. It's impossible for a middle class American to pay for their education without saddling themselves with tremendous debt. To bring Thomas Jefferson into this, "There [is a measure] which if not taken we are undone...[It is] to cease borrowing money and to pay off the national debt. If this cannot be done without dismissing the army and putting the ships out of commission, haul them up high and dry and reduce the army to the lowest point at which it was ever established. There does not exist an engine so corruptive of the government and so demoralizing of the nation as a public debt. It will bring on us more ruin at home than all the enemies from abroad against whom this army and navy are to protect us." --Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1821. (*) FE 10:193 (http://etext.virginia.edu... ) 7.) Domestic policies which promote the general welfare and domestic tranquility are not the steps towards socialism, they are a security to ensure that private ownership can exist by limiting the ability of the wealthy to completely disenfranchise the lower and middle class, which would eventually lead to a social disorder that promoted government owned industries, utilities, and other "private assets."