Dear Editor: If our Constitution gave us a government with “few and defined powers” (actually only 18 powers), describing the boundaries of our Constitution as “unalterable” and “fixed,” why then do we have unlimited national power? Who distorted such particular phrases as “General Welfare,” “Necessary and Proper,” “Commerce” and expanded federal power? Today these phrases are made to mean anything whatever. Therefore there is little that is exempt from federal preemption, subsidy and /orregulation. Our system of limited government, under a binding Constitution, has become a federal power grab that is constantly expanding. Alexander Hamilton said, for instance, that “necessary and proper” was a “tautology,” not an independent grant of power. Madison called the protest over “general welfare” a measure of anti-Federalist desperation — “stooping to such a misconstruction.” Our system of “limited powers” that was supposed to be the palladium of our freedoms has been ignored these last 50 years! As a consequence of liberal reasoning the national government today involves itself in: Welfare spending of all types, education, extensive regulation of the economy, employment training, health care programs, criminal justice, care of children, etc. Yet the repeated witness of our founding fathers was that these issues belonged to the jurisdiction of our states. They were understood thusly by the people who ratified our Constitution and read the federalist papers. It is obvious that our Constitution as originally adopted and expounded in the federalist papers is no longer with us. The forms and titles remain, there are still entities called states, and there are divisions of administrative functions, but the limited government idea is ignored. In fact, we have in operation now exactly the kind of top-heavy, arbitrary power that our founding fathers wanted to forestall, with the federal government routinely dictating to both states and individuals what is permissible and what is not! Why! John Sabol