reg•u•late, v.t.

 

From Noah Webster's dictionary, 1828

reg•u•late, verb transitive

1. To adjust by rule, method or established mode;  as, to regulate weights and measures;  to regulate the assize of bread;  to regulate our moral conduct by the laws of God and of society;  to regulate our manners by the customary forms.

2. To put in good order;  as, to regulate the disordered state of a nation or its finances.

3. To subject to rules or restrictions;  as, to regulate trade;  to regulate diet.

Note that placing rules and restrictions on a subject was the last thing Revolutionary era Americans thought of when they said 'regulate'.  The first thing they thought of was 'adjustment':  to make something work properly, the way one might adjust a clock to keep correct time.  Thus, a 'well-regulated militia' is one that functions as a unit and all of whom know how to clean, load, and fire their weapons.  To 'regulate commerce' did not mean 'suffocate under a mountain of legislation';  it meant 'make it work the way it should'.

Under Congress' article I section 8 power to 'regulate commerce among the states' the implication was that Congress would facilitate commerce rather than micromanage it.  This was the primary impetus behind FDR's threat to pack the Supreme Court with additional judges who would see things his way:  FDR wanted more power than the interstate commerce (hereafter IC) clause allowed because his vision was of a larger, more powerful central government that could mold the economy in ways that would dispel the economic depression of the 30s and 40s.  He got his needed reinterpretation and today almost everything Congress does is justified under those expanded IC powers.  That new interpretation is so expansive that the Gun Free School Zones Act was cast as justified by the IC clause because it claimed to protect future consumers in IC!

In fact, although article I section 8 grants power to Congress in only 17 specific areas, this new interpretation of the IC clause is so broad that it can truly be said that article I section 8 now grants power in 16 specific areas and one other which is 'anything else Congress wants'.

Virtually everything we see as 'wrong' with the federal government today arises from that faulty interpretation:  we are supposed to be living in The Free Trade Zone Of The United States but are instead saddled with rules that require (just as one example) special certification for over-the-road long haul drivers who operate in more than one state — and those rules cost money.  In the one recent case where Congress should have been using its original powers to prevent damage to the consumer, they conspired with a state to promote it.  Before 1974, if you wanted to fly to Dallas, you landed at Love Field (DAL), 5 miles NW of downtown.  When DFW was proposed as Dallas' new airport, Texas asked for and Congress agreed to limit the use of Love Field in order to promote DFW (and American Airlines).  As a result, as soon as DFW was operational, the FAA no longer accepted flight plans for Love Field to or from airports outside Texas.  You could then fly DAL-Abilene-Seattle, or DAL-ElPaso-Hawaii, or DAL-Houston-Paris, but you could not fly non-stop to any of those destinations unless you flew from DFW.  The 40-year agreement expired in 2014 having cost Southwest Airlines 40 years of business out of Love Field and funneling most of that business to America Airlines which, for all intents and purposes, owns DFW.

Because of Congress' new-found power over the economy, corporations whatever their size and, in fact, entire industries are at the mercy of Congress which now wields the power of life and death over them.  Is it any wonder Washington DC is awash in corporate lobbyists and campaign contributions?  People who complain about the corrupting influence of corporate money over politics are complaining of the wrong thing.  They should be complaining about the corrupting influence of the incorrectly-interpreted IC clause.