We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,provide for the common defence, 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.

The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts andprovide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Toprovide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

Toprovide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

Toprovide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

But is the art of medicine or any other art faulty or deficient in any quality in the same way that the eye may be deficient in sight or the ear fail of hearing, and therefore requires another art toprovide for the interests of seeing and hearing-- has art in itself, I say, any similar liability to fault or defect, and does every art require another supplementary art toprovide for its interests, and that another and another without end?

Then now, Thrasymachus, there is no longer any doubt that neither arts nor governmentsprovide for their own interests; but, as we were before saying, they rule andprovide for the interests of their subjects who are the weaker and not the stronger-- to their good they attend and not to the good of the superior.

The authorities essential to the common defense are these: to raise armies; to build and equip fleets; to prescribe rules for the government of both; to direct their operations; toprovide for their support.

And unless it can be shown that the circumstances which may affect the public safety are reducible within certain determinate limits; unless the contrary of this position can be fairly and rationally disputed, it must be admitted, as a necessary consequence, that there can be no limitation of that authority which is toprovide for the defense and protection of the community, in any matter essential to its efficacy that is, in any matter essential to the FORMATION, DIRECTION, or SUPPORT of the NATIONAL FORCES.