EDITORIAL - Almost every week I hear some Democrat clamor on about the need for the Constitution to become a "living document". A living document, he or she claims, is one that changes with the times and somehow morphs to reflect the issues and society of today. That means the Constitution of the year 1800 would be radically different than the one today.

Of course, the living document argument is a weak-hearted attempt to somehow rationalize away the government's big federal programs, like social security, welfare and minimum wage, and ultimately provide the federal government with more power and control over the American people. After all, how do you think the government was able to get as incomprehensibly massive as it is today?

What the Democrats fail to realize, however, is that the Constitution already is a living document; it was designed to be a living document by our founding fathers. Yes, it certainly was. The implementation of that design can be summed up with one single phrase: the amendment process.

Our nation's founders certainly understood the need to update the Constitution as the years pass, and the amendment process is how that is supposed to be done. After a proposed amendment is ratified, it becomes law. It becomes Constitutional.

The problem is the Democrats (and some Republicans) want to skip the amendment process, instead relying on their own interpretations of what our founding fathers "meant" by what they wrote. Interpretations, of course, are downright dangerous. Muslim extremists, for example, interpret their religion to advocate the slaughter of every human being on the face of the earth that does not believe as they do. Clearly, interpretations lead to strife, confusion and insecurity.

The Constitution was designed to provide our federal government with few and specific rights. We have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which means the government cannot forcibly take our life or possessions without it being otherwise constitutional.

The phrase "General Welfare" is well-used in the hopes of legalizing some of our government's most unconstitutional social programs, like social security and welfare. A read of the Federalist Papers, and specifically the words of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, two of the most well-known writers of the Constitution, reveals quite clearly what they meant by that phrase. It was not intended to give the federal government virtually unlimited power, provided that power can be linked to general welfare. It was never an interpretable phrase to rationalize big federal government control (see the article Rationalizing big government programs with General Welfare for more on that topic).

Instead of interpreting away our Constitution, we need to use the amendment process to clearly and unequivocally provide the federal government with its necessary power. It truly is a living document, and it certainly does not deserve to be defined based on the mere interpretation of those currently in power.