a question for my fellow conservatives.?

I am always suspicious of questions that start out "My fellow conservatives..."

Is the trolling good today?

No. But you're asking the wrong question.

First, the common welfare clause is NOT a grant of power in the constitution. All modern legal scholars concede this. There was a time that leftist legal academics tried to argue that it was a grant of power, but since it is in the preamble and the preamble is about explaining WHY the constitution was formed, not WHAT it was forming, it could not be interpretted as a grant of power by any reasonable person.

Second, education spending's modern hook is under the commerce clause, which has been stretched to a point where there is almost NO restriction on what congress can do unless it violates the explicit rights expressed in the bill of rights. This is in fact exactly what the founders worried about in the constitutional convention, and is why they did not create a list of rights in the original document. They constructed the constitution to be an explicit grant of POWERS to the government with ALL OTHER POWERS forbidden. In other words, your rights didn't need explicit protecting because no power to violate them was granted. They feared that by listing explicitly those rights that were protected, future morons would misinterpret the constitution as granting limitless power, but exempting specific rights rather than the reverse. But ultimately people like Patrick Henry and others insisted on a bill of rights, so the founders relented.

The modern interpretation of the commerce clause is so loose that there is almost no power not granted, and this is the hook federal education spending rests upon.

Third, universal access to education IS important, especially in a democracy. However, government has proven over and over that it is TERRIBLE at delivering goods in an efficient and effective way. Schooling in this country was entirely private (with a few exceptions) until the early 20th century. Federal involvement didn't start until the 60s. We see that there has been a consistent decline in quality since these two events.

So we want the feds out of the education business altogether. But we also don't wants states and lcoal govts to deeply involved either, because they suck at education. yet we want universal access, and that's not something the private sector necessarily does well.

The solution is vouchers. Have state and local govts supply money for those without means to access a school with tuition of at least average cost (the voucher recipient can add more if they want/can, but an average tuition should give them an adequate starting point), and other than transparency rules, let everything else be determined by competition and parental choice.

No. Countries with universal education have no more college graduates than we do.

If we had Universal education costs would skyrocket when backed by government funds.

Anyone can go to college. In fact, the poorer you are, the better off. You can go for nearly free.

First off it's "promote the general Welfare" not provide. The "provide" which I denote as "must do" comes with 'provide for the common defence". "Promote" does NOT mean a "MUST DO".

The FFs knew an educated public is needed for a function democracy & keeping liberty.

Interesting. Yes I think we should do all we can to make sure we continue to have the best in education. But if you're talking college, then I believe everyone must earn there own way.

It could be construed as such but, since the department of education as foisted upon us by "Mr. Peanut" Jimmy Carter, has been a complete disaster, we need to start moving in a different direction.

Government ownership of schools is contrary to the common welfare. It is one of the things destroying the country as a whole.

You could say that about anything. The question is: where is the boundary? I think we can all agree that if we eat less fat and salt, we'd all be better off. If we did not allow people to engage in sports, we'd be much safer. Should we ban these things?

Not higher education.

No! That's not what that clause meant and it could be used for anything?

Should the government build us all a house too?