The Regulation of Interstate Commerce

Barge Travel down the Susquehanna River.

      In the late 18th century the mode of transporting goods was River Barge and horse drawn vehicles and later trains in the 19th century. As horse drawn vehicles got more expensive the larger they were because the larger the vehicle demanded more horses, River Barge travel was the main method of transporting long distance goods at the time of the Constitutional Convention.
Goods travelled by steam boats and barges up and down all the major rivers and canals in the US. In DC we see the remnants of this in the C&O Canal before the railways were all built in the 19th century.
Google yourself when the rail lines were laid- it wasn't until after the Constitutional Convention.
The Constitutional convention attenders, aka "the founding fathers" wanted to give Congress the power to 'regulate interstate commerce.'  What they had in mind was that someone selling tobacco in Virginia who wished to ship it up the Potomac to Pennsylvania should not be so heavily taxed at the Maryland line  or impeded with a barge locke until they paid such an exhorbitant tax that they went out of business before they got to Pennsylvania. This video describes what barge lockes looked like-its in France but this is what we had here also and you can see remnants of it everywhere:


http://www.hulu.com/watch/105632/rick-steves-europe-burgundy-profoundly-french

     Interstate Commerce regulation had to do with GOODS moving through state lines- not people. It was never intended to speak to regulation of people just because they pass through state borders. It had rather to do with  someone selling apples in New Hampshire trying to take them to farmers market in Faneill Hall, Boston who should not be taxed so heavily at the Massachusetts border that they have to dump them in the pond.  The Yale Law Prof. who makes the argument repeatedly that people lived within a 50 mile radius then so what the founders thought the Commerce Clause meant then has to be updated to mean regulation of people any way congress wants to regulate purchasing is totally absurd. It was not an authorizing statute for the regulation of people, or CONSUMERS but for the benefit of commercial enterprises and on any state, state actor or private enterprise that would impede interstate commerce. 

   To be sure the commerce clause has historically enjoyed expansion in precedential twists and turns but it should not be construed to mean a blanket congressional authorization on all consumer activity. Just not what was intended by the authorizing constitutional principle. There is no such constitutional authorization for congress to regulate individual consumption any way it wishes under whatever common good health and welfare principle it deems worthy.

  Philadelphia was at the time de facto headquarters of the Revolution, George Washington had his encampment on "Misery Mountain" now known as Valley Forge just outside the city. It was a major commercial center because it sat on the Schuykill River which flowed through Delaware south and was a major Port city. It was for a time the Capital of the country prior to Washington, DC for that reason. The founding fathers had in mind River travel and not impeding it because rivers flowed naturally through several states. The commerce clause originally had NOTHING to do with regulation of consumers and the impingements of liberty on such a notion would have shocked them silly.