The clause giving Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce is one of
the major errors in the Constitution. That clause, more than any other, was the
crack in the Constitution’s foundation, the entering wedge of statism, which
permitted the gradual establishment of the welfare state. But I would venture
to say that the framers of the Constitution could not have conceived of what
that clause has now become. If, in writing it, one of their goals was to
facilitate the flow of trade and prevent the establishment of trade barriers
among the states, that clause has reached the opposite destination.