Although your belief is a common one even at the highest levels, reality is that Art. 1, §8, cl. 2 is not actually as broad a power as is believed and/or imagin

Although your belief is a common one even at the highest levels, reality is that Art. 1, §8, cl. 2 is not actually as broad a power as is believed and/or imagined. People are reading something into that clause that did not exist when it was written, nor should it exist today. It is a function of the misunderstanding of what "regulate" means as it is and was meant, rather than what today's manipulators or "designing men" as Andrew Jackson called them, intend to imprint on it. When written, "regulate" did not mean control by authoritarian and dictatorial means, absent of checks and balances and controls on power as it is implied today, i.e., "we {insert unelected bureaucratic authoritarian agency} decree by regulation that you may not do this thing or that you have to do this thing." What "regulate" meant when written was to order and bring into purpose suited structure, to bring into a regular state, opposed to an irregular state. There was no overt or hidden or implied sense of manipulation and control implied, it was a description of state, not action. It is something that is to a large extend willingly overlooked by those who are authoritarian minded, but this natural entropy of language/meaning and even often deliberate and intentional manipulation of language and words (see today's public dialogue and clear and intentional manipulation of language, i.e., you can say some things and the meaning and use of other things is imposed or assaulted), causes excessive amounts of problems. A good example of this kind of change, is the word matrix; that means a pattern of lines or marks, usually in a uniform layout, which used to mean nothing more than a female breeding animal since time before records and well into the 18th century, including even today in niche agricultural circles. The connection to the breeding female coming from the sense that a mathematical matrix is a component into which quantities can be set, or bred into. Congress does not technically have the right to control commerce, let alone trade, but it does have the power to set commerce into and orderly, or regular state; opposed to an irregular state, i.e., into a wanton and unpredictable state. That does not include using its powers to change or manipulate it with objectives or outcomes in mind. But regardless of what I say or even the founders meant, the great powers of human hive-mindedness and whoever can control it will ultimately determine the outcome and impacts. We are rapidly approaching a state where everything and anything in the Constitution is essentially put through an authoritarianism conversion where everything is interpreted as meaning centralized control and power, while always and relentlessly stripping individuals of power and control over their own lives and freedoms … all by changing language, which is precisely why certain groups are so focused on changing the language, because if you change the meaning of freedom to slavery, then you are halfway to 1984.