Once government claims and exercises powers, be they legitimate or not, it's pretty much impossible to get government to scale back. History is a good guide as to the eventual fate of governments and nations that allow arbritary power to expand without limits.

Generation to generation, the natural tendency of a relative minority is to seek and maintain influence over the many. This is reflected in the continued advance of the power of the State over the rights and liberties of its citizens. Unlike our own political vocabulary, The Greeks had terms for this particular dynamic: hoi polloi and hoi oligoi.

> You can, of course, make the argument that, power aside, the government should not use its enumerated powers in the way in question and should instead act as it did in the past case

My larger argument is more fundamental. If power is asserted over rights often enough, there will be few, if any, actual rights left.