“It is the nature of power to be ever encroaching, and converting every extraordinary power, granted at particular times, and upon particular occasions, into an ordinary power, to be used at all times, and when there is no occasion; nor does it ever part willingly with any advantage. From this spirit it is, that occasional commissions have grown sometimes perpetual; that three years have been improved into seven, and one into twenty; and that when the people have done with their magistrates, their magistrates will not have done with the people.”
We are clearly at or beyond this point and we seem to lack the stubbornness of Cato the Younger. In spite of all opposition, Caesar was triumphant and the power of the Emperors never again was checked.
I suspect you are right. To bring up the maxims of our framing generation is to invite at least scorn, and perhaps in the future, punishment.
There have been some recent, not so tongue in cheek suggestions that the constitution be done away with. For the time being at least, the constitution still says what it says, and Marx cannot be perpetually grafted on to Madison.
History will not look well upon a people who gaffed off the power to restore freedom.