All the "silliness" here is coming from you and fellow pro-Confederates.
The rest of us only respond with facts & reason -- all of which you studiously ignore.
achilles2000: "You and others have a fifth grade emotional attachment to certain figures you treat as demigods."
Rubbish, and prime example of your "silliness".
In fact nobody on this thread, or any other, has expressed such sentiments.
We have merely responded to your historical-revisionist propaganda with facts & reason.
achilles2000: "Federalists clearly didn’t like the compromise they were forced into in the Constitution and set about trying to get the powers they wanted by going around the Constitution."
More than once I've provided you with proof positive (11th & 12th Amendments) that our Founders themselves well understood which government actions required Constitutional Amendments and which could be passed as laws by Congress, signed by the President.
The fact that you disagree with our Founders on this just tells us that you hate both them and their Constitution.
achilles2000: "Hamilton was very aggressive in this and was supported by mercantilist interests."
He was also supported by Southerners, who agreed to charter his First Bank of the United States, in exchange for locating Washington DC in the South.
That sounds to me like total "politics as usual", not some Constitutional-crisis requiring correction now 200+ years later.
achilles2000: "Go ahead and claim that the Alien & Sedition Act was Constitutional..."
Part of the Alien Act is still US law today, and was never ruled unconstitutional.
The remainder -- which expired naturally around 1802 -- our Founders considered at the time war-time emergency acts, which were only perceived as unconstitutional after the emergency passed.
In that sense, it was equivalent to today's "Patriot Act", which also grows increasingly unpopular as the public perceives terrorist threats receding.
achilles2000: "or that the “necessary and proper” clause allows the government to do anything it deems “necessary and proper” (in which case we can dispense with the rest of the Constitution)"
Of course, I don't agree with that, nor has anybody else here posted such an opinion.
achilles2000: "that the power to “coin money” means printing up fiat money,"
"Fiat money" was common in those days, issued by both state governments and by the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation -- hence the expression, "not worth a Continental".
Our Founders did not consider "fiat money" to be a matter requiring Constitutional Amendment, and neither do I.
achilles2000: "or that Article 1, Section 9, Clause 4 means the federal government can levy an income tax directly on citizens, or any other nonsense you like."
No, the Courts ruled that a permanent peace-time income tax requires Constitutional Amendment, hence the 16th Amendment, ratified just 100 years ago, launching the great explosion of Federal Power.
So, nothing I've posted here qualifies as "nonsense", but virtually everything you post does, FRiend.
achilles2000: "Even if Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson swore on a stack of Bibles that those things are true, they would still be unconstitutional."
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Finally, an honest confession from our pro-Confederates, that you oppose our Founders, and their Constitution.
I say, that's great -- of course I don't agree, but at least you're honest about it.
So now we can dispense with all debate over what is, or is not Constitutional, because we know right off the bat that achilles2000 considers our Founders' Constitution itself unconstitutional, at least as they understood & interpreted it.
achilles2000: "Your assumption that leaders engaging in acts of realpolitik actually tell us what the Constitution says is either nothing other than a modified version of the doctrine of the Royal Perogative, over which Charles I lost his head, or some mystic vision of Hamilton and others as oracles."
More silly rubbish.
The reason our Founders' original intent is used as the Gold Standard for what is, or is not, Constitutional, is that otherwise we have no solid basis on which to define the "compact" ratified in 1788.
If original intent is not a valid standard, then there is no standard, and we are forced to accept -- as valid interpretations -- ideas which can vary from, oh, say, Nancy Pelosi on the one end to, say, achilles2000 on the other -- depending on which can gin up the most voters.
If you declare our Founders' interpretations were "unconstitutional", then it means we never, ever had a validly functioning Constitution -- a claim which is ludicrous & beyond debate.
achilles2000: "The progressives own you, and you don’t even know it."
More silly rubbish, but lunatic anti-Constitution, anti-Americans do own you achilles2000, and you do know it, though are most reluctant to confess the truth.
Indeed, my opinion is that there's nothing truly "conservative" in you, achilles, because the word "conservative" means conserving the best of what is, or was.
But you wish not to "conserve", but to impose something which never was, and never can be: your personal interpretation of the US Constitution.
Note especially final conclusion at the end of #394.
I suspect that achilles may view himself more as a libertarian than a conservative and Confederate leaders were very fluent in the language of libertarianism. They talked a lot about the importance of personal liberty, especially the right to own people and the right to buy and sell them in a free market.
Obviously, championing the Confederate cause can be a bit awkward at times for a libertarian.