That's precisely what the battle to create the Constitution was about. How to control the federal government so it wouldn't abuse its citizens. The brightest minds in human history couldn't contain the beast. The thirst for power among a few is too great even for hundreds of millions to contain.
I'm going to somewhat disagree. You see the Constitution worked marvelously until three things happened: (1) people-in-general began to believe, in effect, "the Constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means" which has the result of assigning the Supreme Court into a position of authority over the Constitution [instead of being under it], (2) The supreme court caved into the cowardice of justifying the politically expedient*, and (3) the general populace accepted the idea that government was "the good guy."
* Two cases stand out in my mind: Wicard v. Filburn, wherein the Court bent over backward to justify illegitimate law [in effect saying "no commerce = commerce"]; and, secondly, Schenck v. United States wherein that court declared that, yes, the Congress could regulate speech/print.
Some explanation here (Schenck v. United States) is needed. The case got started when a man, a socialist actually, was arrested for distributing anti-war pamphlets against WWI. In these pamphlets he declared the war immoral and urged two things: first, that men would petition the government to get-out/stay-out of the war and, second, to refuse to comply with the draft. -- This is particularly important, because there have nearly always been exceptions to forcing people with a religious-based objection to military-action [e.g. Quakers] in American law. So if the war was immoral, then to compel someone to fight in it would also be immoral -- this has been recognized in America until fairly recently.
Anyway, it was in this case that the court gave the example of "shouting fire in a crowded theater" as justification that speech could indeed be restricted by a law enacted by congress. They ruled this way so as to not ruffle Congress's feathers up by discrediting its Sedition and Espionage laws -- if you want to check it out, it's here.