What the Constitution Didn’t Say - and Why It Matters Now

Flopping Aces ^ | 08-19-25 | Vince

[Starman417]

Our Constitution, perhaps the greatest document in human history behind the Bible, is not quite perfect. In 2025, we can see things that might have been added. Number one is probably term limits.  Another would be a prohibition on deficit spending outside of war.  And maybe they could have added something about judges being responsible for the crimes the criminals they release into society commit…

No doubt there are countless things we could sit here 250 years later and think of that the Founding Fathers could have added, but didn’t because they couldn’t see into the future. One thing they could see clearly was that the nature of man is to accumulate power, use that power to take from others, and that the most effective way of doing both is by harnessing the power of government.

Alas, it wasn’t possible to put frameworks in place to control all of the base instincts of men, as they are simply unending and evolve constantly. The Founders could not envision our world.  They could write about freedom of speech and the press, but they couldn’t have known about radio or mobile phones or the dark web or Bitcoin or shadowbanning.

Nonetheless, one of the greatest attributes of their Constitution was its staggered terms. The House, the place from which spending originates, is the closest to the people and is elected every two years. The President, who executes the laws, has a term of four years.  Then the Senate, originally the representatives of the state legislatures, serve staggered six-year terms.

The goal of these staggered terms was to tamp down the passions of men such that if a majority wanted something, they couldn’t easily command it, and it would take years for them to take control over the government. The Founders understood that tempers run hot, but cooler heads often prevail with time and therefore they wrote a document with built in cooling off periods.

What the Founding Fathers never envisioned, however, was a permanent government, in either the elected officials or the bureaucracy.  Sadly, today we have both. That wouldn’t be a significant problem if the government was as small as it was initially.  Indeed, for America’s first 50 years, we had a Department of State, Treasury, War, Attorney General, and Postmaster General.  That was it.  Interior and Agriculture came in the middle of the 19^th century when the country was adding states and territories rapidly, and farming was becoming a major point of conflict between cattle herders, sheep herders, farmers, and miners, not to mention Indians.  Nothing more until the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903 – the two split in 1913.

The point is, for most of the first half of America’s history, the federal government was essentially an afterthought in the minds of most Americans.  For the Founding Fathers, government was part-time.  Today it’s anything but. To put this in perspective, there have been almost 2,000 people who have served as a US Senator, and of the 25 who served the longest, all but one started his career in the 20^th century – 15 of them after 1960 – and two are still there!  Similarly, over in the House, where 12,000 people have served as Representatives, of the 33 longest serving, all but one began their service in the 20^th century and four are current members.  The Founding Fathers didn’t see a need for term limits because for them, Congress was a service to the country, not a job, and certainly not a permanent career.

Today, the federal government is anything but an afterthought in the lives of Americans. Not only does it seek to control almost every aspect of our lives, but it spends like a drunken sailor on liberty weekend.  Not surprisingly, most of the regulations that stifle productivity and innovation and the departments from which most spending emerges, are those created in the last century. Seventy-five percent of the federal government spending is on things that simply exist at the federal level for our first 150 years.  From healthcare spending to food stamps to Social Security to education, the limited government our Founding Fathers left us with has metastasized into a borg that grows year after year, regardless of who’s in control.

This does not end well, particularly as the United States is $37 trillion in debt, with twice that in unfunded obligations.  The words of Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler explain why:  “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

On our present course, that is America’s fate. Sadly, we have few leaders willing to tell Americans the truth about that reality.  While we have men like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, Americans writ large don’t seem to be interested in following them.

[Political Junkie Too]

All true.

When I talk about the synergies between the Congressional and local districts, the overlap but not align. Voting for your state assemblyman and state senators are important, too, but their direct influence on Congress is muted now.

I don't know how much corruption goes into the state races, and if it does, whether the corruption is coming from the same or from different interests.

-PJ

[fwdude]

Term limits isn’t going to mitigate the Swamp.

What would happen is that a congresscritter who gets termed out would name an heir apparent. The Swamp would illegitimately fund this heir to the seat and we’d have the same problem.

There is no easy fix.

[delchiante]

‘Easiest’ is 1766 obliteration and drain.

Then make those 535 Congress critters part time with minium wage salary, and term limits, so it is the worst possible career move ever..

Maybe then instead of being ruled over, we’d be represented..

Wouldn’t be easy but spying using hoax info, hoax impeachments, Wuhan Coup Flued, and stolen elections should have consequences for the area these events were birthed from.

[itsahoot]

The only term limits should be elections.

The only term limits should be honest elections, which we don't currently have.

[itsahoot]

The tragedy isn’t that our heroes change when they get to Washington.
The tragedy is that we keep expecting them not to. _Unknown

[Glad2bnuts]

Get rid of the Federal Reserve, and deficit spending would be not much fun. They would have to raise taxes in broad daylight, and people would be filled with revulsion. That is a word that denote revolt, isn’t it?

[BDParrish]

Please do not get hung up on that word!
Surely you can see the point of the post?
Is there really some meaningful difference between what is happening to us and what YOU call a democracy.
Please include your terminology guidelines so that in future we only use your permitted words.
Anyway we do have a republic either.
We are under an all encompassing bureaucratic tyranny!

[exnavy]

Democracy is mob rule. The attendees of the very first constitution openly condemned “democracy”. Democracy is the only form of governance where we the people can vote to have you eliminated. That is not our form of government.