Indeed, Jacquerie: Many federal (and state) courts appear to be "not sympatico" with the idea of constitutional constraints; so they just ignore them. No wonder our society is increasingly a madhouse these days! To undermine the rule of law leaves the society in a state of moral ambiguity, turmoil, uncertainty....
I think it's safe to say that the Framers recognized that state-vs.-individual political power was perhaps the only true zero-sum game in the world. In this we can discern the influence of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) and John Locke, the philosophical genie behind the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
The zero-sum consists in the fact that the more the power of the state, the less the power (liberty) of the person. Thomas Jefferson accordingly spoke of how this zero-sum power game plays out in political reality: "When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
I imagine that many/most Americans nowadays are simply terrified of Washington... and with good reason....
FWIW. Thanks so very much for writing, Jacquerie!
The rot is deeper than that.
Some say the rot goes back 400 years.
Certainly within the earliest years of our Republic, powerful rich people cooperated with powerful rich people in Europe to insure that they remained essentially in control of the world, and expanded and tightened that control.
Satan worship was reportedly involved early on.
Certainly for at least the last 100 years, those who made the most money insured that other up and coming, becoming wealthy folks played ball according to the globalist script . . . or were bought out . . . or threatened . . . or bankruped by clever schemes or imprisoned on trumped up charges o out right killed.
I no longer have any doubt of such things.
Insuring that their stooge was in the White House was an early, well managed priority. The farce of a great difference between the DIMRATS AND THE GOP was just that—playing the public for fools while distracting them with a phony competition. The Good-cop/bad-cop ploy coupled with the frog in the bucket strategy allowd all manner of skullduggary to go on under the table and sometimes in plain daylight—e.g. the VietNam war etc.
Of course they have been INCREASINGLY shredding the Constitution for decades. They never did respect it.
Of course the courts have been compromised for a long time. I suspect that 3/4ths of the judges are covert or overt globalists. It might be even 85% or more.