It wasn't till the Progressives came along in the later 19th century that we had a significant group that wanted to dump those boring old rights because they inhibited their gleeful use of government power to "solve problems."
The battle the author mentions is therefore not much over 100 years old, not "all of our nations' history."
When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth rock, and had to endure a winter that killed 1/2 of their population, one group wanted to return to the Old World while another group wanted to stay and finish their work to evangelize the Indians.
Even before our Independence, there were factions who wanted to separate from England, while another faction wanted to remain loyal to the Crown because of repressive taxes.
During the formation of the Constitution, there were those who didn't want to incorporate the third branch of government because they felt that if their was a National Supreme Court, they would eventually take power away from the other two branches, make law instead of interpreting existing law, and become a government unto themselves........and that group, as it turns out, was Right On!!
Before the Civil War, there were factions in government that wanted to keep slavery legal, while another faction wanted to abolish slavery, and that's the reason for the Civil War.
I never said there were not factions throughout our history. I said we haven’t had a faction that wanted to put the government in charge of everything throughout our history. This came along with the progressives in the later 19th century, who eventually turned into today’s liberals.
They want to import philosophies based on the French Revolution, the ideas of which were utterly foreign to our country when founded, even if Jefferson, misguidedly, thought they were merely American revolutionary principles taken a little too enthusiastically.