[ReleaseTheHounds]

The trick is to keep the core principles while devising appropriate rules of the game.

In that sentence, you've just defined the American Experiment. It started out with a series of compromises that most of the founders deemed deplorable, until it was found to work and evolve. It was never perfect, but for the first 200 years, it proved better than anything tried before by any other country.

And now we find ourselves with a President and Government that is willing to throw all of the principles and founding assumptions of our great Republic out the window while pursuing its own view of the great Socialist State. Very depressing.

[Publius]

It started out with a series of compromises that most of the founders deemed deplorable, until it was found to work and evolve.

And those compromises defined the loose construction versus strict construction debate that ended with the War Between the States -- but has been revived of late with the return of a movement toward genuine federalism.

The names of Marshall, Jefferson, Webster, Clay, Hayne, Jackson, Calhoun, Crawford -- and the very elderly Madison -- figure in here.

I would strongly suggest a reading of Forrest McDonald's States' Rights and the Union to examine what you've brought up in deep detail.