So, you want a "perfect" compact/contract/agreement that is self enforcing? Har; fat chance! There is no such thing. We The People are the only sovereigns within this arrangement and it is up to us to enforce it. If we don't enforce it, we have only ourselves to blame for the consequences. Of our options, getting the states out in front of this parade would be very helpful but not absolutely necessary. There's nothing else that can be said about it IMHO.
My next question to you would be, do you believe it's too late to turn back the feral beast short of taking up arms?
I'm not asking for perfection. I'm asking if there isn't a form of government that would be more conducive to liberty than what we have, less conducive to expansive centralized power. It's demonstrably possible to have a less centralized system. The old confederacy was such an example. The problem there was that it actually contained too little power to sustain itself. So my question is whether or not there could be a form somewhere between the two extremes, perhaps a federal system--a confederacy--that contains enough power to sustain itself, yet does not give so much power to the general government that we end up where we are today. I believe the Constitution should be judged not on the intent, but on the results, and if the results are not good, our thinking should be directed towards correcting it.
We The People are the only sovereigns within this arrangement and it is up to us to enforce it.
I understand and I hear this all the time. I compare it to a lion cage at a circus. Imagine the USA is a circus. We have several lions that perform in our circus (the politicians). And we have a lion cage (The Constitution) to hold them securely in their place. Now let's say the lion cage is faulty. The bars are spaced to widely, and the latch doesn't hold on the door. The lions get out, and attack several of the circus workers and spectators.(the people). I don't blame the lions (politicians) for escaping and causing harm. I accept that lions, though necessary for our circus, are dangerous and have it in their nature to do harm. The trick is to keep them in the cage. I don't blame the people for being harmed when the lions escape--after all, that's what the cage is for. I blame the cage. I say if the cage is faulty, it must be fixed or replaced. If there is no way to keep the lions in a cage, we're basically in peril. We must devise a way to confine them.
In summary, politicans by their nature are avaricious and dangerous to the people at large, and yet remain necessary. The people are naturally vulnerable to unrestrained politicians. In such an arrangement, the politicians have the upper hand. The Constitution must restrain the politicians or else the people are in grave danger.
The question is quite rational, though to some here merely raising it is treated as if it were outrageous blasphemy---could their be a better form of government for securing liberty? This part national, part federal system was the first of its kind, with its mixed sovereignty. Can we not now look at the 200 years of data and assess its utility in the real world, and conceive of changes that might be warranted?
If we don't enforce it, we have only ourselves to blame for the consequences.
First, each generation is subjected to the errors of all the preceding generations. You and I were not around when Alexander Hamilton and George Washington used the "implied powers" doctrine to create a national bank, over the objections of Madison, Jefferson, and others. We were not alive when the 14th amendment was passed, and later used by the Court to establish "substantive due process." We were not present in the 1800s when the commerce clause (known to lawyers and judges as the "everything clause") was being expanded to cover more and more "implied powers." We were not around when the FDR administration passed all those new deal entitlements and expanded the power of the national government (and look at FDRs electoral results--he was winning with 400-500 electoral votes---massive victories). We didn't have anything to do with any of that, and yet we are subject to its results.
We are NOT to blame. We are unwitting victims of the national system, as it has been administered throughout its history, and the people who failed to resist, or who erred in judgement and supported the changes at the time. And those changes, once made, and once established over a period of years, are very difficult if not impossible to eliminate. Just look at Social Security and Medicare.
Second, the government holds the upper hand. We all want to change it. We all want to reduce its power, and yet we find ourselves powerless to do so. Are we now to blame? Is it our fault if we find ourselves not only unable to roll back past expansions of power, but unable to prevent further encroachment? What is it we are supposed to do that we are not doing?
Yes, the people have responsibilities. But the government has awesome power. They have the purse and the sword. If it were so easy to overcome tyrannical rulers, don't you think it would be more common in human history? Quite the contrary. The aim then, MUST be to limit the power of the government in the first place, so that they don't possess the power.
You might argue that the Constitution did just that. I would only submit that I find it had several fatal loopholes and powers that made this gradual expansion of power inevitable. Do I know what the better system would look like, down to the specific details? I do not. At this point, I merely raise the question--could there be a better system? My next question to you would be, do you believe it's too late to turn back the feral beast short of taking up arms?
I think it is. The hardest thing to undo, it seems to me, is SCOTUS jurisprudence. Commerce clause jurisprudence alone goes all the way back to the early 1800s (McCulloch v Maryland). The court doesn't like to undo well-established precedent. They follow common law principles and they also guard their own institution, by not overturning their own court's rulings willy-nilly. Hence you get Scalia using Wickard v Fillburn to justify federal drug interdiction.
To try to rewind all the way back to the "few and defined" powers envisioned by Madison would take nothing short of revolution. There are so many jobholders living off of the system as it is, and the people, desiring peace and ease above all else, are tempermentally opposed to radical change of any kind. That's why we have so much debt. The people are unwilling to roll back the national power, and unwilling to pay the taxes necessary to finance it.
I see the amount of powers that need to be reversed as so great and massive and comprehensive, that truly, if you think you have the people ready to go that far, it makes sense to contemplate a new system, and correct some of the things that brought us here in the first place.
The other method would be to try to undo it in the way it's been done--gradually. But the expansion seems to overwhelm such attempts. Again, if Scalia is willing to use new deal COmmerce clause jurisprudence to support current programs, how much hope do you have of getting real change through the SCOTUS. If the people are not ready, how do you get such changes by amendment?
So, in the end, I'm asking the same question the rest of us are asking: Where do we go from here?
Some find it easier to blame a piece of paper rather than those entrusted with enforcement of what it written on the paper. Pity.
They're going to run into this:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
And as far as "In pursuance thereof" goes, again, who, under the Constitution, gets to decide what is and isn't in pursuance thereof? So much of that has already been well established, as I already outlined. Very hard to undo.
If it is truly the people's job to undo it, as it is, then the one mode offered under the Constitution that would work is calling a convention. But no one wants that. The outcome would be worse, it is supposed. Why? Because the people are ignorant and we are devoid of real leadership on the question.
One last thing, the government is able to shape the people. Each generation grows up in the system that exists when they are born. Unless they are taught otherwise, they accept it as it is. They grow accustomed to it. In my view, one area where change should be pursued is education. If conservatives want to win in the long run, they should infiltrate and overtake the educational system. They should flood the school boards, they should become teachers en masse, they should infiltrate children's educational programs, they should create children's cartoons and games that subtley embue conservative principles. They should infiltrate the culture in discreet ways--make first person shooter video games that have subtle conservative messages built into the story line. They must influence the people, educate and indoctrinate the children, and win the battle of ideas by every means necessary. In this way, over the course of a few decades, they might begin to make a dent and see a glint of light among the people.
That's what I did. I left corporate life and became a music intructor. Even in this role, I can subtly and imperceptibly pass on principles and ideas that might take hold in young minds.
It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.
Niccolo Machiavelli
I challenge anyone to name a government that did not end up abusing the rights of the people.