Sanford Levinson- Constitutional Faith Princeton U. Press 1988
I suspected when reading it that he was numbered with those on the other side of the House divided against itself.To borrow from Abraham Lincoln ,1858 -as he borrowed from the Sacred Writ. This editorial has served to affirm that first impression.IMO the Constitution would be ok if only the mere politicians -the men governed by ambition more than Reason would only understand it according to the meaning of the terms used as understood when the supreme law of the land was adopted by the people. Problem is we are now decades and more into “progressive” decline generated in large part by Dewey-eyed educators. Beguilers who have addicted the people to to the “promise” of a bright and shining LIE.
The problem is that We The People want our government to provide “stuff” that cannot be efficiently provided using the Constitution as originally written.
So we have the choice of ignoring what the people want (which won’t stand in a democratic system), ignoring what the Constitution says, or changing the Constitution so it can efficiently provide what the people want.
Unfortunately we have gone with option B. Which has no logical stopping point. If you ignore provisions A thru E of the Constitution, why strictly enforce provisions F thru L?
The Founders, if alive today (besides being totally appalled at what our society has become) would never write the Constitution they did in the 1780s. They tried to produce a system of government adapted to their society. Today’s society is so different it is ludicrous to try to run it the way they did. Working today they would produce a vastly different system.
Personally, I think the answer is federalism. Return the federal government to its original limited role. If the People want a welfare state, let it be provided at the State level. Which actually would not violate the original Constitution, which put remarkably few restrictions on what States could do internally.