from the Forbes article:
The great jurist Learned Hand, in 1944, gave a brief, immortal speech, The Spirit of Liberty, before a million and a half people in Central Park, New York, on “I Am an American Day.” Hand observed:
“ I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do
much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.”
Judge Hand is a figure esteemed as much by the left as by the right. Saul Alinsky cites Hand in Rules for Radicals. An Article V amendment process is a function of citizen dignity — ‘power to the people.” It leans neither left nor
right. It is federalism at its finest. It has, and will have, humanitarian populist proponents (and, also, not-always-so-populist opponents) on the left as well
as the right.
I agree with the sentiment. However, the people never had 100% virtue, don’t have it now, and never will. Indeed, only about 33% of the 3,000,000 Americans around the 1770’s and 1780’s were interested in Liberty. Would guess that no more than 33% today are interested in it as well. But, those that do care need the tools to defend it... and Constitutions, laws and courts will have to do for now.