[Antoninus]

The Founders didn't envision a gigantic, unelected, unaccountable federal bureaucracy with unbridled powers to spy on, threaten, and blackmail elected officials and hound them out of office if they attempted reform.

They probably would have said that the republic died sometime in the 1960s.

[central_va]

Appomattox.

[DesertRhino]

“They probably would have said that the republic died sometime in the 1960s.”

I think the founders would have thought it was over in the progressive era of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson especially when it kicked into high gear. An income tax that made King Georges taxes look tiny, national slavery of citizens to join into a war between Europeans, a national mission to spread an American empire and gain colonies, the creation of an early FBI. Thoughtcrimes in the Espionage act. Congress abandoning it’s constitutional role to set the value of money to a private and foreign bank.

The Republic, as founded, ended in the early 1900s.

[itsahoot]

The Founders didn't envision a gigantic, unelected, unaccountable federal bureaucracy with unbridled powers to spy on, threaten, and blackmail elected officials and hound them out of office if they attempted reform.

John Adams predicted that The Constitution would not be able to restrain the evil people we have in power now.

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the governance of any other." October 11, 1798 John Adams

We now live it the time of any other.