[Wonder Warthog]

"Dude, that is just plain silly. Those things were pushed through as Constitutional amendments. The mechanisms of restraint against those are huge. Those things passed because the nation succumbed to the temptations of direct democracy and of marxist levelling."

Well, DUDE, the restraints built into the Constitution WERE NOT ENOUGH to prevent that, now were they? That simple fact speaks for itself.

[William McKinley]

The constraints put into the Constitution against changes to the Constitution were not sufficient to prevent changes to the Constitution such as the 16th and 17th amendment.

But that has absolutely nothing to do with the arguments between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists (except for the fact that the Federalists thought that the amendment process might allow 2/3 of the states acting together to subvert the Constitution. In other words, the Federalists wanted to make it tougher, not easier, to alter the Constitution).