[achilles2000]

I just knew I would get a response like this. Thanks for not disappointing me.

[BroJoeK]

achilles2000: "I just knew I would get a response like this.
Thanks for not disappointing me."

If that is "good-bye", then let me leave you with a simple, profound idea:

If, for whatever reason, you end up trashing our Founders -- if you mock and condemn them for failure to abide by the Constitution they wrote, then you are left with, literally, nothing in the way of actual historical example Conservatives can point to and say: "see, that's what we're talking about".

If, according to you, the Free Republic established under our Founders' Constitution never really existed -- if from Day One it was corrupted and killed-off, by the Founders themselves(!), then everything we advocate as Conservatives is pure fantasy, mere figments of some overactive imaginations -- because it never really existed.

I say: such an opinion would be untrue and unacceptable.
The much better opinion is that our Founders' Republic, as established in 1788 and substantially corrected in 1865, continued on its track, as founded, until the "Progressive" era circa 100 years ago, with its new 16th & 17th Amendments.

I cite as proof of this the fact that our Founders themselves well understood which legal actions required Constitutional Amendments, and which could be accomplished with laws passed by Congress.
Thus, they passed the 11th & 12th Amendments in the 1790s, but felt no need to pass amendments regarding, for example, John Marshall's judicial review, or, say, President Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase.

But around 100 years ago, and not before, the Republic essentially came off its rails, and steamed off into the swamp of unlimited, centralized Big-Government, into which it has sunk ever deeper and deeper -- from 2% of GDP then to now well over 20%.

This view has the huge benefit of requiring less than total shut-down and rebooting the Constitution -- an effort which cannot conceivably end well.
But repealing two amendments -- 16th & 17th -- would go as far as necessary in restoring the Republic as intended, and as inherited from our Founders, imho.