It really is a matter of civil society. Does one want to establish a set of orderly rules to live by, or does one want to return to the days of Dodge City, constantly looking over one's shoulder for the person who was bigger, stronger, or faster than one's self?
This is what the second amendment was all about. The Founders feared weaker states forming their own armies in order to have "equality with their more potent neighbors," according to James Madison in Federalist #8.
Madison then goes on to describe an arms race between the states as they each try to match the others in strength.
The expedients which have been mentioned would soon give the States or confederacies that made use of them a superiority over their neighbors. Small states, or states of less natural strength, under vigorous governments, and with the assistance of disciplined armies, have often triumphed over large states, or states of greater natural strength, which have been destitute of these advantages. Neither the pride nor the safety of the more important States or confederacies would permit them long to submit to this mortifying and adventitious superiority. They would quickly resort to means similar to those by which it had been effected, to reinstate themselves in their lost pre-eminence. Thus, we should, in a little time, see established in every part of this country the same engines of despotism which have been the scourge of the Old World.Put in its simplest tribal terms, rejecting the civil society existing under the Constitution would return us to the days of the strong oppressing the weak, which the Founders feared.
To amend your statement: The history of the world has never had pieces of paper preventing radical change, until the Constitution. That is what was meant by the phrase "American Exceptionalism;" we were exceptional amongst the countries of the world in how we were a nation of people who agreed to be ruled by the consent of the governed, not by divine-right monarchies or conquerors.
-PJ
It is not about what I prefer.
It is about what is and will be.
The United States will not last forever.
The breakup will not be “legal” and will not be pretty.
Waving pieces of paper in the air is irrelevant.