Another thing: times change, right-wingers.
The fact is, the country today is one the founding fathers couldn't recognize. They couldn't have every policy they did that fit our society as perfectly as it did theirs.
As my first witness to prove my point, I call any of the founding fathers. THEY are the ones who recognized this as well, ensuring the constitution could change and grow.
It's these fundamentalists who demand that every policy be just the same as it was for 18th century America - and who are not consistent even at that, only when it suits their prejudices - that are the enemies of the founding fathers' intent for how the country should be run.
So, am I saying the constitution is wrong, outdated? No. In fact, there are some timeless principles the founding fathers caught. Free speech was an issue then when John Adams wanted to put you in jail for criticizing him, as it is today when you want to Twitter that Obama was not born in the US. Illegal search and seizure was an issue then and now. Not having the state establish a religion was relevant then and now. All kinds of things are relevant. But not everything is.
The fact is, about your magical formula of 'federal' versus 'state' power, it comes from a time when it was a very different situation - when you needed colonies to give up some of their jealously guarded sovereignity that happened to have been created by how England set things up. You had to make compromises to get that to happen. The same people had tried once, more your direction for 'states' rights', and failed with the Articles of Confederation.
So, that's fine, that's how it happened. It doesn't mean every bit of the power balance then is the optimal balance today in a hugely different society.
We don't have to even change the constitution to adjust - just the flexibility it provides, instead of misusing every word by the founding fathers as something that has to be followed exactly the same today, and even that is only what the Tea Party claims to do, not what it does - they really don't know much about the founding fathers, and just hide behind them to claim any crazy idea they want is a 'founding principle'.
You talk about the founding fathers' views on 'small federal government'. But how much did they appreciate today's society, when they ran a tiny country smaller than our cities today where the biggest house in the country was the size of today's tract home, the White House was the biggest building in America, over 90% of the citizens were on farms, and corporations were tiny groups of people who organized for a specific activity like building something for a limited time, subject to the government saying it was for the public good? In a time without electricity except for one citizen nearly killed by it named Franklin, much less computers and internets and nuclear missiles.
If we're sticking to the literal same federal government, can we stick to the literal same corporations too? Instead of the multi-nationals with revenue more than most countries?
Who pour billions to corrupt our elections and our citizens for their anti-public agendas?
The descendants of the tiny, baby corporations about whom even Thomas Jefferson said:
I hope we shall take warning from the example [of England] and crush in it's [sic] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country.
But your answer is to have an 18th century federal government and a 21st century corporatocracy, where there is no competition in that 'trial of strength' he mentioned.
Funny, I bet the corporations agree with you.
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