Did the Founders Hate Government?

[CTyankee]

17. I don't want to get into a long rant on this except to say that what you are saying strikes

me as part of the "American Exceptionalism" argument, which I find incredibly shallow and not very well thought out. But, more on that later...it is actually a larger subject...

However, I will say here that I find your argument for Constitutional Amendment or constitutional convention, without a comparison model elsewhere, intellectually weak. I am not sure the Amendment process is the best way to progress and can work against it. Leaps to Prohibition, then back again, were a big waste of time and I scratch my head when I think about those two efforts. The setting back of equal rights with the defeat of the ERA in 1980, 190 years after the creation of the U.S. Constitution and women STILL not written into the Constitution, speaks volumes. Other countries have leapfrogged ahead of us and women in those countries enjoy rights under their constitutions that far surpass what we have in this country. Our Constitutional processes failed badly.

Second, you mention Constitutional Convention as a means to remedy our constitutional defects. Exactly ONE such Convention has taken place in U.S. history and that was the first one, back in 1797. No one is REMOTELY suggesting such a convention and haven't, at least in my long lifetime. For such a proposition to be a remedy, it has to be possible. And I don't see that happening.