"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so volumionous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows that the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule which is lettle known and less fixed?"
--James Madison, Federalist #62
And we have not come very far in the last 230 years have we?
We have traveled quite a bit. From tax tyranny to tax freedom and back and back and back. What the Founders took offence to was a 3% tax on a good. Now we think 40% of our income is reasonable.
We traveled much, but as you said, we didn't go far. We went backwards.