We've had a pretty good run, in my opinion, this two centuries of creaky stability threatened by power mongers, would-be despots, social reformers, and utopian fascists who ultimately came up against the bulwark of the Constitution and have been relegated to nibbling at its peripheries and tunneling desperately to undermine its foundations. Unfortunately a fair number of these populate the institutions whose charge it is to defend the Constitution. The wonder is not the damage they have done but the strength of the edifice that still stands.
Ultimately Hamilton, who had to be dragged into the conclusion, was right: nothing in the Constitution is any stronger than it is made by the will of the voter to maintain it. When the voter becomes lazy, complacent, lulled by promises of great wealth to be had at the cost of only a little theft, that structure must fail in the end. "A republic, madame, if you can keep it," was Franklin's formulation, and his fear that the populace whose members were already forgetting the costs of liberty would end up selling it for a mess of pottage. That brilliant student of the human condition would be disgusted, I think, at the sight of those who have, and not a little thrilled by those of us who still refuse to, lo these two centuries hence.
If I learned one thing from all of this personally it is that we're still fighting about the same things. That's actually pretty encouraging. Thanks, all, for reading.
I occasionally play a parlor game where I state the following quote: "The Constitution means whatever the American people wish it to mean." Then I ask which president said that. The first guess is always FDR. I keep saying "Earlier" until I get to the correct answer: President John Quincy Adams, who said it in 1826. It is the mantra of the loose constructionists.