It defines a proscribed set of powers but doesn't say the use of those must be minimized. On top of all of that all the powers currently used have either been ruled constitutional, are untested extensions of tested uses of powers, or haven't been challenged/are currently being challenged, we can all have our own opinions about what the Constitution does and doesn't allow but within the system defined the only opinion that directly matters is the Supreme Court's. Everyone else's only gets filtered through their selection and ... optional shall we say extra-constitutional means?
Ultimately my stance is the founders weren't perfect, their creation isn't some mystical perfect system handed down from on high [0] so we shouldn't weld ourselves into some imaginary form of what precisely they would or wouldn't want. They're dead it's our country now we have to live with it in a world they couldn't even imagine. Even the groups that do try to lay claim to the founders original vision are cherry picking their favorite version of the founders and their ideas.
[0] Remember their first try at it, the Articles of Confederation fell apart in 4 years and the Constitution was a broad overreach of the mandate that the convention was even convened for.
I agree that it is our country and we get to shape it as we wish. But we should build on what came before. The Constitution is pretty damn good but obviously not perfect. I believe that the identifying feature of the Constitution isn't so much the words on the page but the underlying message. The whole of the Constitution espouses an idea that we, as a people, and individuals will agree to live under laws of the defined government IF the government stays in the bounds defined in the Constitution. If the government breaks their end of the deal all bets are off. In that sense SCOTUS constitutionality rulings are meaningless. If ruled constitutionality is different than the people's understanding of the Constitution it creates a sense of tyranny. If there are too many rulings that people feel are unconstitutional they will not tolerate it. The Constitution says it is the right of the people to replace their government. It doesn't say it has to be peaceful.
I would much rather see people participate in their own governance and take back control of the government peacefully before it is intolerable. However, history makes me fearful of a possible violent upheaval.
We are building on what came before, the decision for a more powerful federal government isn't particularly new. Pooling the resources of the many states has a lot of benefits (and the states traditionally opposed to that benefit the most from federal dollars).
> If the government breaks their end of the deal all bets are off. etc etc
Those are all explicitly extra constitutional and the ones I euphemistically referred to. The methods for changing the constitution systematically within it's own rules are through Convention or Amendment.
> If ruled constitutionality is different than the people's understanding of the Constitution it creates a sense of tyranny
I'd be more charitable to the devolution of powers if the expressed preferred outcomes of that devolution of power didn't so often tend towards the repression of various groups. There's the OG slavery, segregation, voting rights, and the modern day antitrans/gay panics and to gut things like the voting rights act to prop up gerrymandered governments... but now we're tending towards topics that wind up [dead] due to flame wars.
One of those powers is to rely on interpretations of the Constitution by SCOTUS and to pick SCOTUS’s interpretation when it comes to conflict with an HN commentators’ interpretation.
So this is still just putting the cart before the horse.
