On this day, 235 years ago, the United States Constitution was signed.
The Constitution sucks. It's arguably the worst thing that ever happened to These United States.
If you ask a so-called "Constitutionalist" what they like about this deficient document, they'll doubtlessly fire off some empty rhetoric about freedom of speech, religion, or the right to bear arms.
Fine.
I like those things, too.
But they weren't even supposed to be in the Constitution. A group of rowdy rapscallions who didn't want a Federal government to begin with forced the Hamiltonians and ex-Royalists to adopt the Bill of Rights in 1789, two years after a Federal abomination was firmly entrenched in American governance.
No modern Constitutionalist earnestly believes that doctrines like "separation of powers" actually work. We witness their failure on a daily basis. No modern Constitutionalist wants to return to a highly permissioned Representative Republic where very, very few people get to vote, and even fewer can run for office. God forbid we return to the Constitutional doctrine of no standing armies - the so-called "Patriots" who've lost every war in the last 70 years to defend the corpse of the British Empire might lose their government pensions. We can safely toss the Back the Blue crowd in with 'em, as our modern police jack-boots are far more threatening to Liberty than the redcoats ever were.
America would have been far better off if the Constitution were never ratified and the Articles of Confederation ruled supreme. We'd have avoided the tragic and costly Civil War and likely many of the imperial excursions that followed.
Better yet, America should have been a bastion of decentralized localism, with every State operating as a Nation unto itself, free to form mutual defense, immigration, and trade pacts with others as they saw fit. That was the original vision of the Antifederalists, after all, and most who call themselves Constitutionalists today are typically at odds with the Federal government (for good reason).
But we're a long way from that vision. I hope we can return to it someday as the Potemkin Village of modern American Federalism continues to crumble.
Besides, you're probably going to lose your government pension, anyways.
-FF
P.S. My position here should come as no surprise to students of history, as this author's name is borrowed from the prominent Antifederalist who used it before me. I don't think he'd mind if I dust it off for my own purposes. Names, after all, only have power when spoken into existence.
Too many of our forefathers are long forgotten already, as it seems only the most villainous of our Founders live on in public memory through faggy Broadway plays.