[jacquesm]

Think of a constitution as guardrails about democracies, the constitution nails a couple of very basic rules down hard and leaves room for interpretation and variation. It's a good principle, the constitution guarantees long term stability and the 'basics', the parliaments/congresses/whatever the local variation is called deal with day-to-day variance.

So 'the people' will want both, depending on whether they have the long or the short term view and those two views can and do contradict at times.