[thwarted]

In some sense, the Bill of Rights could be considered a premature optimization. Rather than waste time having the people and the government come to an agreement in an agile way, through multiple iterations, on the things the first 10 amendments cover, they just decided to preempt all that debate and bill-making and bill-overturning and list the things that were off-limits. Didn't turn out that way though.

And like all premature optimizations, maybe it wasn't such a good idea.

[hammock]

The problem with the Bill of Rights is that it refocuses grievances from "where do you, the government derive the power to do such things?" to "what fundamental citizen right is being violated in this case?" Which sounds OK but it's just wrong.

The latter question is relevant in terms of inter-citizen disputes like theft, but in terms of government intervention the former is the appropriate one. Unfortunately it's usually the latter that gets asked.