[beaeglebeachedd]

The 10th amendment was supposed to restrain the federal government to a few enumerated powers. It was gutted via interstate commerce being everything, and you can't give it up because people will start screaming about the civil rights act or the EPA or something.

President, as envisioned by founders, should barely even matter outside of war.

[stetrain]

There was also a pretty significant constitutional crisis in the middle of that that involved an actual war between states with the deaths of many Americans to settle it.

Whether we have adequately updated the constitution along the way to cover the new realities is a valid question, but governing by just what the original founders wrote doesn't have a great track record either.

[janalsncm]

> the civil rights act

How would you square the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause with enumerated powers?

[beaeglebeachedd]

The 14th amendment is a restriction on government. Civil rights acts on private entities involved in intrastate trade.

CRA also expressly allows racism unlike the 14th. For instance the civil rights act allows a business to preferentially treat an Indian in a near reservation (but off res) business while outlawing discriminating say in favor of blacks near a historically black neighborhood.

[stetrain]

But the 14th amendment didn't actually work in practice. Nearly 100 years later and many states had explicitly racist laws and policies - in some cases supported by the Supreme Court - and those that the 14th amendment were supposed to protect were disenfranchised.

If the 14th had actually worked then the Civil Rights Act wouldn't have actually been needed, but there is a lot of hard evidence that it, or something like it, was needed.