The founding fathers created a document that was already struggling with modern realities prior to Trump. 250 years is not a particularly impressive amount of time for a country to not fall apart.
A country that is a thousand years old is obviously going to have to change its constitution.
European countries have gone from massive societal changes to massive societal changes (for example from monarchies to republics).
The USA is a new country, and its constitutional rigidity causes a lot of social and political problems that most likely will lead to big changes in the future.
Yes, some countries in Europe remained monarchies for 1500 years or longer. They didn't really have a constituion back then because they were not republics.
They really did have constitutions back then. Substantial constitutions. With many many many documents over hundreds of years.
A constitution, or supreme law, is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. [0]
Their entire history of implementing and applying principles of Roman Law and other creeds was their ever growing constitution.
> The USA is a new country, and its constitutional rigidity
and general loudness on the matter of "what is a constitution and why ours is the first and the greatest" has caused much confusion given they have such a short and barely evolved one.
>250 years is not a particularly impressive amount of time for a country to not fall apart.
250 years is older than almost every country in Europe (by that I mean current borders and form of government, not the ancient historical ones).
Most were monarchies or various forms of dictatorship till only a few decades ago and finally settled on their current borders only after WW2 or the fall of the USSR or the Yugoslav wars.
For example Spain had its first democratic elections in 1977 and then the UK was dealing with "The Troubles" sectarian conflict in northern Ireland. Europe always was a powder keg around forms of governance, culture, religion and sects. All that is not something that goes away overnight just because EU membership happened.
In contrast, 250 years of continuous governance and conflict free stability is super impressive by that standard.
Care to elaborate on concrete examples on where it struggled? 250 years is quite impressive even if you don't believe it or not because only a handful of countries in the whole world has an older constitution.
As a humorous illustration of the point (of the presence of what is now low relevance content in the constitution.)
Let's try to figure out where the 3rd amendment might actually have significance in the future. Maybe in space habitats? Or could forced installation of government AI in systems be considered a 3rd amendment violation?
"250 years is not a particularly impressive amount of time for a country to not fall apart." ?
Sure it is, it's very impressive.
What other nations have lasted that long?
Chinese Dynasties usually collapse within that range.
Aside from the UK, maybe Sweden (?) which have been fairly contiguous, most nations are more short-lived. France is on it's 5th Republic in the same time-frame.
America is way more than the gong show in charge right now.
Most of the 'tests' of it's integrity are due to really just that one guy.
But you're right to point out inherent problems with the Union.
Because EU is not a 'right wing flag waving' entity, we don't really think about it in terms of 'nationalism', but the EU has among the loudest, most clearly visceral and virulent nationalist supporters.
You can say anything you want about national governments but critique of the EU is met with a lot of rancour.
I've worked for EU bodies, it's full of well meaning people and it has tremendous value as an economic unions, but as a political entity it has existential flaws, too many to name, and it is absolutely an elitist project and it absolutely has a 'regulate first' attitude, which is quite upside down.
'Doing The Stuff' matters 10x more than 'Talking About The Stuff'.