| > I know this is a bit offtopic but why is the obsession with the semantics and the literal text of the Constitution? The literal text of the Constitution is the current law of the land. That's why its interpretation continues to be relevant. I'm perfectly fine with amending the fuck out of it in theory, but I can agree with most people that such amendments need to be carefully reasoned about before being enacted. I, for one, don't consider the Constitution to even be correct. I consider it to be real. It's not really different from a man saying, "The sun comes out at night." I feel obliged to correct him, but to do that, I have to acknowledge that he said it. > It is as close to theology as I could not imagine. Your mistake is mostly in imagining that it is not theology. It is. [1] Many people, most notably libertarians, have been co-opted by the refrain of "what the Founders originally meant" and "what the Constitution originally said" as a way to justify their policies. This is made more confusing by the presence of "originalist" jurisprudential theory. [2] But this originalism is also an outgrowth of dominionism. Libertarians would normally be expected to oppose this kind of trend, but their label was part of the co-opting. The result is that there are libertarians and Real True Libertarians, just as there are Christians and Real True Christians and Republicans and Real True Republicans (read: not a RINO). All of this is dominionism. It's arguable that a lot of this is just a wave of echoes from the Reconstruction after the Civil War, which was unprecedented in a lot of ways (the rise of the central executive using what was unquestionably force to suppress rebellion and secession; the breaking of the institution of slavery on a national scale; the deliberate and callous humbling of the losers in the war), and merely delayed until the 1980s because of the two World Wars and Vietnam. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Theology
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism
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It wasn't so much "delayed" so much as faded over time without completely subsiding until, as the post-WWII realignment of the major parties progressed, it eventually became political useful for one of them to deliberately expend resources and propaganda efforts to fan it, starting with Nixon's "Southern Strategy".