I love how everyone pretends like there was a time over the last 100+ years where there was some Constitution driven government running this country. There hasn't been. It's a unicorn that purist blabber about to make themselves sound erudite. Christ, Lincoln flushed the Constitution down the toilet for the "better good" and he is on the damn currency......twice.
Oh, no argument from me. On Lincoln's watch we went from a Republic composed of United Sovereign States engaged willingly in Federation to a National Government, imposed on half the country by force of arms.
Lest people forget, this was done by the "Republican" Party. Such notions as the income tax and paper money were also a product of that era.
The circumstances which led to that open conflict had been laid for decades before that. One issue which people claim to be THE cause of the war had never gone away, even from the founding, but was a can kicked down the road in the quest for consensus. Others involved trade policy which favored some regions over others, and even the construction of railroad bridges across the lower Mississippi which would have made major steamboat traffic farther upriver impossible without transloading cargoes.
There is no pretense here, just the recognition that continuing down the road of sacrificed principles is another step in the wrong direction. It isn't as if we can only go half way into this swamp before we are actually heading out of it. Instead, we are only getting farther away from where we should be.
