Record Setting

As in setting the record straight.

There's a lot of misconception about what the government is and what it was intended to be.

I've tried to explain it and while I think I fail more often than succeed; I've never been refuted.

The biggest misconception about our Constitutional Republic past thinking it's a democracy is that government has rights.

The people who wrote the constitution would probably be OK with you slapping the snot out of the person who planted that idea in the minds of the populace.  Perhaps even erecting a gallows.

The really sad thing about it is the Constitution is written in plain language and the plain meaning of the text is the intended meaning.  How do I know this?  The authors left notes!  Their thought process is documented and detailed!  The Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers are like the Cliff's Notes version of those notes, but they suffice.

The whole point of the federal government as defined and limited (note that) in the Constitution was to secure the rights of the people and harbor liberty.

Remember who these people were!  They'd just fought a (literally) bloody war over the very issues addressed by the Constitution.  The Bill of Rights is a rather specific addressing of some of the more egregious issues of the days of The Crown.

Emanations and penumbras which contradict the plain meaning of the text would have horrified the authors.  They would have said that there are no hidden meanings.

Yet...

We debate endlessly about the meaning of militia when the plain operative part of the sentence is clear.

We have so debased the commerce clause that it's become a catch all of literally anything, and some things specifically mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.  The plain meaning was direct commerce that passed interstate.  Not indirect, not local, not intrastate and not international (which is covered by a different clause).

The original design was for the Federal Government to have a lot of power in some very small places.  The individual state governments were supposed to be nearly independent entities one step removed from being sovereign nations themselves.  In many ways this is still true, but subverted.  Interstate Highway funding is the classic example.  The federal government cannot ORDER a state to conform to its demands, but the state can "voluntarily" submit to them if it wishes to receive the funds for several items.  Since the taxes are taken regardless, submission is the only way to see some of the money returned.  It's extortion; but it has allowed the Federal government to slip outside its narrow confines.

I say, over and over, show me where the government is granted the power to x.  Only rarely has someone attempted to, let alone actually shown me.  I've gotten a couple of "well it doesn't really matters".

OK, it doesn't matter and is void.  But that makes the whole thing void.  A void constitution also voids the powers granted and makes those taking the power to themselves criminals.  "Under color of authority," seems particularly apt.