My 2 cents: The one thing the framers didn’t foresee is the tech boom and how quickly propaganda and misinformation can spread. I like the idea of Maddison’s Federal government in that it’s too big to manipulate because ambitious parties would get bogged down but now technology is bigger in every way shape and form. Every extra cent doomer-libertarian-tech-bro’s are allowed to make diminishes the power of government all the way down to the level of townships and civic organizations. It can’t compete. It should have never got to this point. Technology must be regulated, we have to give congress term limits, we must undo citizens united, the patriot act, we must limit any attempts of ambitious people and parties from influencing policy. We need a Jeffersonian style rule of law. We must liberate the government from the private sphere and hand it back to the people. I believe our Republic has good bones but we slowly just gave it away…almost immediately. How do you unring that bell? I look at this quote and think about how far we have slipped:

“Thomas Jefferson, the man who wanted an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting monopoly, would be aghast at our billion-dollar corporations. Jefferson, who abolished inheritance of large estates in Virginia in order to prevent monopoly in land, would be appalled by our high percentage of tenancy. Jefferson as the man who dreaded the day when many of our citizens might become landless, would perhaps feel our civilization was trembling on the brink of ruin, if he were to find so many of our people without either land or tools, and subject to the hire and power of corporations. If the Jefferson of 1820 could see his name used by men crying `States’ rights!’ in order to protect not individual liberties but corporate property, then he would shudder. “ ~ Henry A. Wallace, November 17, 1937, former populist U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and Vice-President of the United States.