The concept of the Federalist society is primarily originalist, is it not? They attempt to ascertain exactly what the founders meant when drafting the original documents and interpret our current law based on that.
I'm saying we probably shouldn't do that.
In fact, it sounds so ludicrous that one might think I'm exaggerating, but that is the actual position of originalism.
The piece I left out, the piece that makes that crazy statement not seem so crazy to those who follow it, is God. Supporters of originalism would say they were "a special group of wise people ordained by God who set down words..."
And yet they still didn't think much of women or Black people, lived in a world in which every farmer had munitions capable of holding off the world dominant power, ands had only seen what they had seen up to that point in history.
I wouldn't want any one group of people today, in 2022, deciding the details of government for a group of people in 2257, and I don't think we should be bound quite so firmly by people from 235 years ago, either.
We can--and have--corrected the most obviously egregious errors with some early amendments, but at the same time we've left most of the structural choices based on the same attitudes in place, or even made them worse with artificial limits.
First, if you took a trip in a time machine back to then, I'm fairly sure you'd come off as a raving lunatic. Second, you're completely glazin over the fact that what we ended up with was a hard fought for and won compromise, which is half of why we venerate the people who actually locked themselves in and reached it in the first place, and also stick to some of their guiding wisdom on things. We haven't changed much but the most obvious deficits, because the action potential hasn't been able to be reached, which is exactly what you're looking for in your founding Constitution. You want law to come and go, and not to be all enshrined at the highest level.
Whenever anyone suggests direct democracy at the Federal level, it's just a low key "I want cities/population centers/large States to dictate how small states do things."
Absolutely! Which is WHY acting as if every rule and guideline from more than 200 years is holy and must not be changed is terrible.
I'm definitely not in favor of pure direct democracy, nor of changing things on a whim. However, we have had more than 200 years more of experience around the world with variations on democratic systems, and I think we can do better than we've done.
It is possible, even common, to look at a situation, see that all solutions tried so far have been bad for various reasons, and so to choose a new solution that avoids all of those pitfalls, only to run into new pitfalls that hadn't been seen before. That's no knock on the latest attempt! It's progress, it's just not the last attempt that should ever be made.
I think the founders were reacting to the world at the time, and their reaction was maybe the best possible one given the time and the need for compromise. They saw the dangers of the unchecked power of royalty, but underestimated the power that comes with concentrating wealth. They saw some of the economic dangers that had been revealed in countries around the world at that time, but completely missed the economic power unlocked by enabling women to enter the workforce. I could go on and on and on, and I don't think it's speaking overly-negatively about those men and their accomplishments to say that they should not be venerated as all-wise, all-knowing, or god-like, which is definitely how some political figures--including US Supreme Court justices--describe them.
I was implying that we should rebalance the structure away from purely wealthy land owners to make it more equal, not exclude them entirely.