Quote Originally Posted by cstone View Post
I'm going to call that a bit overly simplistic. There is no possible way our Founding Fathers could anticipate everything that would happen 300 years into the future. The US Constitution is amended and interpreted to allow for changes in culture and circumstances. I just don't believe that everything should be or needs to be explicitly spelled out in the Constitution.

My point was not to focus on any particular agency, but to flip the coin over and see if there was anyone who actually had anything positive to say about any government agency, federal, state, or local.

I can't possibly be the only person who looks at our country and still believe that it is the greatest possible place to live both in history and geographically. The US is exceptional. Not because of our government, but despite our government. We the People are exceptional when we stop bitching and start creating.

Don't get me wrong, I do my fair share of complaining (and then some), but I've never forgotten a lesson I was taught many years ago. You can do nothing and you have no one to blame but yourself. You can do something and deal with your successes and failures as they come. You can complain about things you don't like. These are not mutually exclusive. I don't mind complaining, as long as you are doing something while you complain. Of course we each make our own choices. Yet one more thing to like about America.

If someone decides they don't like something because it isn't perfect, I would have to assume they deal with a bit of self-loathing.
It's not overly simplistic. It's called federalism. The federal government is bound by the constitution, specifically Article 1, Section 8. There are 18 enumerated powers that congress has. Everything else is left up to the States.

The founding fathers didn't have to predict the future. Name one thing that they couldn't have possibly known about that isn't covered by Article 1, Section 8 or the 10th Amendment. The federal government is meant to have limited powers, and that is why they are and must be explicitly spelled out in the constitution.

And the concept of a "living constitution" is contradictory to the rule of law. There is a way to change the constitution and it's spelled out in Article 5. The constitution isn't reinterpreted with a change in "culture and circumstances". No branch of government has the power to reinterpret the constitution.

I can tolerate federal government agencies that are authorized by the constitution. Anything beyond that is unacceptable, regardless of how I feel about it or how popular it is.