Funny you should say that, since both parties (including yours) seem hellbent on rolling back those freedoms slowly over time, for the benefit of the few. I don't think this is happening for the reasons a few of you are stating - namely, that the world has changed and the constitution is obsolete. On the contrary, nothing that's happening now on a socio-political level wasn't foreseen to almost eerie detail by Jefferson. Sure, maybe the Founders didn't foresee gay marriage and other social changes like that, but such renovations to the social contract are not of primary importance in why individual rights have become 'laughably weak.' They are laughably weak because it is inevitable that in a sufficiently capitalist setting corporations will overpower individuals, and unless strict controls are in place, will overpower the boundaries between public and private as well.
Well said. And looking at history, the more modern axiom of "Money talks" is probably the most apt description for much of history.
The story of history seems to ultimately come down to one of 3 paths:
1) Power seeking money, by any means necessary.
2) Money seeking power, often by any means necessary.
3) People with power/money acting in what they believe to be Egalitarian ways. (Often with negative results.)
Replace "Corporate Board" with "Titled Aristocracy" when it comes to discussing many issues present today, and you're basically talking about the situation in the world several centuries ago. The only difference is the Corporate system is slightly more of a Meritocracy than the Aristocratic system that it replaced. "The other difference" was that in the late 18th century, there generally were information constraints that tended to limit the depth and scope of the influence the aristocracy could wield individually.
Obviously, improvements in Transportation, Communication, and "Information Management" have wildly changed the game in that respect when it comes to exactly how much one person can exercise control over. It has also generally increased the amount of information available to everyone, although the quantity and quality of said information, and has access to what, is often widely variable.
Which is where I imagine most of the people on this board sit when they say it is perhaps time to change the configuration of the Constitution towards a more Democratic system. Except as Fenring points out, the situation we're in today isn't something not completely unforeseen by the likes of Madison and Jefferson. The specifics of how we got here may be completely alien to them, but the practical side of it is something they very much saw. Because the Humans involved in it all haven't changed, just the (amount of) information they have has.
The founders were all about Option 3 outlined above, hence a lot of talk about people "acting in Enlightened Self-Interest." However, they also fully realized that was an ideal, and that history bears testimony to the fact that the reality is people are far more inclined to act in "self-interest" above all else. They may extend that sphere of "self-interest" to include (extended) family members, and friends, but eventually their "outer limit" will be reached, and they hit the point where they'll gladly trample on the rights/privileges of people they don't know so long as doing so does not negatively impact anybody they know/care about. It almost always comes down to "My 'tribe' against everyone else" at the end of the day.
Another way to put this is to quote Space Balls and declare "Good is dumb." Because someone who lives/breathes that egalitarian mindset often has a hard time even conceiving the idea that someone could possibly act in a deliberately harmful way towards others. Which is a large part of the reason why such systems tend to end up as spectacular failures. People with Egalitarian motives concentrate a lot of power in the hands a small group of people, or even a single person, often for "a good cause" and then are shocked when they discover that the person/group they just empowered isn't Egalitarian at all.
Because of things like that, direct democracy is a very scary thing, as history across the world can attest to, as almost every nation that has gone the direct democracy route has had a problem with rampant violence. Now of course, the Ivory Tower types like to claim it is "lack of 'Democratic institutions' being established" but it's more basic than that. They're setting up systems where a majority, or sometimes just a plurality, gains control of the government, and as soon as they do, they "democratically" decide that everyone not part of "their side"(tribe) should be treated as persons unwelcome, and in many cases, that gives them the excuse to (violently) pursue sometime centuries old feuds.
They failed to do what the founders did in the United States, they did not place sufficient backstops into their governmental processes to prevent the Majority from becoming a Tyranny. Of course, the US also had a big advantage in this respect in that it largely left the feuds from Europe, in Europe, so it lacked "the history" that would otherwise present such problems... At least until the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves.
Another way to look at it is the uninformed voter problem many people lament about today? You really need to go back at look at the full text that Jefferson's infamous "blood of patriots" quote comes from:
http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/The_tree_of_liberty...(Quotation) (emphasis added by me)
...There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted.
Or Madison in Federalist 10, emphasis added:
https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist+Papers#TheFederalistPapers-10No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.
It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.
The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.
If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that it is the great desideratum by which this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.
By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression. If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control. They are not found to be such on the injustice and violence of individuals, and lose their efficacy in proportion to the number combined together, that is, in proportion as their efficacy becomes needful.
