er:
"Actually, my definition of government is the public institutions we set up in order to protect us from the abuses of private enterprise."

tb:
"This is very interesting, and would no doubt surprise the founders of this country and the authors of the Constitution."

I'm glad you brought that up, because this is a topic I've always wanted to discuss in this forum. Why should I want to have the same opinions as the founders? Why should anyone feel the obligation to agree with them? They certainly didn't agree much with each other! In fact, they were masters of compromise and deliberate ambiguity.

Don't get me wrong, the founders were patriots, political geniuses, and enlightened men, and there is no question that the documents they authored proved to be very long-lasting and universally admired, and they deserve full credit and respect for that . But they were, after all, men of the eighteenth century, and the world has changed. Furthermore, they were men, not demi-gods, which is why I refuse to capitalize the term "founding fathers". I also think they would have been the first to discourage their countrymen and descendents against forming a cult of personality based on them.

I am often puzzled by modern commentators bringing up the phrase "what was the intention of the founders?" in reference to some contemporary issue, often one which might have been simply inconceivable to them. Very often we plumb their other writings, such as the Federalist Papers, or even their personal correspondence, to try to determine their take on some of the finer points of constitutional law. I think they would have been scandalized by this. I believe where the Constitution is vague it is so deliberately, by design. They understood the document had to be flexible, and it was already controversial even in its day. After all, many of the founders were rivals, often bitter enemies. As you have often pointed out, partisanship in those days made today's political controversies seem tame in comparison. Those guys fought duels!

The Constitution, and the republic based on it, are, if I'm not mistaken, the world's oldest; so the education, experience and intellect that went into this political document is undenieble. But I respect the Constitution for another reason too: even a flawed constitution is better than none at all. A constitution is a flywheel, a damper in the political machinery that densitizes the system from the vagaries of the mob, and allows change to be gradual and well-considered. It smooths out the erratic stops and starts democracies (and republics!) are heir to.
And we should keep in mind the founders were republicans, not democrats, in the original sense of the words, the differences in the governance of classical Rome and Athens, respectively. These were men who had read the political thought of those great cities--in the original tongues.

But they also understood the law of the land could not be inscribed in stone, as if handed down by the Almighty in Sinai. They knew it had to be a living document and able to change with the times. The mechanism to amend the Constitution, as well as the Bill of Rights, were perhaps the greatest gift to posterity the founders left us. It is often pointed out that today's Federalism is not what the founders had in mind. That the relationship between the branches is not the same as they envisioned, and that they might even be appalled at some of the functions and attributes of government as they exist today. But I think they would not be too surprised. They understood perfectly well they would not have the last word.