I feel the need to comment.  Here goes:

Doug: you know that if we had one now, we wouldn’t get anything like enumerated and restricted powers or the Bill of Rights.

On this, I wholeheartedly agree.

Doug: (later in the same segment):  If a new constitution were drafted today, we'd get unlimited and expansive powers and a Bill of Entitlements.

If such a document were brought into effect, it would be to serve TPTB.  And as soon as it proved inconvenient to their interest, it would be ignored, just as the current constitution is ignored.

Doug: People often gush about what a wonderful thing the Constitution is, but I've always suspected that US and world history would be different – and better – if those delegates had done as they were told and just smoothed over the rough spots in the Articles rather than replaced them with the Constitution. Greater independence among the states could have led to more innovation, and I doubt there would have been the unpleasantness of 1861-'65. People with differing ethical values and economic interests would not have been forced to obey the same laws.

I think a significant aspect of the timing of the (so-called) Civil War has to do with living memory.  Everybody old enough to know what was going on during the Revolutionary War at the time it happened was gone.  We used to have a town "elder" here who declared that wars only became possible when a generation of young fools got old enough to be goaded into going off to fight it.  He died in the 1960's - before then that worked pretty good - since then, it hardly applies at all.

Doug alludes to a "time when the constitution was taken seriously".  I doubt the constitution itself was ever taken that seriously.  What was taken seriously was immediate interests.  Clauses to protect the major interests of various states were included to acquire ratification.  The interests of those various states, as well as new states were sufficienly served by those provisions prior to the Civil War.  When citing the Constitution served to  advance immediate interests, I'm sure it was cited.  If nothing in the Constitution served an immediate interest, other ways of securing the interests would likely be pursued.  If the Constitution blocked an immediate interest, most likely it was ignored where possible by the frustrated parties, until and unless doing so sufficiently conflicted with the interests of others with clauses in their favor.

But the abiding motive was always immediate interests, even at the convention (or coup if you prefer), not any aim to make the world safe for democracy for all people, everywhere, forever and ever.  I base this opinion (and that's all it is) on 60 years experience, not on any exhaustive review of court cases.

Aside: On the topic of living memory, sometime between when I was 5 and 7, I sat in a hot, dimly-lit room within a 1/2 mile of where I'm sitting right now with a living man who had fought as a soldier in the Civil War.  At the time, I was too young to carry anything of interest to this topic from that meeting, and I'm sure he was too old to offer much.  But that meeting occurred FWIW.

L: So, what else would you list among Doug Casey's top ten gripes with the US Constitution?

Doug: The provision to establish post offices and post roads. The post office is a paragon of inefficiency and bad service, was never necessary as a government function, and absolutely should never have been a monopoly. And the first roads in America were private toll roads.

L: I remember reading that Lysander Spooner competed with the US Post Office in the 1840s, and did a better job at lower cost until the government shut him down.

Doug: Once again, the power to establish post offices and post roads is given, but the authority to crush private competition is not. The first power was later interpreted to include the second, and so it's been with everything in the Constitution ever since it was written.

I've been studying the Constitution somewhat actively for 23 years now.  I've known for sometime that the legitimate mission of the federal government in 1791 was to quell convulsion within and repel invasion from without.  I'm not entirely sure why even THAT obligation was assigned to government and not underaken by the people at large, but that's the way the Constitution is written.

So if indeed, the mission of the federal government in 1791 was to quell convulsion within and repel invasion from without, what does the post office have to do with that?

Thank you!  Seriously, I doubt whether that thought would have ever occurred to me.  It hasn't yet.  True, you can visually scan the words in a few minutes, but even after 20 years, I comprehend new things about those words on a regular basis.

I've seen more than one person in more than one place compare trying to revive the Constitution to trying to raise the Titanic.  I watched Sunday's presention of the History Channel's latest documentary on the Titanic.  After exhaustively photographing the debri field with digital cameras, they've identified everything and produced a picture of the ship assembled from those mangled clumps of wreckage.  By this process, they've arrived at a new theory of the ship's sinking.

Bottom line:  The Titanic was fine ship.  She lasted an hour longer than anyone there expected it to.  That saved lives.  When the collision with the iceberg occurred, the Captain was operating the ship per standard protocols in place at the time.  The collision stressed the ship way beyond its design.  And that's why it sank.

In a similar fashion, I have tried to construct an image in my mind of government in accordance with the Constitution in our time.  And I have compared that image with the images provided by current headlines.  From this, I have tried to arrive at a conclusion of where the flaw is.  And I have answered that largely to my own satisfation - subject to revision upon further consideration.  Before identifying that flaw, I will state that my conclusion concerning the Constitution is similar to that reached during Sunday's presentation on the Titanic.

The Constitution is a sturdy document.  It is as sturdy a document as I expect will ever be written.  If the Civil War is taken as its first catastrophic failure, it withstood 70 years of trials before failing.  I doubt any constitution crafted today will go nearly that long before similarly failing.

If people did right all the time, "government" would not exist.  But people don't do right all the time, so in the Declaration of Independence, a proposition is advanced (paraphrasing) the course of human events has demonstrated the need for us establish among ourselves a government best suited to secure our safety and happiness.  But the individuals who design that government and later pursue its obligations come from the same species whose actions seem to require that government.

And there's the rub.

In my view, that's the fatal flaw.  The human element is the factor that cannot be eliminated by any document.

Assuming that is the actual problem, what is the solution?  The solution is to seek to better ourselves, either on our own, or in the company of others of like mind, in arrangements freely chosen and found mutually agreeable.  If that is accomplished, the current constitution will serve admirably - but of course, so will anarchy, as hinted in the DoI's alter or abolish language.

DC Treybil