"If we stuck to the Constitution as written, we would have: no federal meddling in our schools; no Federal Reserve; no U.S. membership in the UN; no gun control; and no foreign aid. We would have no welfare for big corporations, or the "poor"; no American troops in 100 foreign countries; no NAFTA, GATT or "fast- track; no arrogant federal judges usurping states rights; no attacks on private property; no income tax. We could get rid of most of the cabinet departments, most of the agencies, and most of the budget. The government would be small, frugal, and limited." -- Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) 1998
If by this you mean as originally written, well, we'd also have slavery. At least, we'd have no pesky environmental or civil rights legislation.
We'd also have no freedom of religion, speech, privacy or assembly; no right to bear arms; the government's ability to torture and imprison people without charges; and only white male landowners could vote. Sounds like a lovely country.
Too bad Ronnie Boy forgot about Article V of the Constitution. He must have been asleep that day in history class.
No bank panics, either. Article II, Section 2 specifically gives the President the right to enter into treaties. The Supreme Court respectfully disagrees. See US v. Miller. Treaties again. So the part where "Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes [...] to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States" (art. 1, sec. 8) means what, exactly? Yeah, bombing those Taliban encampments last year, not to mention keeping West Germany safe from the Commies for 45 years, those were real terrible ideas. "The Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce with foriegn nations." Article 1, Section 8 again. You know, these books not only look good, they're filled with useful legal tidbits! Most of us got over the Brown decision a while ago. Why do I get the feeling that this stalwart defender of the Constitution as Hamilton and Madison and Jay dreamed it up would have been foursquare behind the Whiskey Rebellion back in the day? And, yet, amazingly, the Constitution is provided complete with this clause about how to amend the thing, possibly because the people who wrote it realized that they were not clairvoyants who could forsee the problems of 100 years in the future. And, in my opinion, worthless. Where's the idea here? The fact that we're living in a different kind of country from the America of 1789 would seem to indicate that strict adherence to the letter of the 1789 law isn't necessarily the swiftest idea. There's no good reason to believe that the most perfect possible form of government was created at the Constitutional Convention, which is the only reason to believe that any deviation from the Constitution as originally written is inherently a bad thing. This, kids, is reason #461 why separation of church and state is a good idea: laws are not the same as Holy Writ. The Constitution was not handed to Moses at Mount Sinai. It was created by people at a specific point in history, and it is a product of that point in history. Its strength lies not in its unwavering brilliance, but the fact that its creators were smart enough to realize that they needed to include a mechanism for its improvement in the future as circumstances change.