Comment Re:bill of rights restricts GOVERNMENT (Score 2) 116
Further, where are the chartered corporations that these power seekers made?
It's worth noting that we can actually look at what the founding fathers wrote and said, rather than just accepting your bit of historical revisionism. For example, Madison said of the charters of the day (in debate on whether to create a public charter, the Bank of the US:
He waved a reply to Mr. Vining's observations on the common law, (in which that gentleman had been lengthy and minute, in order to invalidate Mr. Madison's objection to the power proposed to be given to the Bank, to make rules and regulations, not contrary to law). Mr. Madison said the question would involve a very lengthy discussion - and other objects more intimately connected with the subject, remained to be considered.
The power of granting Charters, he observed, is a great and important power, and ought not to be exercised, without we find ourselves expressly authorised to grant them: Here he dilated on the great and extensive influence that incorporated societies had on public affairs in Europe: They are a powerful machine, which have always been found competent to effect objects on principles, in a great measure independent of the people.
He argued against the influence of the precedent to be established by the bill - for tho it has been said that the charter is to be granted only for a term of years, yet he contended, that granting the powers on any principle, is granting them in perpetuum - and assuming this right on the part of the government involves the assumption of every power whatever.
So there's an example of one of the most important of the founders eschewing the corporation of that time.
While I imagine Madison would be dubious of today's legal fiction of "corporate personhood", he would have also resisted the formation of many of the US's current public institutions. And in the few cases where those institutions met his approval, he'd probably disapprove of their considerably enlarged scope.
And on other end of this spectrum was Alexander Hamilton who supported a strong central government and probably wouldn't have had a major problem with much of what has been done since.
Just like now, there was a mix of the many human opinions, vices, and virtues. To say that the founding fathers meant that or this, especially when what they supposedly meant is just a blatantly fantastical reinterpretation of their times through a modern ideological filter, is to lose understanding of them or of their times.
Finally, though I don't see the indication that the times of the late 18th century are sufficiently different from today that we can safely ignore the purpose of the Constitution or the various dangers it was designed to forestall or mitigate.