[Overpaid Slacker]

Steve -
I think the founding fathers had a lot of power in mind for the President; read any Hamiltonian Federalist Paper, for instance. And Jemmy Madison was pretty strong too. But those are arguments for we paleolithic "constructionists" that like to base our interpretations on silly things like contemporary writings of a document's contributors and authors.

I'll stipulate that it is more fun to "project back" onto the Constitution the "isms" that were created well after the Constituion, that the founding fathers therefore could not have been familiar with/influenced by. But that alternate-reality fiction deserves a place on the "What if Hitler had won" or "What if Mao were gay" shelf of the library.

Vash -
I agree wholeheartedly with your last statement; but for a reason you probably don't like. The FF could never have imagined the need for such a bill, living within what was a very homogenous, pious society. I believe it is safe to say that such a bill is as far beyond what the FF would have conceived as is the Internet.

Virtually unrelated rant follows...

FWIW, I smirk when I hear some unhinged, history-deprived moonbat screeches about how capitalism is "conservative." This is the most categorically untrue statement I've ever heard that even tangentially relates to "economics," and it's susceptible to almost instantaneous disproof (assuming the other side will listen, which is stretching things in many instances).

Capitalism is value-neutral (even amoral) and thrives on new ideas, whatever their nature. It succeeds the more options there are -- ideological, spiritual, fashion, technological, whatever. I can't think of a more potent force for "progressivism" and undoing of conservative ideals than capitalism.

Consider theocracies -- very conserative, no? I frequently refer to Islam's Mullahcracies as 12th century theocracies -- their leaders manage their power through refusal to admit of new ideas, technologies, philosophies, etc. Why are these theocracies universally among the worst economic countries? B/c they suppress capitalism in order to suppress the influx of ideas that it brings. These oppressive, theocratic dirtbags understand capitalism (well, what it does...) better than many self-annointed cognoscenti in the West.

Capitalism is not "Liberal" in the American political sense, but it is anti-conservative in just about any sense (political, social, theological) of the word "conservative".

OK, enough rant for now.

JP