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Exactly, if it wasn't carefully adhered to, from very early on, there is no reason it should be now. All of that is just a framework for decisions that benefit the people. If your rules don't work and have to be ignored, then the rules are no good and should be ignored.
Now that does allow for decisions to be made in partisan ways, and that is another problem I completely agree. But the rules didn't stop that happening anyway. So you are no worse off. But having actual enumerated decisions at least let people know what the ground under their feet is doing now. Sure maybe that changes on the next case, but that is ok. Knowing what the next step looks like is enough for 90% of people.
Personally I'd prevent the Supreme court from punting or making very minor narrow decisions. If a law is unconstitutional then they force the government to rewrite it until it is. Give them some powers to enforce that on the executive and legislative branches. Give them some actual teeth to really be a check and balance. Their job is to determine that and punting it back and forth helps no-one except prolonging things. Even if that means my side would lose a lot of cases given the ideological make up of the court, I would far prefer that.
This is straightforwardly fallacious. There are many reasons why it should be adhered to now, but even if there were not, "no one has ever does this so there is no reason to do this" is clearly bad reasoning.
No-one has ever done this, because it demonstrates it could not be done even when people really wanted to do it is the point. Like communism may be just fine if it weren't being attempted by humans. But sadly it is.
If it couldn't be done from the start (which was your point), then why would you ever think it could be now? It may be bad reasoning, but it is real world reasoning. Philosophically and logically perhaps you are correct. But in practice I think I am.
I did say maybe ever, and I was being perhaps a touch hyperbolic. This is... complicated... but I think that the aspiration toward enumerated powers is often almost as important as actually achieving it. I do think there have been efforts in that direction, many times throughout our nation's history. I think they have in general been for the best. I also think that opposition to that principle has also been present from the start, and that said opposition has generally operated for the worse.
It's a process, in other words. Attempts to adhere to principle allow that process to continue. Circumventing that process by abandoning principle entirely, not so much. There are many, many things in the world that I suspect genuinely work in this way, that is, aspirationally. But I've not found a really good way of communicating that even in a book-length work, much less a forum post. Sorry.
No need to be sorry! And for what it is worth, I do think aspirations are important. Just because I don't think it can work completely or perfectly, doesn't mean that I think the idea has no value. Indeed American aspirationalism, is one of the things I most admire about this nation.
I'd just think the people making the choices probably need to be aware the aspirationalism is important, but also not strictly achievable. Which is in and of itself not straightforward. In a distributed way society needs people who truly believe in the aspirations AND pragmatists who work as if those aspirations are not true. Too much belief in the aspirations tends to create too much trust in the institutions those aspirations create, which can (and often is) exploited from within those institutions, and too little gives you nowhere to go, no overall goal. Individuals I think tend to be bad at holding both of those views at once. Whereas a successful society can be the outcome of both groups. Where influence may wax and wane over time between each side.
And I don't think that is necessarily entirely along left/right lines. Though that can shift over time.
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