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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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