Mr. Richman says...

A couple things, actually, though they're all tending to the same effect (hm, I thought I was quoting The Declaration, but I guess not)... Anyway, he has some gloomy news for us in two articles.

From "Was the Constitution Really Meant to Constrain the Government?"

A shortcut favored by most advocates of limited government is "restoration" of the Constitution. "If only we could get back to the Constitution as it was written," people say. It's a sincere wish, but as a path to a free society, it's riddled with potholes. Not that I don't want the Constitution interpreted in the most restrictive way in order to prevent violations of liberty. Of course I do. The problem is how we can get there from here. Many advocates of liberty have thought they just had to appeal to the “original meaning” of the Constitution and things would more or less take care of themselves. But if that were so, why are we in the mess we're in now? I presume that earlier generations interpreted the Constitution in a way more to the liking of today's constitutionalists. What happened? Since that time, the Constitution has never been suspended; the government wasn't replaced by a non-constitutional regime. The formal Constitution has been in force continuously since 1789. Everything that happened was justified constitutionally.

And from The Constitution or Liberty:

It is important to separate two issues: what the Constitution appears to say and how we evaluate it. We must resist the temptation to let our political-moral views warp our reading of the document. The ultimate political value for libertarians is not the Constitution but liberty-and-justice. If the former fails to support the latter, we must not hesitate to say so. We gain nothing for the cause by supporting it with arguments that are easily knocked down.

If the foundation of our case for liberty is nothing more than the Constitution -- rather than natural-law justice -- we will continue to be trumped by our opponents. After all, the Constitution was in effect all during the time the national government expanded and liberty shrank. As Lysander Spooner wrote, the Constitution "has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it." Liberty's champions have to come to terms with that logic.

But, back to the more recent article:

My message is not one of despair. But we will not cause the freedom philosophy to prevail merely by invoking a political document written by men who thought the main problem with America was too little, not too much, government. Rather, we must cut to the chase and convince people directly that our concepts of freedom and justice best accord with logic -- and their own deepest moral sense.

And don't ignore the

To be continued.