Comment by pessimizer

> they believed that a government of only enumerated powers was enough.

That's a perspective, but it seems to me that the Federalists didn't believe that government should be limited at all. The Constitution is a genie granting three wishes, and explaining beforehand that one of your wishes can be to wish for three more wishes.

Personally, it's always seemed obvious that the Federalists and their children have been the worst intellectual current in US government. They never had popular support at any time, and relied on the manipulation of power and position to accomplish personal goals (which is really their only ideology.) It began with a betrayal of the French Revolution, setting the US on a dirty path (and leaving the Revolution to be taken over by the insane.) The Bill of Rights is the only worthwhile part of the US Constitution; the rest of it is a bunch of slop meant to placate and protect local warlords and slaveholders. The Bill of Rights is the only part that acknowledges that individual people exist other than the preamble.

The Anti-Federalists were always right.

I agree with you that what we should be working on is specifying, codifying and expanding the Bill of Rights, rather than the courts continually trying to come up with new ways to subvert it. New ways that are never codified firmly, that always exist as vibes and penumbras. Rights shouldn't have anything to do with what a judge knows when he sees. If we want to abridge or expand the Bill of Rights, a new amendment should be written and passed; the Supreme Court is overloaded because 1) Congress has ceased to function and 2) the Senate is still an assembly of local warlords.