Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics

This is worth reading as a study of how the US government got into the current mess. Is it true that the Constitution is a flawed tract? Or can it be used as a universal guide-post for the future? Just as biologists replaced the static picture of God's creationism with Darwin's evolution, so thinkers of Wilson's day developed Progressivism as an evolution of the original Constitution. This is Progress! An interpretive reading is required to form a theory of what was going on. One might see the exuberance of Jack London, Spencer's "survival of the fittest,", Teddy Roosevelt's rough riders, etc. The industrial revolution was in full force, and, by golly, let's innovate an advanced central government funded by an income tax and regulated by a federal reserve bank! This development of course is what the founders were afraid of. They tried to hobble the central government to limit it's dangerous growth and to limit the "factious nature" of political man. They passed the second amendment to arm the citizens against the central government. (not only against foreign invaders as is sometimes assumed.) The Constitution attempts to protect the people against the perrenial failure of centralized government, but the Progressives felt the developing complexity of the modern world required an expanded federal government. Perhaps one could argue that neither the centralized state nor the libertarian approach is a good answer. This of course has led to experiments like socialism, communism, pluralism. But did Wilson anticipate the growth and fall of a narcissistic central government? And understand the limits of his own rationalist thinking?