The federalist wing of the drafters of the US Constitution didn't think a Bill of Rights was necessary because they believed that a government of only enumerated powers was enough.
So they didn't even think things like the First and Second Amendment were even necessary.
Fastfoward 250 years and now maybe the idea of a "right of the people to own and self host their own software, shall not be infringed" doesn't sound like such a bad idea.
"The law is antiquated and should be repealed. The framers could never have envisioned Our Supreme Lord AI and how irrelevant individual compute is today when writing that law."
There's an oft-repeated factoid that recognizable organized civilizations last about 10 generations or 250 years on average. And then there's Strauss–Howe generational theory. There's no magic formula or universal fate except it's risky to have lots of corrupt, stupid leaders, injustice, inequality, and/or bad circumstances that do everything to avoid rare, effective leadership with integrity and labor wealth growing faster than capital wealth. Late stage capitalism is omnicidal and suicidal because the greedy fools involved tend not to care about or plan for the future, including a cognitive dissonance to deny anticipation of domination by externalities like changes in youth public sentiment, demographic shifts, geopolitical balances, and climate change. The current richest people in the world are drug addicts, warlords, pedophiles, and those who erroneously believe public beaches belong to them personally.
> 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.
Ha. You reach for the 2nd but fail to realize that of all the Amendments, there is more legal precedent torture to sidestep that prohibition than any other amendment save maybe the 4th, 5th, and 10th.
So they didn't even think things like the First and Second Amendment were even necessary.
Fastfoward 250 years and now maybe the idea of a "right of the people to own and self host their own software, shall not be infringed" doesn't sound like such a bad idea.