it worked that way forever till FDR hijacked it with the commerce clause.
utter power grab by the federal government. that really began the downfall.
Others seem to think that the 14th and 16th amendments were pretty terrible 'power grabs' too. One might be forgiven for envisaging a stereotypical conservative believing that your Founders and your Constitution were a pinnacle of human civilization... so perfect that their system somehow went downhill all the way :doh
Some comments made by Thomas Jefferson seem a more reasonable counterpoint to such views:
"I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless. Our particular security is in possession of a written constitution.... Let us go on then perfecting it, by adding, by way of amendment to the Constitution, those powers which time and trial show are still wanting."
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Wilson Cary Nicholas, September 7, 1803
"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading, and this they would say themselves were they to rise from the dead.
I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816
"But can they be made unchangeable? Can one generation bind another and all others in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter unendowed with will. The dead are not even things. . . .
A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man."
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Cartwright, June 5, 1824