A Novel Idea, Argue your position using the

A Novel Idea, Argue your position using the constitution
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/07/07/our_progressive_constitution_123213.html
These progressives have cleverly thought to base their argument on the constitution!  They expect to argue circles around Conservatives, but starting with  the consititution as the basis of all are laws is refreshingly traditional.
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"Instead of treating the Constitution as the property of lawyers and judges," he notes, "it proposes that legislators, and even citizen-activists, have an independent duty to evaluate the constitutionality of legislation."
One plausible progressive response is to see Ponnuru's exercise as doomed from the start. The framers could not possibly have foreseen what the world would look like in 2014. In any event, they got some important things wrong, most glaringly their document's acceptance of slavery.
Moreover, because the Constitution was written primarily as a foundation for government, it can answer only so many questions. David Strauss of the University of Chicago Law School authored a book called "The Living Constitution" to make plain that there is a lot more to this concept than its detractors suggest. He notes that "a great part of the framers' genius lay exactly in their ability to leave provisions general when they should be left general, so as not to undermine the document's ability to serve as common ground."
The problem with "originalists," Strauss says, is that they "take general provisions and make them specific," even when they're not. One might add that the originalists' versions of specificity often seem to overlap with their political preferences.""
Is it possible that general principles, govern the specific?  What is confusing about "Shall make no law that ..."   or "all laws shall be created by the legislative branch"
Before we worry about that, however, can we agree some government actions are clearly in violation of the constitution?  There are federal laws against owning a machine gun.  Does this meet the "does not infringe" language? You may not agree that individuals should be able to have the tools to go to war, but the constitution clearly does.  Why is that? Maybe the weapons of war in the hands of individuals, makes their possession  by the government less dangerous overall? You might argue the government is more competent to handle  the responsibility, but not all will agree.
You might argue that the writers of the constitution can not anticipate the problems of a modern age, but the authors seem to have anticipated a person like President Obama.

""  The authors remind us of Franklin Roosevelt's warning that "the inevitable consequence" of placing "economic and financial control in the hands of the few" would be "the destruction of the base of our form of government." And writing during the Gilded Age, a time like ours in many ways, the journalist James F. Hudson argued that "imbedded" in the Constitution is "the principle" mandating "the widest distribution among the people, not only of political power, but of the advantages of wealth, education and social influence."

The idea of a Constitution of Opportunity is both refreshing and relevant. For too long, progressives have allowed conservatives to monopolize claims of fealty to our unifying national document. In fact, those who would battle rising economic inequalities to create a robust middle class should insist that it's they who are most loyal to the Constitution's core purpose. Broadly shared well-being is essential to the framers' promise that "We the people" will be the stewards of our government. ""

You can argue the complience to the central theme, but you must first conform to the actual words.  The more appropriate concern is the concentration of power in the fderal government unconstrained by the actual words.