Last week, I somewhat audaciously proposed a “Restoration Amendment” to free the U.S. Constitution from decades of judicial precedent and neglect and return it as much as possible to the original intent of our nation’s founders.

Among the reactions from readers, two in particular prevailed. Many readers were grateful for the effort and pitched in with their own ideas for how the federal leviathan could be tamed, but many others were dismal and dismayed — certain that any honest effort to reform the nation was already a lost cause, and that the Constitution was already good enough if only people would follow it.

Probably all of us who are concerned about the state of the union can find a certain amount of sympathy for those who have essentially surrendered to the inevitability of decay and destruction of the principles of liberty enshrined in the Constitution. But that does not mean we should accept that destruction gladly. Let’s take the tenor of our fight rather from the Irish poet Dylan Thomas, who urged his readers to “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Certainly, that spirit of resistance is alive and well in America, whether it is called the Tea Party or something else. The point is that for those of us who have taken the time to study our nation’s founding documents, it is impossible to accept the modern federal state as anything but a mockery of that which was intended by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Therefore, we continue to look for solutions that will restore the Constitution to its original purpose as a document to regulate the joint relationship between separate sovereign states, and not a roadmap for federal control of every aspect of our individual lives.

I’ll highlight a few of the proposals from readers this week, and expect to return with a revised version of the Restoration Amendment in a future column after incorporating some of these new ideas into it. But one thing is certain, the American genius for invention is alive and well, and so is the thirst for liberty.

Inter Lake reader “Pete” pointed out that education ought to be specifically addressed in a Restoration Amendment. After all, when the Constitution was written, there was no federal involvement with education at all, nor is there any constitutional authority by which the Department of Education can be deemed legal. Pete sees a very good reason why such a federal role would never have passed muster with our Founding Fathers: “How can we expect to have free-thinking citizens when they are indoctrinated by the STATE?” he asks, concluding forcefully, “I would prohibit federal involvement in education — period.”

Absolutely. If the prior language of the Restoration Amendment is not strong enough to make it clear, then by all means we should include a provision that specifically bars Washington, D.C., from imposing its belief systems on the individual states or, for that matter, the individual students.

Pete also wanted to see a provision that declared that the “individual states bear no fiduciary responsibility to those states who choose to live beyond their means,” raising the specter of state bankruptcy, which is certainly a real possibility for California and other profligate spenders. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine how the union could exist with a mongrel mix of bankrupt and solvent states. I’ll have to think about that one.

“Helen” reported that there was a law passed in 1803 that said that citizens did not have to follow any law made that was unconstitutional. That wouldn’t work without some fine-tuning, but maybe one article of the revised Restoration Amendment could state the right of every American citizen to challenge the constitutionality of every law if they were willing to bear the cost of such a lawsuit. One of the most annoying aspects of common law that prohibits the public from challenging unjust and unconstitutional laws is that they have to prove “standing” and rarely can. In a true constitutional republic, every citizen should have standing when defending the people’s Constitution.

“OhMy” envisioned a provision that would restrict the ability of any government to take more than 10 percent of a citizen’s wealth or earnings. That, or something else like it, might make for a healthier, freer society, but it would be beyond the scope of the Restoration Amendment’s intent to put things back the way they used to be. Although the income tax was a later amendment to the Constitution, and its legitimacy has been challenged by some, that fight must remain for another day.

Several readers, including “Paul,” proposed a paragraph that “specifically states that the Congress as a group and the federally elected politicians as individuals and federal bureaucrats as individuals cannot exempt themselves from the rules and laws that they impose on the rest of us.” I have no doubt that such a provision would be adopted by acclamation by the general public, but getting the elites of Congress to vote for it strikes me as about the same likelihood as Marie Antoinette manning the barricades during the French Revolution.

“Ol’ Jim” took controls on our elected and unelected officials a step further and proposed that any member of Congress or judge who proposes an unconstitutional bill, or subverts the Constitution in any way “shall immediately be removed from office and banned from further government service of any sort for a period of not less than 120 years.” He also specified that, “There can be no ‘compelling government interest’ allowing violation of the terms of the U.S. Constitution.”

“HTC” likewise argued that the amendment must make clear “that any justice who violates these clear restrictions has committed an impeachable offense that requires the people’s elected representatives to convene a ‘constitutional court’ to decide if removal from office is indeed appropriate.” He is right that some such conveyance of justice must be included in order to ensure that the provisions of the Restoration Amendment are followed through, but I am pessimistic about the ability to codify such a process in a way that incontrovertibly protects it from mischief and subversion.

HTC also called for a process to enable recall elections of representatives and senators in the face of such violations. Although representatives have never been subject to recall (perhaps because of their short two-year term), senators were indeed subject to recall under the original Constitution because they served at the pleasure of the state legislatures, which appointed them until the 17th amendment was ratified in 1913.

“Scott” shared a number of interesting ideas, but most significant to re-establishing the primacy of the states, as it existed prior to the Civil War, would be establishing a legal process of nullification by which states could overturn federal laws or Supreme Court rulings that are antithetical to the beliefs or morals of the individual states. This, it seems to me, would help to establish the sense of “we the people” as the sovereigns of the Constitution, instead of “we the five black-robed justices” that we have been increasingly stuck with as the arbiters of our rights and responsibilities the past 50 years.

Well, there you have it — a grab bag of ideas all aimed at giving the people more power and the politicians less. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.