I'm not going to give specifics of where to find what the Constitution means and how it should be viewed. The list is extremely lengthy and would likely take up several pages of this thread. There was no official record kept. While researching, I came across thousands of documents in the very hand of a lot of the framers. I will give a list of generalities. Start with the easy stuff, like the federalist papers and the opposite of that would be the anti-federalists papers. Then try to find as many notes that were kept during the debates on the Constitution while it was being drafted. There are thousands of these out there and a lot of them are readily accessible on the internet, free of charge. BTW, you may want to find the most common used meanings of some of the words at the time of the framing (like regulate and State, just to name a couple). The next things are a little more difficult to find and some will really put a dent in your bank account. These are the letters that went back and forth between some of the framers after the debates were over. There is a lot of other material out here that I used but it is extremely hard to find and you may feel as if you were being robbed when you discover the price of these objects. I paid it, and it was worth it.
I have several thousand dollars and several thousand hours invested in my research and you ain't getting it for free. I know you liberals like free stuff from people that worked hard for it, but you'll have to do your own footwork this time.
Do you know why they didn't keep an official record? Do you know why, after drafting the Constitution, the framers hightailed it out of Philadelphia in such a rush? I do. Don't ask, 'cuzz I ain't tellin'. If you can find that piece of info I will be impressed with your research skills. BTW, a hint, both questions have the same answer.
If I can find all of these things, being a high school dropout, don't you think that the gods on Mt. Olympus should be able to find them.
One thing I discovered while doing my research is that the Constitution is not set in stone, it is set in something harder than steel, harder than a diamond. It is not interpretive. It is steadfast.
It is SCOTUS that decided it was fluid and ever changing. In doing so they, without the other two branches of government, increased their own power a hundred fold or even more. Congress should have impeached the lot of them at the time. It has now become accepted practice for them to interpret it.
