>> Once our elected leaders turn toward limiting our rights, the force of The Constitution will be right there along side them.
While we just quoted here such creeping cases of federal law applying to states, etc, you still need to acknowledge that US Constitution prevented a lot of abuses. Laws do matter. For example, German Weimar republic was constructed without much thought and collapsed legally very quickly. Also, notice that among countries that used to be colonies, the British ones (including USA) are doing much better than Spanish and others, presumably something to do with the British legal system.