Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

At the same time, I have encountered several educated Frenchmen who are very vocally racist in their attitudes in ways no one here would evince en famille.

Stop It,Jacques

How many of us have come with an entire ideology all by ourselves?

Many "academic types" have tried and it never goes as well as hoped. Two I can think of are Arthur Schopenhauer along with his understudy Friedrich Nietzsche. Both spent their professional lives and writing careers striving for self-made philosophies free of traditional belief. Both went insane, Nietzsche more so; And rather than leaving behind a worldview that could successfully replace the supposed ills of history's insistence on God, they merely left us an individualistic ambition saddled with its own baggage, that often filled in the gaps with DNA from Eastern religions anyway.

The failure of coming up with your own ideology is that almost inescapably it always comes about as a reaction against an established point of view, like Christianity, and thus conversely validates the established point being rebelled against. The throes of fanaticism are blind to what’s truly inescapable: everything is ultimately a taking of the good with the bad. Religion, politics, economics, etc. But fanaticism persists because its promise of utopia, such as a caliphate or the abolition of private property, is alluring and highly reactive.

The failure of coming up with your own ideology is that almost inescapably it always comes about as a reaction against an established point of view, like Christianity, and thus conversely validates the established point being rebelled against. The throes of fanaticism are blind to what’s truly inescapable: everything is ultimately a taking of the good with the bad. Religion, politics, economics, etc. But fanaticism persists because its promise of utopia, such as a caliphate or the abolition of private property, is alluring and highly reactive.

I'd go deeper here and specify that it's against an established point of view that has evolved without purposeful improvements/checks.  
As in "because it's tradition" is no reason to do something.

I fear our country has already fallen prey to this - specifically our worship of the Constitution.  I can't fathom a new amendment being passed today, and there hasn't been a meaningful one in 50 years.  It's become a document to be revered (rightfully), but frozen in time as some sort of perfect product of us.  THAT is a problem, imo.  It's not a perfect, golden document brought down from on-high by the baby Jesus.  It was a good start, created by flawed men in a simpler time.  We can still revere it AND acknowledge its imperfection.

Anyway, one of those flawed guys suggested we seriously revisit it every 20 years or so and make appropriate edits/amendments and we're no longer doing so.  

I would disagree that we worship the Constitution and that is why we don't see successful Amendments.

Different people would like to change it in very different ways obviously.  Without something closer to consensus, it doesn't change.  The concept was that it be this way.

Some called for a Convention of the States for example to enact a Balanced Budget Amendment or a Rule on years in Congress, etc.  As I read about such a convention, it sounds like it could easily be a free for all with unintended consequences.

I lean to thinking if we don't have a decent consensus about a thing, we should not do it when it comes to the supreme law of the land.

there's no shortage of special interest groups that would like to change the Constitution to fit their agenda 

They revisit it and cornsider it regularly 

I see routine calls for Amendments by people who would like to "revisit" the Constitution, regularly.  I don't think that is the issue.
 
I see routine calls for a Convention of the States, and a fair number of states have voted to convene one.  

If magically I were given the power to rewrite it, I probably would change it significantly, and so would most people.  Whether I'd change it for the better is another question of course.  And if that power were conferred to someone else, they would alter it differently from me, probably, and therein lies the rub.

Our first Constitution of course failed, so they contrived a second one, which has served us pretty well for 200+ years.  As time goes on, perhaps it is reasonable that further changes would be slower in coming.  Amendments came in a relative rush initially, and then the process slowed, which could be sensible if you view the process as asymptotic.

Does that creature have bacon strips for arms?