nobody since Nixon was been impeached for violating his oath of office by subverting the Constitution. This suggests either that everyone honors the oath or that the oath is meaningless. Suppose, in a society with a normal level of criminal behavior, there were no prosecutions for burglary. Would you infer that there were no burglaries in that society? Or would you infer, rather, that the burglary laws just weren't being enforced? When a bill is proposed in Congress, our representatives almost never ask themselves: "Where in the Constitution do we get the power to enact this measure?" Instead they presume that they have virtually any power they choose to exercise. They simply feel no tension between their will and the Constitution that is supposed to restrain them. This doesn't look much like an ethos of limited government.