In the view of the Founders, government existed to secure the rights of man and to perform those few tasks that the people had agreed to delegate to it. Liberty was the goal of the state, and that state was expected to remain strictly within its guidelines. As both the Federalist papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers make abundantly clear, the primary purpose of the Constitution was to create a framework that simultaneously checked and harnessed the ambition of the men entrusted with powee. Fragmented, not all-encompassing, power was the order of the day.

Charles C.W. Cooke, The Conservatarian Manisfesto