"Now, isn't our Constitution a "living" document that evolves..."

"Now, isn't our Constitution a "living" document that evolves in accordance with experience and changing times, as we're so often told?  No- a thousand times no.  If we feel the need to change our Constitution, we are free to amend it.  In 1817, James Madison reminded Congress that the Framers had "marked out in the [Constitution] itself a safe and practicable mode of improving it as experience might suggest" - a reference to the amendment process.  But that is not what advocates of the so-called living Constitution have in mind.  They favor a system in which the federal government, and in particular the federal courts, are at liberty - even in the absence of any amendment- to interpret the Constitution altogether differently from how it was understood by those who drafted it and those who voted to ratify it. 

A "living" Constitution is just the thing any government would be delighted to have, for whenever the people complain that their Constitution has been violated, the government can trot out its judges to inform the people that they've simply misunderstood:  the Constitution, you see, has merely evolved with the times.

That's why on this issue I agree with historian Kevin Gutzman, who says that those who give us a "living" Constitution are actually giving us a dead Constitution, since such a thing is completely unable to protect us against the encroachments of government power." -Pages 48 & 49 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"The power of the executive branch, for instance, has expanded far beyond.."

"The power of the executive branch, for instance, has expanded far beyond what the Framers of the Constitution envisioned.  One mechanism that has strengthened it is the executive order, an instrument by which presidents have exerted powers that our Constitution never intended them to have.  An executive order is a command issued by the president that enjoys his authority alone, not having been passed by Congress.  Executive orders can have legitimate functions.  Presidents can carry out their constitutional duties or direct their subordinates by executive order, for instance.  But they can also be a source of temptation for ambitious presidents, since they can always try to get away with using them as a substitute for formal legislation that they know they cannot get to pass.  He can thereby circumvent the normal, constitutional legislative process. 

Executive orders were rare in the nineteenth century; for a president to issue even several dozen was unusual.  The first twentieth-century president to serve a full term, Theodore Roosevelt (who served two, in fact), issued over three thousand. 

This is a travesty against our constitutional system, and any president worthy of the office would absolutely forswear the use of executive orders except when he can show express constitutional or statutory authority for his action."  -Pages 41-43 of The Revolution, A Manifesto