One of the Constitution's founding purposes was to prevent change. But another was to allow for change without violence. Amendment is a constitution's mechanism for the prevention of insurrection-the only way to change the fundamentals of government without recourse to rebellion. Amendment is so essential to the American constitutional tradition-so methodical and so entirely a conception of endurance through adaptation-­that it can best be described as a philosophy. It is, at this point, a philosophy all but forgotten.