The latest TIME cover story asks about the U.S. Constitution: “Does it still matter?”

It’s an important question, but the magazine’s readers are saddled with a guide in Richard Stengel who misses some key points.

For example, here’s his initial defense of big government:

If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn’t say so. Article I, Section 8, the longest section of the longest article of the Constitution, is a drumroll of congressional power. And it ends with the “necessary and proper” clause, which delegates to Congress the power “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.” Limited government indeed.

Well, yes. The Constitution was intended to assign to Congress only those powers set out in Article I, Section 8, or elsewhere in the document. That’s a limit. The document doesn’t say “Congress: Have at it” or “Go with the flow, Mr. President.”

Later, Stengel reveals his essential disinterest in the initial question by making the following assertion:

We can pat ourselves on the back about the past 223 years, but we cannot let the Constitution become an obstacle to the U.S.’s moving into the future with a sensible health care system, a globalized economy, an evolving sense of civil and political rights.

If the Constitution does not serve as an obstacle, then Stengel wants majority-rule democracy to decide every political question? Really? Given the political predilections he espouses elsewhere in the article, he should be careful in making that wish.

If Stengel would like to learn more about the limits prescribed in Article I, Section 8, along with the reasons why the Constitution should serve as an obstacle to government overreach, he could start by perusing the lectures associated with the John Locke Foundation’s Citizen’s Constitutional Workshop.