I was mostly responding to the second part of your statement, "[i]t sounds like an 'appeal to authority' of the small government crowd." It is very difficult to find statements from historical figures, especially philosophers, that speak to modern debates. The context in which they developed their theories were quite different and don't always map one-to-one with the modern day.

“Men being, as has been said, by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.” -- John Locke, Second Treatise of Government

"Government has no other end, but the preservation of property." -- John Locke, Second Treatise of Government

Without really reading his two treatises on government those quotes are not very enlightening I'm afraid. The only way to really understand the philosophical core of the US is to read the writings that influenced the founding generation. So my "evidence" is their body of work; apologies for not being able to be more succinct than that.

> For a short comment on HN, it's safe to say 'It was meant to be a democracy'.

This is a topic that was covered by the founders so I can pretty easily provide quotes here.

"I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either." -- John Adams, Letter to John Taylor

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty." -- John Adams, Letter to John Taylor

"It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity." -- Alexander Hamilton, New York speech

"We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. Those who mean to form a solid republican government, ought to proceed to the confinges of another government. As long as offices are open to all men, and no constitutional rank is established, it is pure republicanism. But if we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy." -- Alexander Hamilton, Constitutional Convention 1787

"A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of Government, have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions." -- James Madison, Federalist No. 10

Many of the founders, despite the above quotes, thought more direct style democracy and civic engagement was valuable in very local contexts rather than federally. Tocqueville wrote about this in "Democracy in America". Republicanism (representative democracy) at the national level was thought to be much preferable to (direct) democracy but also had constitutional limits placed on it due to its shortcomings as I mentioned before, e.g. no bills of attainder, protection of habeas corpus, prohibitions against ex post facto laws, the Bill of Rights (expressed as limitations on government), enumerated powers, checks and balances, etc...

I like to point to "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" by Edsger Dijkstra in this situation. Dijkstra was discussing unrestricted goto statements in much older languages like Algol, something which doesn't exist in any language in use today that I'm aware of. It was also never an absolute "ban" on the unrestricted goto. Yet the lesson that was learned was to never use restricted goto (e.g. C). The issue Dijkstra was concerned with was something we are still concerned with; clean, maintainable code. If we take the simplified conclusion that most people have internalized then the Linux kernel's error handling and resource clean-up would likely be far less maintainable than their current judicious use of goto for that purpose.

Similarly we are still debating what effective governance looks like today. By simplifying the founders thoughts on the matter we obfuscate the problem they were trying to solve and deny ourselves past insight into the problems we are trying to solve.