The 18th Amendment didn’t come out of nowhere. It was the result of a century-plus of anti-alcohol activism in America, much of it religiously-motivated.
These conservative Christian groups joined forces with feminists/suffragettes interested in saving women from drunk and boorish men, and also “progressives” generally interested in improving the lot of working-class people, which it was believed banning alcohol would do.
My point stands that the 18th Amendment would not have passed except through getting lots of different groups with their own priorities on board.
And it’s not really a great example to offer against the principle of amending the constitution in general. It is only one out of 27 amendments, and it was itself repealed by the 21st Amendment just 14 years later.
I think if anything, we’ve gotten too shy about amending the Constitution. We haven’t had a new amendment since 1992.
Interestingly, the 27th Amendment took 202 years to ratify since it was first proposed!
