The point being made is that the choice isn't between 'strict constitutionalism' and loosey-goosey-legalism, it is between loosey-goosey-legalism and feudal war

The point being made is that the choice isn't between 'strict constitutionalism' and loosey-goosey-legalism, it is between loosey-goosey-legalism and feudal warlordism. I realize a disturbing number of techies are actually attracted to that (even if they think it will turn out differently), but I think most of the US populace thankfully isn't. The theory is that there's a social analogue of Gödel's theorem, the humans are incapable of defining a formal set of rules for governing themselves that provides non-absurd outcomes in all cases. I believe this, but of course we don't have solvers for human reasoning (otherwise we could test the theory). So sure, I absolutely agree with you that civil forfeiture is just a new name for highway robbery by the King's men. But for literalist constitutionalism to be viable, it has to handle hard cases as well as simple ones in zero-and negative-sum games, and the US Constitution (any document) leaves huge areas of potential conflict undefined. So your choice reduces to either it won't work with real humans, or you have to interpret it. To interpret it means designating someone (or some people) as official interpreters. And at some point, you find yourself back where we started, arguing about the interpretation of justices who are right because they are final.