Part D: Thinking Further

Given the distinction between a constitutional amendment and a law - if you had the influence how would you amend the constitution?

A law is a rule or principal created by the local, state or federal government. They are the bills that have been passed. Amongst laws, the Constitution is "the highest law of the land," which was made by the federal government. And the constitutional amendments are revisions to the original version of those specific set of laws. And while laws can be made by any of the three governments, the amendments can only be made by federal government.
If I had the influence, I would eliminate the 12th amendment, which states that the person with the most electoral votes would become president. This amendment draws America further away from a true democracy. Electoral votes covers up each individual's voice with the dominating point of view. Democracy is supposed to be government by the people, but in America it's people voting for people to be part of the government. And with electoral votes, it is not even people voting, it's the majority of each state. Therefore all the people who do not have the mainstream perspective are not being represented by their president. In addition, if we did not have this amendment, Bush would not have won the 2004 election and caused America to become such a mess.

What is the general tendency of the Constitution and Amendments in your view - general and steady expansion of human freedom and decency? ...

I think that the Constitution was originally written with the government being it's only priority. It's main purpose was to set up the government and divide the powers amongst the three branches. In the 7 articles of the Constitution it does not mention anything about the people. It only discusses what the government can and cannot do. When the government began to write the Amendments, I think they were trying to appeal more to the people. They were attempting to fulfill that part of the Preamble that says "in order to form a more perfect union." The government began to consider the people and follow the Preamble and its goals. In some ways, the Constitution did improve in order to expand human freedom and decency, but that is only because it was limited by the government and society to begin with.
The Constitution and Amendments do not reverse or contradict in any particular direction. In some ways the Constitution did improve and in some ways it changed in order to make America less of a democracy. As I mentioned before, having the 12th Amendment and Electoral votes betray the idea of democracy. Even so, the Amendments did improve America in some ways. It caused America to start a slow process of becoming more and more accepting. While the Amendments were created and the Constitution was being revised, there wasn't one direction that it was heading in terms of improving.
To say that the Constitution and Amendments are a documentation of the battle against good and bad is invalid. "Good" and "bad" cannot really be judged. Although freedom and rights for the people is commonly known to be good, it could be that if the people are given too much rights they will take advantage of it. So in that case, limiting the people's freedom would be consider to be good. For example, Amendment 2 states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." This is definitely a right given to the people, but it may not be the best for the people. It is impossible to determine what is good and bad. And perhaps the American society is just all bad, and that the Constitution is a record of bad against the worse.

How does the Constitution, as amended, create/constrain/shape the American Way of Life?

The freedom give by Constitution shaped the American Way of Life. In America, people are more expressive about their thoughts and feelings, unlike other countries where people get arrested for saying something that does not appeal to the government, such as North Korea. This is to due to the 1st Amendment, that gives the the freedom of the speech and the press. This might also be the reason why Americans tend to be somewhat more rebellious. We take advantage of that right and abuse it as much as possible.
The Constitution also made the people living in America more open-minded. The freedom that it provides welcomed people from other countries to immigrate over to America. People around the world were lured into America because they wanted rights that were not given to them in their home country. Therefore it opened a door to diversity. Americans were surrounded by people of many different backgrounds. Everyone had their own values, and people accepted the differences within those values.
The diversity in America leads to the next trait that the Constitution created as part of the American way of life, which is laziness. Since people have different values, they also settle for less. Some people are glad that they are able to live in a country where they can have a home and raise a family. Therefore they do no aim to become the top or to become rich. So instead those people who value money and aim for those goals (usually the people who are already rich) use them as cheap labor. So while the rich guy is just sitting there, being lazy and getting even richer, the immigrants are working extremely hard in order to maintain their "simple" life.
The Constitution started something that appears to be good and shape the AWOL in a positive way. It encouraged expression and diversity. In addition, being the humans that we are, the people abused it. The freedom of speech gave us the freedom to rebel. The whole Constitution itself provided us the opportunity to use one of the Dark Methods, making us lazy and rich at the same time. The Constitution was, according to the Preamble, written to "form a more perfect union, establish justice..." And in some ways it did. In other ways it made America, a nation of rich slackers and poor workers. This does not apply for everyone, but there is certainly an imbalance between the rich and the poor, and the Constitution encourages this, either intentionally or unintentionally.