I'd probably go back to its ʝʊdɛօ-Masonic origins to find the disconnect...
And that's where the First Amendment comes from. The U.S., from it's very beginning, has been a country based entirely upon Masonic ideals. So yes, it could be argued that it may have been irretrievably lost from the get-go.
My only point was that, it being lost is not necessarily a bad thing. It's been lost.
Agreed.
And more to that point, I find it interesting when I'm in conversations with "conservatives." They keep on harping about how we need to go back to this and that. I then ask them if they consider themselves to be "conservatives." They invariably answer in the affirmative. So then I ask them, "What is it you're trying to conserve?" Their answers are, generally speaking, something akin to life before the (((cultural revolution))) (i.e., before the 1960's), or 'muh freedumbs, 'muh liberties, blah, blah, blah. When I then ask whether they would be in favor of repealing the 19th, which I do more out of curiosity than actual seriousness, every single time their reaction is one of being taken aback, astonished I would even suggest such a thing. When I point out that our country (the U.S.) has had more time without suffrage than it did with, this has no bearing on them. Thus, I've concluded that the term "conservative" has no actual meaning, other than wanting to go back to a time when the country was already off the rails, though the the signs were less obvious than today.