John, you may have managed for 1000 years without a constitution, but don't forget that a few hundred of those years featured serfs and monarchs. And let's also not forget that it was the wonderful "freedom" the colonies enjoyed as part of Britain that caused them to rebel and write the Constitution in the first place.
Leaving aside the pros and cons of written versus unwritten constitutions, the US actually had no real choice but to write it down. It's not all freedom and stuff, but nuts and bolts. They had to decide on things like having three branches of government, two houses of the legislature, etc. They couldn't simply opt for waiting 1000 years for these things to evolve. And even when it comes to the freedom stuff, since they were forming a new government and had to write down what they were forming, it would have been foolhardy of them not to at least try to articulate some of the guiding principles.
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