I read this book quite a few years ago, when it was first published. It is brilliantly written and meticulously researched. It shows clearly that the attack on our Constitution is not recent, that those who desire more power than the Constitution allows have worked to undermine it since shortly after it was adopted. At this point in history, our Constitution has become almost entirely irrelevant; politicians openly mock and deride our Constitution and its authors, despite the fact that they swear an oath to support and defend it. Our elected officials pass laws which clearly violate both the spirit and the letter of our Constitution. We desperately need to restore the power of our Constitution, by actually enforcing it.
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Judging by the reviews, I’d find the book interesting.
Hypothesizing that the Constitution is dead, what would you propose should be done? Try to resurrect it? Write an entirely new one? Write one incorporating the best of the old, and omitting and adding whatever experience has taught us was weak or missing in order to strengthen it?
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I don’t think we need to change the Constitution itself. We need to adopt policies that put teeth back into the Constitution, to hold our elected officials responsible for violating, or even advocating violation of our Constitutional rights. We need to clearly define what power the Supreme Court has and does not have, when it comes to “interpreting” the Constitution. This would not be an easy task, of course, as those in power have become accustomed to disregarding the Constitution at will, and promote the ridiculous notion that the Constitution is a “living document”, the meaning of which changes over time.
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I think another problem is that our government has been engulfed by the Administrative State, who are not accountable because they are unelected.
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Yes, that is absolutely true. Although the reality seems to be overshadowed by the ominous-sounding descriptor of “deep state”, that term describes something very real. Unelected bureaucrats hold a lot of power in Washington, and can greatly influence public policy.
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