it is my distinct honor here to introduce my colleague yuval levin. i'm ramesh ponnuru, by the way, all is the kind of person whom people in my position say he needs no introduction, but that then raises an awkward question about why i'm here. so i will introduce him. he is the director of social cultural and constitutional studies here at aei, where he also the beth ann ravenel currie

chair in public policy, the founder and editor of national affairs. he is also a senior editor, the new atlantis, a contributing editor, national review, and a contributing opinion writer at the new york times. in his role as of social, cultural and constitutional, i suppose i should point out he is in some sense my boss so i guess, he will be reviewing my performance as i review his today, which is about as good an example democratic citizenship as as we can find we're here to discuss new book and if i may say so i think is his best book yet. american covenant how the constitution our nation and could again it is it is a book that is i should say, epistemic, clean, modest, politically ambitious. it that the cure for many of our

modern discontents in. the united states can be found by recovering the of our existing constitution. it could be said to elaborate on the constitution's theory of itself. and among the things that this book reminds us of is that the unity that we speak in e pluribus unum is, not a once and done accomplishment, but a constant achievement that needs to be renewed. it is pretty common for, conservatives, to suggest that we forgotten some of the genius of our constitution, but it is at this point, countercultural in some precincts the right no less than of the left, to suggest that the of our constitution has not yet been exhausted. that is the bold proposal of

this book, and i hope you'll join me in you all. a warm round of applause as he elaborates on it. thank you very, ramesh. i appreciate that enormously. and i think in my capacity, some kind of unofficial editor position and ah, you're my boss. so way or another there will be report. it's really great to be here with you, ramesh. and really, i mean, what an amazing room of friends to talk about this book with it's it's it's staggering to me and i should say i'm excited for the opportunity to a few words about the book here at home i would say aei with all of you for one thing this is a book about the constitution and so it's a book about law, politics and policy. it's about political culture and institutional design.

all of the things that we love to do here at aei, or at least in my little corner of aei. but more than that, speaking with of you in particular about the book and doing it here, let me say a little more personal than i normally might a bit about how i came to write this book. and i want to do that in two brief ways, and then to pull out just a couple of themes from the book for you. and then ramesh and i can chat, which is really what i'm here for for to begin with really. on one kind of personal note, i for me, this book is really natural extension of work that i've been doing for a decade and more about the roots and, the character of political in america wrote a book in 2012 about the sources of the left right divide. and then in 2016 about what you might call the up down divide, the the the ways in which the fracturing fragmentation of

american life has opened a chasm between elites and the broader public. i wrote a book in 2020 about the breakdown of our institutions and of our trust in them. and as i say that, i do notice that all these problems gotten worse over that time. so i should probably stop writing these books. but the path of these books me has been a kind of path from diagnosis toward prescription, from thinking about how things have come apart to thinking at least some how they might be brought back together. and this book for me is a kind of natural next on that path. it's about what it would mean to be a more unified society now and how that might actually be brought about, at least in our political life, which is of course only part of our life together. and it also draws an argument that was central to the second of those books that i mentioned, a book called, the fractured republic from 2016 that argued in part that we have moved in public life in america from a long period that began in the middle of the 20th century, in

which something like liberalization was the moving force of our politics, cultural liberalization for the left, economic for the right in which the two parties wanted to both claim the term freedom themselves into a new phase, where what people feel they lack is not just kind of individual liberation, but a sense of belonging, what we hunger for, what a successful movement would have to offer now is not freedom, but also solidarity. and left and right in our time are both groping for ways of presenting their priorities in terms of it's going very poorly far. it's looked like it's looked like identity, which both i think are ways of trying to advance right or left under the banner of solidaire ali. we're going to need to do better than that. but a lot of our institutions and practices and priorities in the coming years are going to have to find ways to, articulate the case for themselves, in part terms of solidarity.

and i think this is also true. the constitution we're used to a case for it in terms of freedom of individual rights. in that case is true. but we've lost sight of the case it in terms of solidarity of forming a more perfect union, which after all is the first kind of case that it makes for itself. i think we need to reacquaint ourselves with that case. and that's part of what this book tries to do it is a case for the constitution in terms of solidarity. but for me, this for the american system in of holding us together runs than that too. and that's the second kind of personal path to this book that i would highlight for you. i am an immigrant to the united states. i was born in israel. my family moved here when i was eight, so i mostly grew up here, but i'm a naturalized citizen, became an american at the age of 19 in the federal building in newark, new jersey, in 1996. it was a big naturalization ceremony.

lots of people, lots of places. and at the end of it, the retired federal judge, as i remember him, he was ancient, but i was 19. so maybe he was like 40. he got up to speak and i thought he was going to talk, you know, lincoln and the founders. and he didn't do anything like that. he gave a very short talk. and he said from today on, you have to think about america in the first person, plural. that was the phrase that he used. and i'm quite sure that i was not the only new citizen who did not know what that meant. and it was very glad that it wasn't on the english test that we just took. but he explained it. he said from now on, we have to say we and us when we talk about america, not them. and and that was it. that was he said and i remember being with what he said, but here i am more than a quarter century later telling you about it because in fact it was profound. it was exactly what needed to hear and what we still need to hear, not just we immigrants, but we americans. we have to work at finding ways

to understand our country, not in terms of the day of those terrible people who are going to ruin everything if they win the next election. but in terms of we all of us who in some ways share a future in common as americans, that's not a case being nice. it's not a case for truce or even for civility you. make a truce with enemies. citizens are not enemies. our options are not war or truce. we are meant to argue each other precisely because we do share a future in common. we arguing about that future and what it ought to be. and the stakes are high. exactly. because we are a we we is actually a very important word in the american political tradition. it's the first word of that amazing second sentence of the declaration of independence. we hold truths to be self-evident. it's the first word of the constitution. we the people of the united states. and that's not a coincidence, both of those documents are expressed in the first person plural, because they are both examples of a people taking

ownership of its fate as a nation acting together. politically, the declaration expresses a common commitment to a set of ideals that then underlie a decision, an act of separation in common, the constitu and builds on that premise, embraces principles, but it does something that, in practical terms, may be even complicated. it establishes political framework for a society that generally agrees about those fundamental principles, but doesn't agree about much, doesn't even agree about exactly what those mean as a practical in a lot of situations that, disagrees about a lot all the time. the constitution is exactly how to make that we reality as a practical matter in the face of division and in a sense that is what this book is about. it's about how the constitution can function as a framework for unity and for cohesion in a divided. we are obviously short of unity and cohesion.

now in america. and the notion the constitution could help might seem strange at first americans are very divided, polarized and among things that's made us frustrated with our of government because that system forces us constantly to deal with people who disagree with us so too many americans are persuaded that our constitution is just not suited to our contemporary circumstances, that it's a relic of past age, or that it's undemocratic that it makes it too difficult to adapt to changing times so that in this era it can only make our problems worse. this book argues that that is roughly the opposite of the truth the constitution is not the problem we face. it is much more like solution. it was intended to address the problem that we have the challenge of how a divided society can hang together and govern itself. it was designed with an exceptionally sophisticated grasp of the nature of political division and diversity, and it

aims create common ground in our society there in part to unify us, the book lays out what that means by first helping us see what the constitution actually is and what is characterized two kinds of modes of operation. look like how it shapes the public and by working through the purposes and history of its various institutions, federalism and the congress the presidency. the courts also the extra constitutional institution of the party system it considers all those in light of the constitution's prioritizing of national unity. and finally in its last chapter it tries to think about what unity actually in light of all of that. now, i'm not going to march you through of that here and we are here for a conversation. but let me instead you five quick propositions that i think emerged from considering the constitution in this particular peculiar light propositions that are some of the pillars of the argument, the book and all of which are now contested, or maybe just.

the first proposition is really about the nature of unity itself in a free and diverse society, it emerges from what seems to be a kind of contradiction in the thinking of james madison, in particular. madison is the figure among the framers who i think thought most about and cohesion and faction unity. he values unity enormously, and he thinks it's an essential of the constitution. and he wasn't alone in that forming a more or more perfect is, as i said, the first stated purpose, the constitution, the first third or so of the federalist papers, all about the need for union. and yet madison also thinks that unanimity, what we would think of is just agreement is impossible in. a free society on any subject of real significance, he says very bluntly. in federalist ten, he says, quote as long as the reason of man continues and he's at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be period. so unity is not only possible,

but essential, and yet a free is always going to be the scene of intense disagreements. so then what does unity mean in? that kind of circumstance, this the first proposition i want to put to you, the constitution rooted in the premise that in a free and therefore diverse society unity does not mean thinking. unity means acting together, thinking acting are different alike and together are different. and unity means acting. this distinct notion of unity really essential to understanding or constitute because it's an idea that invites the question to which the constitution is ultimately an answer. i say unity means together, not thinking alike, and that forces us to ask how is that possible? how can we act together when we don't think alike? that, i think, is the foremost question to which the constitution is an answer. all of modes of action, every one of the institutions it creates are intended among their

other. to answer that question, a lot of what is mysterious and frustrating to many americans now about our system is a function of its being an answer to that question of its designed to enable people who don't fully agree to nonetheless together and how does it do that again and again in its various institutional forms and especially in some of those that we now find most, the constitution offers ways of compel constitution and negotiation of forcing differing factions into common into engagement with each other into bargaining and deal making the common action is not always cordial, contentious, it's confrontational it requires dealing with people. we disagree with, which can be slow and unpleasant. but it is directed to finding mutually acceptable accommodations by recognizing that we do disagree, yet do together. that is not simply a matter of

counting heads. some critics of the constitution argue that factional divisions should just be by simple majority votes, and they dismiss our system's bizarre, complicated arrangement of overlapping institutions as undemocratic as but the constitution is a lot more sophisticated than these critics are it's much more sensitive than they are to the dangers of social division. it accepts the premise that only majority rule can legitimize public action. but it also embodies the countervailing insight which is to anybody familiar with the of democracy and the history the united states that majorities can sometimes act oppressively and it recognizes narrow majorities in particular are often just ephemeral artifacts. the election systems that created them they don't tell us something real about society. so it demands that popular consensus be demonstrated multiple durable reasonably

broad majorities that present themselves in institutions that are elected by different constituents things in different ways. and that points to the second proposition that i put to you in our system meaningful policy victory requires broad coalitions, not narrow majorities. now, you would think that would be obvious, but if you actually look at our politics for 5 minutes today. you'd see that it's not obvious at all. in fact, everybody's to have forgotten it. building through negotiation and is now taken to be a betrayal. a betrayal of party, a failure of nerve. politicians promise to fight for their voters as they should but too many politicians and voters have forgotten what it means to fight in our system, what it means to fight is to bargain effectively and so to gain advantage by building a broad that advances your priorities. politicians now behave as though fighting means refusing to negotiate, but in fact, that's losing. looks like.

refusing to negotiate means giving up the only power you have. because what you win when you win an election. the american system is a seat at the negotiating table. to refuse the seat is to refuse your will. it is to lose. the fact that we've forgotten that is a big part of why our practice of constitutionalism is now so out of whack and a big part why our politics feels so and divided. that problem is particularly evident in congress, which is the first and foremost institution of our system. exactly. because it's the primary venue for bargaining and for accommodation at the federal level. congress is where the fundamental work of acting together when we don't think alike supposed to happen. that's why it's particularly disturbing to find congress. the attitude that negotiating with the other side is a betrayal or a failure. it's actually the job description and that attitude has really seeped into a lot of how we now think about fixing congress to. there is a lot of agreement

that. something is wrong with congress. it's not to find people who think that and there's even a kind of bipartisan community. congressional reformers in washington phil wallach and kevin kosar and i are often the token conservatives in a lot of these conversations. but beneath what seems like agreement at the beginnings of those conversations agreement that congress is dysfunctional. there's a very profound disagreement about what function it is failing to perform what is congress not doing. most people would answer i think that it's not passing the legislation they think is essential. it's not acting entitlement reform or climate change or whatever you take to be the crucial challenge of the moment. that is the common view, but i think that it's a mistaken view of what's wrong with the institution. it seems me that what congress is failing to do is not so much advance my policy but enable cross partizan. what is failing to do is enable us to act together when we don't think alike. and that difference actually some enormous implications for

prescribing people who are frustrated with congress failure to move legislation rather than with the failure to advance some idea of cohesion tend to call for things like eliminate supermajority requirements, like senate filibuster or for further empowering and centralizing power in the leaders in both houses. they have in mind something more like parliamentary as a model of what it is that we're missing. but that of model, i think, is not ultimately likely to lead to durable legislation in the american. and more important, it would undermine the capacity of our politics to engage in common, work toward. reconcilable goals. reforms should point in the opposite direction. things like empowering committees and intraparty factions, not the leadership, reinforce the supermajority requirements that are really the only reason that there's any cross partizan work at all in congress. so that's the third proposition i'd give you. reforms of congress should make partizan bargaining more likely

rather than making it less necessary, which is how they often work now. that kind of approach to the problems with our institutions, government asking what's the purpose? the institution? and so what is it that it's now failing to do? could also how we think about the modern presidency, because i think we're almost as confused about the presidency as about congress. like our sense of congress is purpose or understanding of the executive is dominated by a kind of progressive prioritization of policy action over the madisonian prioritization of political order and social cohesion. in fact, we think about the presidency now very legislative terms. we it's a representative institution, and that its purpose is to advance the policy agenda of the party that won the last. but the presidency is a unitary office. it can't be represented of of a diverse society of 300 million people. and it's an administrative. certainly, the president is intended to have a role in driving the of our politics and putting some questions on the

table, setting some priorities. but kind of bargaining and accommodate ation that is supposed to move policy can't really happen within the office of the president. that means that the president can't advance. unity by assertive policy action. the distinct role the president has in advancing national cohesion along with his other important roles in our system his particular role in advancing has to do not so much with energetic policy advocacy, but with what alexander hamilton called steady administration. contemporary presidents because they value their ability to drive policy action, essentially claim to do the work of the legislators. when legislators won't do it. they've dramatically under emphasized administration when every president's his term with undoing everything that his predecessor did and then spends the rest of his term doing everything that his successor will undo. we're left in a place where the kind of steadiness that is necessary to the work of the executive is no of the job.

and the effect of has not just been bad for administration, but also for national cohesion. it dramatically raises the stakes of our elections and the temperature of our politics because means that key questions don't get resolved by bargaining and coalition building, but by sharp turns, by hard stops. everything depends on who the president is. and so my fourth proposition to the fourth implication of looking at the constitution through lens of national unity is that of the executive should prioritize steady administration, not assertive policymaking. finally, when it comes to the third branch to the courts, i don't think an agenda of reform is exactly the way to think about what's needed. the courts obviously have a crucial part to play advancing unity, too, but it may not quite the part that we imagine. it's not rooted in their ability to resolve disputes in courts, to resolve disputes. that's what they but they're intended to resolve disputes over what the law is, not what should be. and so they're not the right

venue for mediating competing visions of public good in america. our great public disputes need to be through the work of the legislature above and the most valuable service that the courts provide to the cause of national unity is in their policing of the and boundaries of constitutional ism. the restricting of the power of majorities and of public officials to pursue various kinds of end runs around the structure of our system. the courts have actually been improving on this front. think and unlike the elected branches they're closer now to serving their constitutional purpose than they were a generation ago. they do need, i think, more of a focus on constitutional structure rather than the policing of personal rights. but transformation of the courts in this century has been an extraordinary thing to see. so when it comes to the courts, the final proposition that i would offer is a function of that transformation. it is that the lesson of conservative success in the courts is that we should be fighting for constitution, not

against it. conservatives and constitutionalists had every reason to give up on the judiciary in the second half of the 20th century. but rather than up on it, they set about renewing its commitment to its proper purpose through a project that began as intellectual, much of it done here at aei, and then evolved into institutional work at the federalist society and elsewhere, supported by political action that enabled a genuine transformation of the judiciary. it was a kind of labor, of love, love of the constitution love of the country. and that's exactly how we should think about the constitutional challenges that we face now. we are with regard to congress, in particular, roughly where the right was with regard to the courts in the mid 1970s, the idea that we could reform congress to do its job seems hopelessly naive right now but it is not more naive than notion that antonin scalia and robert bork and lauren silverman had when they were scholars 50 years ago, that we could have

originalist judges dominating the judiciary, strategic naivete is actually crucial to successful reform work. you have to be a little bit naive about what you love the most you're not a cold eyed realist about spouse or your friends, and you should be just a little naive about our country, too, and about its prospects. not so naive as to be optimistic don't do that, but just naive to be hopeful. and so to fight for our constitution and not against it. there are a lot of people now, including some on the right who are ready to give up on the constitution or dismiss it as inadequate to a society that is as divided as ours. but i think they are exactly wrong. the constitution was intended exactly to address the problem we have now the challenge of governing ourselves despite, deep divisions and in a way that might heal those divisions just a little might bring us a little closer together and help us understand ourselves better. as one society engaged common work despite a diversity, beliefs and desires and

interests that is not going away. helping the constitution do that requires understanding how it was to do that and transforming understanding into an agenda reform and for action. that's what i've tried to offer in this book. it's also what a lot of you do every day. and so thank you for that. and thank you for being here. all right. thank you for. that talk we are going to have conversation here and then we're going to open it up for questions from you, from our remote audience, which i believe is going to be submitting under the hashtag aei, american covenant. so get your questions ready. i want to start by talking about they and them. yeah. instead of we in us. and that is talking about sort of comparative

constitutionalism. there's there's so much for our constitution, this book that it raises the question for me, our constitution is just inferior. the or is ours just better for us? yeah, it's a great question i think that there's there's little bit of both the united states, you know, our system in a sense is so effective that it allows us to compare ourselves with, democracies that have much simpler problems. we do. so you find political scientists saying, you know, the belgian system is more representative, the norwegian system is more democratic. the fact is the united states is like belgium or norway. the united states is like brazil. and mexico and india. it is a mass vast insanely huge and diverse democracy. and yet it works about as well as the european systems. and that is because our system is so well suited to our situation. i do think it's distinctly well

to our situation. i'm not suggesting that the belgians should adopt our i don't know. they seem to be doing fine. but i do think that should not adopt their system because their system is not nearly as well adapted, dealing with the complexities of a mass vast democracy like this. the core difference is that the parliamentary systems really do empower narrow majorities. if you have a majority coalition, you get all the power until you lose coalition. so the mandate, the government is yours. the united states does not work that it does not empower narrow majorities. it tells those narrow majorities have to grow. if you want to do anything that endures that that is very frustrating to narrow majorities every recent president has found himself in some meeting thinking why the hell am i talking to these people? i just the election and the constitution and answers. well, so did they.

the system just works that way. and unless you have a very majority and i think the democrats learned in obama years that even having a filibuster proof majority does not actually exempt you from this challenge. you don't just get to do you want. majority power is the source of legitimacy. it is also the source of very great trouble and danger. and our system is especially to that second problem. and so i think that it is particularly well-suited our situation as a result of that. you know, i'd recommend it to, too. i think it's i think it takes account of human nature and of some of the challenges of political in ways that are probably objectively to the parliamentary systems. but not superior in every way it in some ways less representative. and i my advice friends abroad is a little bit like edmund

burke's advice to the french make the most of your tradition and us do the same for god sake. so you dealt a glancing blow at a people on the right who you suggest consider our constitution to be inadequate today. but i wonder if it isn't truer to say that. they think that is it is sort of lost beyond hope of recovery, that it's a great constitution. but we now have mean you yourself in your book document all the ways in which we have a of wilsonian spirit in the shell of a madisonian system. yeah. and and they don't think of themselves, i think as anti-constitutional much as post constitutional. so why are they wrong? why should they give up hope on the constitution as dead letter? well, it's a few things. i think of all any time conservatives find ourselves saying that we're post something we should we should just stop. we don't i don't think that that

the fundamental political questions are different from one time to another. i really don't. i think the basic durable questions. how do we create a world worthy of our children are always the questions we have to ask and the answers to those questions more or less look alike all the time. there are ways to improve. there are ways that we fall back to. but the core political questions not change fundamentally. secondly, i think that every american generation would have had the temptation to say, well, yes, but now in our times are really bad. these people really awful and they've really broken things. and if generation that lived in the 1860s didn't see that and the generation lived in the 1960s, didn't say that, i don't think we have a very good excuse as the generation living in the 2020s to say that that kind a view that this is broken, that we don't have to try anymore is a form of escapism. it's an for not trying anymore.

the work is hard at the work of preservation and conservation and in a in forward looking country like this of, preserving our capacity to renew ourselves and therefore to make progress is hard. and it would be very hard work. now do what? what i'm suggesting and what we do here at a but the fact that it's hard is not an excuse for not doing it and. there is no excuse for not doing it because. the alternative to sustaining the system is not that we get to win and we just don't have to deal with those other people anymore. if you look around the country, i don't think that's what really would happen. and i would say the same thing to people on the left, if you eliminate the protections for minority rights in our system, you will discover that progressive law professors and traditionalist catholics are not a majority. you may love them, but they are not a majority. and they will not control the future they will find themselves very grave trouble, as we all

would. so that doesn't mean they're wrong. i think some of them are very wrong. but it doesn't mean that it just means that all of us should understand ourselves as belonging. sometimes to minorities and sometimes to majorities. therefore, we should want a system that empowers majorities in a way that is also protective of minorities. i think we have such a system and think it's worth fighting for, even though it's very hard. the book would say is deeply but not insistently. so it operates on conservative about human nature, which are the same really, as those of the founders. it quotes the federalist papers more than most non-conservative books that i think you come across more references to burke than to rawls in it. but if you are the sort of conservative who who interested in policy victories in a smaller yes. and a smaller government in

particular, what's in this vision for you? well, i think that if understand the system in the way i've described it here and then that i it in the book, we end up with a system in which role for the national government is and more constrained and more focused. it's not this is not a libertarian book and it's not a book about how to spend less. i think that would be nice. but i don't think that at the moment the highest priority for conservatives ought to be thinking about the size of government in that. we are in a moment when the basic form of our government, the basic character of our politics on the table in a way that should worry us. and that means that we have to be making the argument for, the basics and remind people why their inheritance is not a burning pile of garbage, but extraordinary prize. the fact that we get to live this country that we did not create and that we get to make the most the kinds of freedoms

and possibilities and institutions we have is something we should begin by being grateful for. and i do think that part of what is required of us in doing this responsibly is thinking about the role of government in a responsible. but that's what i would do within a working system. that's what i would do in a congress is functioning. i think in a funny way the kinds of debates that we think of traditionally as policy debates debates about how to reform medicare or how to. or how to think about the budget. those debates are happening in the right way at this point. they're not happening the right way because our political culture is broken and we have to think about why that is. and maybe first, before we can even to a place where we're having a constructive about how to restrain the size of government or think about the role of government. so i think traditional policy debates matter enormously.

i know where i stand in those, but this is a book about infrastructure. it's a book about how to get to the place where we're even having that debate, a way that could turn out well. i suggest this is a book about infrastructure should not be a big part of your marketing. fair enough but you know better. the one of the suggestions that you make in the book is for an expansion of the house. yes. and i wanted you to briefly sketch your case for how that would improve things. but then also explain why you think an existing house member, an existing house majority, might actually interested in doing such a thing. this is a this is a counterintuitive idea in some respects. i think most of us, when we look at the house, we don't really think i wish there were more of these people. but it is first of all, i, i think of it as a form of constitutional maintenance. the house was to grow after every census so that it remains

connected to the growth of the population. it also did grow after every sentence, after every census, until the until the 1920 census. and it would make for it to continue to grow by formula that was used in the 19th century. i think that would allow our national legislature to work better. but i also think that it's a way into a set of other reforms of congress in a way you know, when you talk to members about change in the rules of the house and senate, this is especially true in the house. they all will. they're with you. while you're describing the problem is they all think there are big problems. none of them are happy with their lifestyle as members of congress. but it doesn't really occur to them that things could change. it's very hard for them to imagine that there could be changes in. the committee system or the or the budget process. i think kind of infusion of new members in the house would create a moment where a lot of other changes too. and if we're ready for that

moment, i think we are with other ideas how the congress could be improved to better do its constitutional work. creating that moment could be useful and so since it's it's a way of bringing congress into line with the intention the framers and a way of of helping it be better representative and a way of creating an opportunity for, those other kinds of reforms. i think it's a it's a plausible for and i look how does it appeal to the average member to say you're important, this should be diluted by adding 150 more members, which is what i would do, hundred and 50. and then growing much slowly after that, every ten years, i think the the argument to members is that the house is meant to be more representative. it is the average member of the house now represents more than 800,000 people at the at the time of the ratification of the constitution in the first house. every member about 30,000 people. we can't get that level, but we

can do a little better. and i think members do see the logic of that. and i would say in general, members are open to this idea. the leaders are not leaders of both parties are very. so a lot of people, too, with yeah. that more members would make the place better and i think that's a good sign to i mentioned that you have a lot of quotations in some ways the book is a kind of commentary on the federalist papers but it's not uncritical and it's it has struck that the two federalist papers that are most familiar to us. number ten and number 51 are ones that actually come in for the most criticism in your book. and it's one of them you might want to a little bit about that. that's really interesting. yeah mean you know those are our colleague adam calls those the big city federalists and the flyover country federalists get ignored and this book really to

think some about the flyover country federalists that have a lot to say to us about some of the questions that we're talking about here this is much a madisonian book. it is the spirit of james madison more than anybody else, his voice certainly is heard more than anyone else's voice in the book. and i think madison stands out in our political tradition for worrying about division. there are that worry social order, dynamism like hamilton, their that worry about something like social justice and equality like jefferson. those voices are there in our tradition. they are at their best, right and the left. madison worries about social cohesion, unity in a way that almost nobody does, lincoln does. and you can see. why? but madison does it without a civil war. it's what he worries about above all, when he thinks about politics in the era of the framing of the constitution.

and so the book learns a lot from him. but i think there is a way that at at certain times madison is dismissive of the need for civic virtue. he that the system can work as a kind of machine that resolves the problem of bad citizenship by the operation of the institutions. madison isn't always like that and you can almost see him kind of correcting himself when goes too far in these directions. but i think that both throws ten as 51 examples of is going too far in these directions. he's dismissive of republicanism and, dismissive of a certain and he basically says the system is a substitute for the absence of virtue. now the best counterarguments to this in the federalist are also from madison and the book emphasizes those because i think those counterarguments are. correct? it is absolutely essential that the citizens in our society have

a certain idea of their responsibilities and that there be a kind of of response ability of virtue the word responsibility actually is very madisonian word. it used to be the case that the oxford english dictionary said that that madison's notes in the constitution was the first place responsibility was ever used in english. and then they found an earlier example. i'm very upset with them for and i want an earlier that was a really useful thing to be able to say apparently it wasn't true. but the word not in general use and it was really both madison and hamilton use it in the and i think it describes the role of the american citizen as someone who takes of the society they live in. it's a very republican concept and i think it is absolutely essential for citizenship in our kind of republic. so, you know, the madison, who says that is preferable to the madison it doesn't the.

i want to maybe push back a little bit on your thoughts about the courts policing the structure of our government and i wonder if there's there's a lack of some of the institutional realism that praise when it comes to the founders that do we really think that the courts can play this intensive role in keeping congress and the presidency in their place which historically. you know, they didn't really do. it wasn't, you know, as you know, it wasn't it wasn't the court that kept the congress from delegating its powers. it was a certain kind of institution for self respect. yes. i mean, congress didn't want to. but part of the problem we have is this peculiar fact that the problem we're trying to solve really when it comes to congress is that the institution doesn't want the power that it has, which is not a problem that the framers really thought about. it is is not it did not occur to them that congress just wouldn't want to have the power to set

the direction of our of our national politics, of our government. i think the role of the courts is very distinct. the courts are reactive. i put this way and i, i put it this way in the book. congress frames legal frameworks for the future. it is a forward looking institution. the president operates the present and lives in the present, always. and congress back. and reviews the courts. look back. i'm sorry. the courts back and review actions the past. and so the role of the courts is constrained by that to begin with. they have to respond. complaints. they don't act of their own accord. generally and they can only review past actions. but they do have an essential role in reviewing past actions, in making sure that the structure of the system, the integrity of the system is maintained. some of the role they have is in

restraining public rather than restraining majorities from doing things you're not supposed to do there all kinds of things the constitution takes of the reach of majorities. but some of the roles in restraining the other branches and i do think that the created by the willful fall under action of the congress does two things at the same time. it invites overreaction by the executive which the courts need to restrain and in itself creates a problem that the courts need to address now addressing under actions very hard and we're finding this now in the current term. and when the court looks at at chevron and about how to handle a kind of delegation of authority to regulatory agencies it needs to find a way to compel congress to do its own job and ultimately to write laws are clearer and more distinct and precise than congress tends to

do. this it's not simply possible for the court to tell congress to do that. it does not have mechanism for solving the problem that way. but i do think that by shifting the balance of delegation some by putting more of the power to to interpret the law in its own hands where it belongs that is what judges do it can create some pressure on congress, do its job. i don't think it's a perfect solution to this. the courts are not going to solve problem. congress has to want the power to legislate and that's going to require in the incentives that members congress face more than action by the courts, which brings us to the topic of political parties. a very common critique of our founding design is the founders didn't want to have parties and parties up almost immediately on the creation of the constitution. but you argue in the book that

the development of the modern party system, particularly martin van buren, ended actually helping the constitutional design. absolutely. my great hero, martin van buren, i think i do love. martin van buren. and don't get me started on him. but you did get me started a little bit so i'll tell you a little bit about him. martin van buren is a politicians politician. he ran for everything and he won everything. never lost an election. he was a mayor he was a county commissioner. he was a legislator. he was the state attorney general of new york. he was the governor of new york, was a member of the house and the senate. he vice president and president had just term, though. fair enough. he knew a lot about electoral politics and the extraordinary thing about van buren is that he saw the party system collapsing in front him. there was a kind of pseudo party system in in the wake of of the

washington presidency. so at the beginning in framing the constitution and there was a sense really that parties not be necessary. the constitution was written in a very peculiar time, a particular time in england where the the structure of the party system was changing from a party of the king and a party of parliament, basically parties of left and right and a peculiar time the united states when there was a kind of agreement about the american revolution, that crossed what we would think of as the left and right and it seemed like durable parties might actually be avoidable and the constitutional system got going and immediately it became obvious parties were necessary that there needed to be some way to organize electoral before people got elected. the parties began through the work basically of and madison and the they came to be organize

into two parties for a very distinctly reason. the electoral which is a very strange thing. requires an absolute majority of electors for someone to be elected president. if no one gets a majority, then congress, the house decides who will be president. that means that if there are more than candidates, that election is going to go to the house almost time and this happened in 1800. it happened again in 1824 in a particularly bad way where party system was totally vitiated. 1824 election there were four major candidate. they were all democrats and the difference between them were just personality differences. that became a kind of policy differences. and so martin van buren is a senator. this point, the election to the house. among the many odd things about election were that the two leading candidates had the same running mate and that person was

elected president. when no one was elected president. so the senators had nothing to do. they were sitting in the gallery of the house, watching the house choose president. and martin van buren describes. this in his memoirs was was sitting there thinking this should not be in congress, this should be happening inside of a political party. these are just deciding who should be the leader of our party and he proceeds to offer a set of ideas how the parties can become mechanism for selecting candidates for office, party convention wins local, party offices, all kinds of for nomination and selection. and that could help the american work better as a two party system to broad permeable, messy incoherent party coalitions that on paper make no sense whatsoever and that allow the system to be a system where people and negotiate and build coalitions, big, broad parties,

train people to build coalitions. and then those people are ready to build coalitions in congress. it's a system that is a kind of missing piece of the puzzle, the constitution and that has worked very well for us for most of american history and in a lot of ways was the brainchild of of of martin van buren the challenge we face today has a lot to do with the fact the system was such good fit for the constitution that the progressives who got tired of the constitution also got tired of the party system. and for the same reason, because it's just about coalition building. it's not about clear, decisive policy action and wilson and others over the course from the end of the 19th century through the 20th century, came to the view that the party system needed to be much more responsive and accountable to policy agendas. and so in a our party should be much more ideological and through various mechanisms have made our party system more

ideological but also much more polarized and, much less of a perfect fit for the constitutional system. our parties as institutions, candidate selection are now very, very partizanship is strong. when parties are weak. and i think a lesson, a kind of ironic lesson we have learned over and over for the last 50 years, and it's time to rethink the way our parties choose candidates think it would be good to rethink in the in a martin van buren direction. i don't think we can really do that. conventions and backroom and ways of choosing that don't involve voters. no politicians are going to get up before primary voters and say you know you people are the problem. you need to let us choose the candidate for this office because you're choosing witches and stuff. i think we can do better than that ad campaign trying to refute that. yeah well, didn't persuade me. but i do. we need to find ways of moving forward so that the we are

asking when a party its candidate is not what do the craziest people at the fringes of our party think we should be saying on election day, but rather do we win the biggest possible majority on election day? that's the party's job. i think there are ways of doing that, but it requires the reforms of the primary system, which are not to be easy. i think not being easy seems to be a recurring theme. yeah, i need lifetime employment in your in your answers we just got a few minutes before i'm going to open it up for questions i do to ask you though in a book that is so devoted to the possibilities of the constitution, there any parts of the constitutional i want leave aside the parts that have been you know. yes. by reconstructions. right. but any parts of the constitution that you think are ill or or you know, if we were starting over, we would get rid of. yeah, look, if we were starting over, i think there are things we probably do somewhat differently. i think we would probably want

to think a little differently, for example, about presidential selection. i can imagine ways that the balance of federalism could better if we were starting over. it's important to remember that we are not starting over. we have. in fact, here the the longest enduring and most successful democratic republic in the world. there's a there's tendency, i think, for us as americans to of our country, as a young country. but we are not a young country. we are the oldest of the existing democracies. we have had the same essentially the same institutions of government for 230 years. that's absolutely amazing. and that's what stands about us. you know, americans sort of think and you see this in some of the catastrophizing that we were talking about before. we always have a sense that this thing is just about to fall apart, that it's an experiment. it's not really working. you know, you listen to the founding generation. they certainly thought so. abraham lincoln, the 1830s, he had good reason for thinking and

he did think so. but every generation, americans, you know, our our national is a song about barely the night there is no other country like this. and we do really tend to think that that we are on the verge of collapse, but we are not on the verge of collapse. we have lot to work with here. and i think the secret to doing that well is really to begin from what we have and see it can be helped to work. so i don't really think in terms starting over and i don't pretend that i could do better than a system that's evolved for 230 years in a complicated at choosing the president or at or framing two houses of congress. i think if we were starting over we would do it differently. i'm not sure we would do it better. and i'm sure we're not starting over. so i think we should think about reforms and, see where they really are. problems we're not always good at seeing the problems really are, you know, in some ways this

book is is an exercise in chesterton fencing that you know g.k. chesterton said a few he had a couple of ways of saying this. the one i like best is an analogy for this. you said if you inherit a piece of property and there's a fence on the property and you think it's useless, you want to take it down, make sure you understand why it was put up. you might still want to take it down, but if you don't understand it was put up. you're probably making a mistake because somebody did the work putting this there and it's really to see why that is. and it was a solution to i think it's very important us to approach our institutions of in this way we may need to change them, but it's really crucial we understand why they are the way they before we do that. and that's what the book tries to do. all right. i'm going to open it up to you. lots if anybody has question, please raise your hand. i'll call on you and then a microphone will come your way. and there's a microphone by you so you can go first.

i thank you so much for you've all this has been fantastic. so the most dysfunctional or one most important aspects of our system is that you touched on the book is the relationship of state and federal powers and it seems as if a an attempt to restore our constitutional will require an aggressive federal ism such as we're seeing some red state governors attempting. that's going to get messy and contentious. how basically, scott know did a review of your book they kind of pushed this point saying, you know you're saying we need to be incrementalist. we need to be coalition building. but what does that look like in a situation the federal government doesn't recognize the rights of the state governors to function as they were meant to constitutionally? yeah. first of all, i do think that scott's review is great it's

worth reading. i certainly that federal is very often the scene the most significant constitutional contentions in our system and it always has federalism was what a lot of the most intense debates at the constitutional convention were about. it was a kind of innovation know there was they faced the question of whether to have a strong national with the states essentially as administrator of units or whether to have strong states in the national government essentially as a kind of confederation like united nations. and they decided do neither of those things. and instead had to have strong states and a strong national government each governing the people directly. but in different domains. they that set things up for a lot of fighting and a lot the most significant disputes in our history have ultimately worked themselves out as disputes between the states and the national government.

i think that part of what it would take for us recover something of the balance of the american now is to have some more arguments and fights about the balance of power between the states and the national government. the federal government is involved in a lot things that it very hard to justify involvement in and in many ways the states have invited that involvement because the federal government makes convenient for the states to benefit from services and money, while also claiming all kinds of authorities. every governor will tell you, well, we balance our budget and we have a balanced budget. and the only reason that's true is the federal government doesn't balance its budget they could never do that if they didn't have the borrowing power of the national government behind them, especially times of crisis. so i think the the core concept that has to the future of

federalism is, is that federalism is not layering. federalism involves channels of power, one federal, one state. we can argue about what belongs in each one. it may that today we should think about whether health care financing should be a federal responsibility. and we nationalized. that's a debate to have. what we can't do is intermix them in the way that we do so that the federal government and the state government are involved in the same work as happens in welfare, as happens in care, as happens in education. and neither of them is really accountable for neither of them has any incentive to constrain itself because whenever there's pressure on that front. they can just push it off to the other one. i think we have to find ways, pull them apart again. you know, ronald reagan in 1983 proposed the kind of deal to the states, i think sort of half seriously that the that the

federal government would entirely fund medicaid and in return the federal government would entirely stop funding education. and at the time, the math kind of worked out in such a way that it would have bounced out, that certainly wouldn't be true today. i think that's that's the logic of how we actually had to think about reforming federalism. we have to find ways to separate these authorities and as i recall, the governors were the governors was in defeat adamantly this. there was one governor lamar alexander said, i'll take that deal. and it didn't happen. you cite in your book, michael rivas upside down constitution, which is a really thorough and excellent explicate of those ideas, a wonderful book, other questions. three. you've all you said earlier that we are in a with regard to

congress that's similar to the one conservatives were in with regard to the court in the seventies. and to me and this may be sort, you know, present thinking and let me know if you think that but to me it makes sense that the conservative legal movement was able to have the success it's had. you know, you establish federalism society chapters at law schools where. there are people who are becoming lawyers and going to enter that field and that doesn't seem to exist for or, you know, whoever it would be that would be reforming congress. i'm wondering what you think the powerful you know i guess i think that actually what they succeeded in doing was much crazier and more impressive than what i'm suggesting, the idea that you could transform the federal judiciary in the way that we have seen the last 50 years was not obvious. and i think anybody who would have said that we will get to a place where there is a supreme court majority that is

originalist in the sense in which originalism began to emerge here in the seventies would have rightly been thought nuts. there was really no reason. think you could do that? what found was both a very compelling of thinking about the role of the judge and as you say, a very practical way to inject that way of into the profession of the law. now, there's no such profession for change in congress, but there is an advantage when it comes to changing that they didn't have, which is all it really takes to change congress is for most of congress to want to change. right. so that's not that many people. we we know them. we go to them with wallach's book and we give them the book and say this is what you should do. now, tell me what you think about that. why don't you do that? it's still going to take time. and i think that the the kind of socialization of a set of ideas what congress is for is going to be the work of coming years on

that front. but i do think it is achievable and i actually think that socializing that kind of idea, you know i wouldn't overestimate what you could do on that in two years, but i would not underestimate what you can do in ten years because congress fast for and bad, there's almost no one there now who was there? 2000 and so all the people who are there now not going to be there in 20 years. and with the work we have to do, if know what we're trying to persuade them of is persuasive work for a couple of hundred people. i think we should try. i think the takeaway there is congressmen change fast but read slow. yes. and in the back of their. yes. i we might have a clog their whole. sure.

yes the choice of convenience. yes, exactly really appreciate all your work and the talk today. very inspiring for us. you know working here in washington dc. i wanted to quickly push back on one point. you made a couple of times during the talk which is that if past generations did not reform the system fundamentally, we we have no right to question it here in our modern age and that just brings back to the original reason why this constitution was necessary three was to manage factions in a new age of enlightenment and an informed really really a new science of politics based on social and cultural factors, which the founders were acutely aware of. and i see in our generation, the formation of faction and science, and, you know, modern

ism being completely different than the late 18th century. i mean you look at social media, you look the internet, you look at how factions i mean, you can have millions of people and we have march on dc in a matter of days. i mean took the civil rights movement months and months to get to that point. but we see, the women's march, get to that point in just a of weeks. so yeah, the the the formation of faction and our modernism seems very to me. so my question is, do not deserve a new signs of politic now to deal with that versus simply reiterating maybe incremental reforms of a hundred and 50 year old system. yeah, great question. first of all, i wouldn't say we don't have the right to do this. i think we do have the right to do this. i think we should think about what we want and need. and i think that we would find that the constitution we is a tremendous resource in answering that question. this is not an argument from

authority and i don't think that we should do things madison did because he was james madison. i think we should ask ourselves if we are persuaded by what he did and if we are, then we should work to preserve it. and i am and i think we are to be. and part of the reason for that is that in some important respects i think their science was less new than they said. i, i madison's political science was very in a kind of classical political science and a lot of things we attribute madison you know the notion that you resolve the problem of factions by increasing their number you if you read book four of aristotle's politics you would you would see that there that's not that was not an invention of the faculty in the 1840s. they they they it as such and and you know the phrase science of politics is in the federalist hamilton does claim that that's what they're doing and he lists a series of ideas that are not

new and i think it's important for us to see that, to but by all means, we have to think about what we need now, and we have to think realistically about what we need and what we have and what we could achieve about it. where the intersection is between things that we could do and the things that we should do, and i do think that in a lot of ways that would point us in the direction of improving on the constitution. we have starting over. i think the example of the of political in the 1960s, in the 2020s is a good example the the march on washington that that's created by 18 hours of social media has effect whatsoever. the women's march came and went and nothing happened. the civil rights movement understood what political actually was and march is only the little tip of the surface. what happens in a real political movement, much of which organizing over time to allow

citizens to act in durable ways, to make change in their society. and we have a lot to learn from them and a lot of what we now is very ephemeral, very careless. it's very impressed with social media. i tend to be a little less impressed with social media because i think that there's a way that it a us from what political action that actually advances an idea of justice would look like that kind of requires a durable commitment and a sense of how people change their mind and how society moves and works. and so i think a movement for justice has to take its from the nature of politics. that doesn't mean we do everything james madison did there are many things james madison did that i would not do and that we should never do and. there are some things james madison did that outright evil. he did own slaves. that's not something we should ignore. but we should be able to learn from our tradition by asking ourselves what we need what it offers us, where there is a gap, where there is alignment, and i

do think that would lead us to an approach to politics that takes its bearings. the constitution, yes, the green. i guess you're both a group. sorry. yes. thank you very much. i was able to glance through the first few pages of your book and i just want to comment to the writing was so had such elegant clarity that i look forward reading it i really appreciate that i, i worry that the rest is not like the introduction but thank you. i'm confident years from having listened to this afternoon i wanted to ask quickly i'm i interested in why your title says american covenant rather than american constitution. thank you. thank you very much. i titles are hard is my first answer. um this not my first title. um i, i to defer on titles to

who are better at this than i am. um, there are a number of people in this room who know that i had in mind several much worse titles than this. this book. but ultimately i think this title does make sense for the argument i which is the constitution you know, it's not a covenant in any religious obviously but the distinction between a covenant and a contract is that a covenant is under steward as describing a relationship rather simply as this kind sets of countervailing obligations in terms the violation of which means things broken i think the american constitution really describes the shape of the american polity by now um and describes a way in which we hang together that is more than a set of institutions, that is more than law and that

in that sense is a little covenantal. um, but you know, the idea of thinking of constitution as i owe to an essay of irving kristol's called the spirit of 87 that he wrote for the 200th anniversary of the constitution a really wonderful and i'm grateful to have run across it after going through seven or eight titles that i didn't like. thank you. we've got time for some more questions in the in the very i can barely see you because of the lights lights. it strikes me that. oh, i know voice constitutional it's not jumping over to is that during major moments we have these flurries amendments beginning with bill of rights reconstruction the progressive era. we kind of stop and i'm wondering how in the whether it you address the amendment in the book or how you think about the

the amendment process today i recall a decade or so ago levin your namesake, proposed a series of, here's the bad elephant. he's a series of liberty amendments. yes. when the rise of the tea party that didn't go anywhere. now we're in this moment where instead of thinking about how we might amend the constitution to make it work, we're about living either post constitution or. yeah, some type of living constitution. how do you think about the amendment process and what would the lavinia amendments? yes, well, i think that the amendment is appropriately it should be hard to amend the constitution. that's what makes a constitution. i think you see in some of the state constitutions that making it too kind of makes a mockery the constitution. um you know the the maryland constitution runs to, you know 300 pages. it's got all kinds of stuff that

has nothing to do with constitutional. the american constitution. 7500 words with all the amendments, it's readable, accessible. it makes sense. it's all about the same subject. it's about the character of regime and. i do think that it should be difficult enough to amend the constitution that we only do so when there is a kind of regime moment that and part of what that means is that in a in a divided time, in a 5050 america, it is very very hard to amend the constitution in a way. you know, the 27th amendment was adopted in 1990s, in 1982. but but really, it was sort of a it was there for the for the 200th anniversary of the constitution. it was actually part of the original bill of rights that didn't get ratified. and it just says congress can't raise its own salary, have to wait for the next election. it was almost symbolic as a wonderful story. it was the student who came up

this idea in an essay and it caught on and and he got a better grade after it passed. yes. he actually that's right. he originally got a pretty bad grade. it wasn't realistic. other than that. less the less sort of of amendments was in the 1970s and there wasn't much of a surge. i mean, you know, the the the post-civil war amendments, the progressive era amendments did come in bunches. and i think they were connected to a kind moment of reform that had gained steam for some time and that had broad public support. it, um, i guess i would say this to matt, i don't think that there is a, there is a problem we confront in this moment with our system, the solution to which would be a constitutional,

um, and i'm conservative. i like the constitution, i'm not inclined to think that what we need is to change it. but i think that of the movements we've seen and, some of them have been on the right for a kind of constitutional convention, for opening things up, for making it much easier to amend. um, i think of those would very likely result in very very bad ideas being enacted. the constitution and that the, the, the logic, of wariness of such change informs the nature of the amendment process is right. um, i certainly be persuaded of the need for one kind of change or another. i imagine ways in which you could advance all of ideas that i like and just put them in the constitution. but don't really think that's how our politics should. these should be regime ideas. they should be about the structure of the system the infrastructure of the system, about policy and. so at the moment, i'm not really eager to see a constitutional

amendment. or other. oh, yes. in the in the back there, because i did pick in the past you over. there we go. thank you so much. this has been great. dr. levine, one thing you've mentioned throughout this talk is kind of the inertia that exists in congress specific early. and so i think i imagine i've not read your book, but i imagine has a package of reforms in it that you would like to see enacted. but what do you think would be marginal reform? the maybe the most doable reform that have the most purchase in terms of kind of setting us back at a rate course like the most imaginable, but actionable reform? yeah, i talked a little bit about expansion of the house, which i think in some ways would the path to other reforms. but i that if we if we look for the most plausibly doable kind of reform it would have a real effect. i think the key for changing

some very bad incentives in the house if we put aside electoral changes, you can't really do just in congress is to empower the committees. i think for congress to take its lead from the state legislatures that let committees floor time would make a dramatic difference in the operate and especially of the house in some respects. also senate, a third of the state legislatures do. this the way it's done, for example, in virginia is that a committee that passes a bill out of committee with at least one vote from the minority party, gets floor. time for that bill. that is very much not. congress works and at the moment most the work that's done in committees in congress is just a waste of time because. eventually, if there is a move to pass legislation on the issue, it's just to get written by a leadership team. it might include the committee chair and it might include some committee staff, but it's not going to be what the members negotiate at it. i think if you let members with

real bullets, if you say this negotiation is actually going to matter because there will a vote on the floor if we get this done, they would care more their committee work. i mean, problem. the problem right now is very simple these are ambitious people want to succeed and working hard and committee contribute nothing to their success getting on cable news contributes much more to their success. and so that's what they do. they're not crazy that that's what you would do if were an ambitious person trying to succeed. so that has to change. incentives need to change. and i think the committee system is the place to start dead here. thank you. amazing book and congrats you ball question because i think this is a know defending the constitution obviously is not popular as maybe it was 1020 years ago.

there's some, i think, real changes on the part of, you know, largely the progressive left that we haven't seen, at least in my lifetime, which is, i think, a desire to literally, you know blow up the system. it started with, know, harry reid watering down the filibuster ten years ago. now it's expanding the court. now it's adding more states. obviously, some of those things, you know, could backfire on the left. you know, if there was, you know, donald trump, you know, a new president, donald trump could add more supreme court justices. he could it would happily do so. but this is you know this desire to blow up the system seems very myopic. i'm curious what your thoughts on that. you know the idea that there are now people in power close to power that are happy to change the system kind of regardless of what the consequences are, even if they ultimately backfire on them. yeah i mean, i think they know what the consequences would be. i just think probably wrong

about that. and i wouldn't say it's all that new. i mean, the of packing the court is not new. that's that one much further the last time it was tried in the 1930s and you know by by a democratic party with very similar views about what was wrong with the constitution. so we've seen these of things before the the impatience with the filibuster is certainly not new. i what it runs into is that the marginal ideologically marginal senators of the majority party actually always love the filibuster even if they're democrats and it survives. the the general attitude that the constitution doesn't us. well that we put up with it because we have no choice but if we had a choice we would it up is not a new idea. it is at least old as woodrow wilson. and of course, in some ways it's older than that. and so i it's something that the friends of the constitution have had to contend with for a long time.

i it's fortunate that major change requires much broader majorities than we're likely see now. i mean, in a funny way, you know, both now are terrified of each other. they think if the other party wins, it's end of the republic. but in fact if the other party wins, it's going to barely win. we've had a 5050 politics for 30 years. the stakes are not as high as they say because the wrong person gets elected, they're going to spend their time banging their head against the wall because they only have a three seat majority in the house. and so i think the parties should spend their time about how to broaden their majorities if they want to change things, rather than about how to blow things, you know, being seen talk about blowing things up is why you such small majorities or minorities so it it's politically nutty. i certainly think there real risks to it. it has to be answered people have to see why the restraints on democratic in the system are

important. it's true the american left has turned against all of those restraints now the courts the bill of rights, one by one, the freedom speech and then of religion and then of speech and the rest are on the way. the senate, the electoral college. that's why the argument for has to be made and has to be made in terms that are constitutional. that's not political, not political. but i don't think it's necessarily new problem. it's a serious problem. but it's one that generations have had to deal with. all right. thank you. these have been excellent questions, but our time has come an end. so please join me in. thank you all for his book for a stock

such masterworks of judicial literature as well as judicial thought but the whole book is just fantastic. the great dissent. >> booktv covered the great dissent in 2013 and you can watch it on our video archive along with all our previous book events at booktv.org. your. >> you have been watching booktv, television for serious readers. every sunday on c-span2 hear from nonfiction authors discussing their books and watch your favorite authors online anytime at booktv that port. you can find us on facebook, youtube and x at booktv. >> hello, everyone. i am stephen kotkin, i'm a senior fellow at the hoover institution on the stanford campus, and i'm also the director of the hoover history lab which is a sponsor of today's book talk, sergey