Has it ever been this bad before?
In "We the People," historian Jill Lepore explains the constitutional crisis before us
The October Ink Book Club selection is We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution—an immediate NYT bestseller—by The New Yorker staff writer and Harvard professor Jill Lepore, who will be our guest on Friday, October 17, at 12:30 p.m. and then again on Wednesday, October 22, also at 12:30 p.m. Eastern. We will have many, many pressing questions for her, and we hope you’ll bring yours to the table, too!
Lepore has spent the last few weeks traveling across the country, speaking to audiences and the media on her book tour. People she’s meeting on the road are feeling “defeated, confused—there’s a great sinking feeling,” she told Katie Couric. This distinguished historian, who writes so eloquently and passionately about our country, asked to characterize the state the U.S. is in right now, replied, “It’s a mess!”
We face what Lepore describes as “a rolling constitutional crisis” playing out in multiple realms: Executive overreach, enabled by a Supreme Court with a Republican majority that seems to be in thrall of the executive branch; a vice president who argues on social media that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power”; Congress’s abdication of its power; the implementation of the Project 2025 agenda, weakening constitutional checks and balances and undermining already established rights. And then there’s the outright assault on free speech—on campuses, in workplaces, and of course, on the stages of late-night comedy shows.
People have questions:
1) Has it ever been this bad before? Answer: yes—see slavery, segregation, Civil War, Japanese internment, the political violence and police brutality of the 60s and 70s.
2) Who can we blame? Answer: It’s complicated.
3) Can you save us? Answer: No.
Lepore doesn’t have easy answers, but this is a time to broaden our understanding of the past, to get our bearings by familiarizing ourselves with past conflicts, crises, and a foundational knowledge of how our governance is meant to work.
David H. Gans, a director of the Constitutional Accountability Center, recently wrote that: “We’re in a period of conflict and struggle over our constitutional system, and this is a question not only for lawyers and the courts, but for everyone.” His challenge to us is that “All people have an important say in this fight over the meaning, the enforcement, whether our constitutional promises will stand firm.” If you want to join one such fight, visit the just-relaunched Committee for the First Amendment.
These words from James Madison resonate ever more loudly today:
“The people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their government, whenever it be found adverse to the purposes of its institution.”
As we prepare for our first Substack Live conversation with Professor Lepore in a couple of weeks, we’ve been thinking about how much we know — and don’t know — about the country’s founding document. How much do you know about the current fights going on around the Constitution? And have today’s conflicts arisen out of those that went on at the time of the document’s signing?
For Book Club members, we’ve put together a pop quiz to test your knowledge of the Constitution. Read on below for more.
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