Peaceful Political Revolution in America

I want to begin the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast with a discussion about Thomas Paine. His ideas, more than any other American, shaped the destiny of not only 1 revolution, but 3. You might say Thomas Paine is the father of peaceful political revolution. It's difficult to overstate how important Paine's message was to our nation, and to Americans, today. His legacy may be a bit obscure to most American...

Thanks to Bernie Sanders, "political revolution" has become part of today's vernacular. It's been used widely to describe the need for change on the system level and on the policy level. It's a powerful slogan and a very loaded term. Revolutions tend to be messy. Glorious one day, bloody the next. Political revolutions often end with someone's head on a pike or a neck under a guillotine. 

Fortunately, t...

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If Bernie's regular castigation of the elites felt justified to you, you'll find this episode especially interesting. Today, I'm going to be talking about the people who gave us our constitution, the Framers. Who were they? What were their intentions? What kind of political system did they create?  Does it explain the vast influence of the elit...

Welcome back to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America Podcast

I thought I'd jump ahead a little and discuss some of the basic changes we could make to our constitution which would actually make it a more democratic system of government.  In this episode, I have the genuine pleasure to interview one of the leading experts on democratic forms of government. His seminal book, Patterns of Democracy is probably the best ...

Welcome back to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America Podcast.

Thomas Paine believed that Americans must control their constitutions of government, that they should revise and update it every generation. But the Framers, subverting Paine's vision of a democratically controlled government, intentionally left out of their Constitution any process through which the people could do just that. As Jerry Fresia points out in ep...

Welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America Podcast.

In the last episode, we talked about our frozen Republic, and how to our detriment, it has not been improved upon in over 230 years. It was designed to be an unbreakable contract between Americans, protecting sectoral rights and the individual accumulation of wealth and property. The slavocracy wanted protection from the intrusion of the north. They did not want t...

Welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America Podcast.

In the last episode, we talked about our frozen republuc, and how to our detriment, it has not been improved upon in over 230 years. It was designed to be an unbreakable contract between Americans, protecting sectoral rights and the individual accumulation of wealth and property. The slavocracy wanted protection from the intrusion of the north. They did not want t...

01/03/22

Welcome back to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America Podcast.

It looks like we could make some very real improvements to our political system. It is becoming more and more obvious that after 233 years, our Constitution could be significantly upgraded.  If we want to have an effective and democratic form of government, we should probably be thinking about how to democratize our Constitution. Confronting this real...

Welcome back to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America Podcast.

It looks like we could make some very real improvements to our political system. It is becoming more and more obvious that after 233 years, our Constitution could be significantly upgraded.  If we want to have an effective and democratic form of government we should probably be thinking about how to democratize our Constitution.  Confronting this reality will...

Welcome back to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast.

It has been pointed out on this podcast by more than a few people, that our Constitution is as much an economic or class document, as it was a political one. For starters, our colonial era Constitution was designed to protect the interests of the slavocracy, to favor the individual accumulation of wealth and property over the collective well-being of society....

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Democracy is under attack. The rise of Trumpism has created a lot of anxiety amongst those who believe in democracy, and for good reason. We have all witnessed the recent attack on our capitol, on our electoral system, on our right to vote, on vaccine mandates, and on immigration.  There has been a sharp rise in white nationalist sentiment in America, and it's not...

Welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast.

Democracy is under attack. The rise of Trumpism has created a lot of anxiety amongst those who believe in democracy, and for good reason. We have all witnessed the recent attack on our capital, on our electoral system, on our right to vote, on vaccine mandates, and on immigration.  There has been a sharp rise in white nationalist sentiment in America, and it's not...

(See transcript for the entire introduction)

Welcome back to the Peaceful Political Revolution in American Podcast.

Iceland has a really interesting history. You may know a bit about its scenic wonders if you ever watched Game of Thrones, but its political history is no less amazing. Iceland used to be part of Denmark, but in 1849, things began to change.

In the 19th century, the Icelandic independence movement from Denmark ...

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When you look around the world at different constitutions, and how political systems are formed, you quickly realize that they are all quite different, even amongst the democratic nations. Every democratic country does democracy a little differently, and the results vary just as much. 

The conditions which lead to a new constitution can be as unpredictable as the e...

Any serious discussion about a peaceful political revolution in America would be incomplete if it did not include a conversation with today's guest. Sandford Levinson holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law.  

Previously a member of the Department of Politics at Princeton University, he is currently Professor of Government at the University of Texas in Austin. Levinson is the author of...

William Howell is the Sydney Stein Professor in American Politics at the University of Chicago, where he holds appointments in the Harris School, Department of Political Science, and College. Currently, he is the chair of the Department of Political Science, director of the Center for Effective Government, and co-host of Not Another Politics Podcast.  William has written widely on separation-of-powers issues and American political ...

Welcome back to the Peaceful Political Revolution in American Podcast.

So, how do Americans "shore up" their institutions of government? How do we strengthen our democracy and protect it from the anti-democratic forces that are currently on the rise? The recent book by George Van Cleve, "Making a New American Constitution" argues that today the 1787 Constitution is protecting America’s increasingly wealthy oligar...

Welcome back to the second season of the Peaceful Political Revolution in America Podcast, a series of conversations with America's top scholars, writers, journalists, and activists, on the topic of our Constitution. Thank you for tuning in to this podcast, and for your time, support, and continued interest in a subject that I personally find to be the most crucial topic of our time. Season one was an amazing journey for me, a...

Welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast.

Bernie loves to point his finger at the elites, but who are they and where do they come from? It seems as if Bernie believes they possess a lot more influence than the rest of us.  But, what does our preamble mean if not that we the ordinary people in America are the ultimate source of power and law in America? So then, who were the elites? How did they differ from the...