Below is my column on Fox.com from a recent trip to Grand Lake, Colorado, a small town where families gather to celebrate our shared faith in the United States Constitution. For this aging academic, the visit was rejuvenating. It was a sharp contrast to the divisions and anger I had left behind on the East Coast.
Here is the column:
“I am very angry.” Those words from Harvard Law Professor Michael Klarman were something of an understatement in our debate at Colgate University last week over whether our country is in a “constitutional crisis.” Taking the affirmative position, Klarman lashed out at the current “authoritarianism rooted in old-fashioned white supremacy.” Analogizing the current situation to that of Nazi Germany, he denounced Trump and his supporters as “fascists” while calling ICE agents “thugs” operating “concentration camps” where immigrants are “essentially tortured.”
When I noted that Klarman was demonstrating the license of what I have called our “age of rage,” he readily agreed that “I am enraged.” He said he wanted to “show rage” because the constitutional system “is not working” and I do say this to alarm you . . . to shake people out of their insomnia.”
Like many law professors today, Klarman questioned the viability of our constitutional system. However, what he was describing was not a constitutional crisis but a crisis of faith.
A New York Times column last year denounced “Constitution worship” and added that “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us; a growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.”
There is a growing chorus of faculty calling for us to scrap our constitutional system.
Brown University’s Corey Brettschneider called the Constitution a “dangerous document” that is driving this “threat to democracy.”
George Washington law professor Mary Anne Franks condemned the “cult of the Constitution” that has been defended to advance “white male supremacy.”
In a column titled “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale insisted that we need to “reclaim America from Constitutionalism.”
Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, author of the book “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States,” argued that the Constitution is now a threat to American democracy.
It is a drumbeat heard on cable news where the Constitution is called “trash” and a vehicle for oppression.
In academia, we are seeing the expansion of this counter-constitutional movement. The recent elections and court cases have gone against the demands of many in the establishment. The conclusion is that the system itself is broken and must be tossed aside.
For many law students, this is the academic echo chamber in which they learn the law. To support the Constitution or deny a “crisis” is to invite ridicule and retribution. It is viewed as simply naïve to suggest that the most successful constitutional system in history is anything but a failed experiment.
In my forthcoming book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I discuss this crisis of faith and dangers presented to the American democracy in the 21st Century.
Despite engaging in such debates for years, it can take its toll. It can often seem like fewer and fewer people understand the great gift that the Framers gave us in this unique document. While Klarman reminded the students in the audience that the Constitution is merely “words on paper” if it is not working correctly, it is more than that. It is a covenant of a people with each other; a leap of faith in a system that survived wars, economic crises, and social unrest for over two centuries.
I did not come straight home to Washington after the Colgate debate. I had one more stop. I was asked to give the Constitution Day Address for the small town of Grand Lake, Colorado. Nestled in the Rocky Mountains, this town holds an annual celebration and I was intrigued by the invitation. It said that they may be a small town, but they believed in something truly big. They believed in the United States Constitution.
I arrived near midnight and, frankly, I was questioning my decision to make the long trip after two weeks on the road. The next morning, I was pretty worn out when I was taken to the parade before the speech. What I found was what I needed the most. The entire town, along with others from communities as far away as Wyoming, had come out to share their love for our nation and our Constitution.
Before we began, I met three young boys dressed in revolutionary garb and carrying American flags. They were part of the local fife and drum team. We proceeded down main street as families lined up to cheer the Constitution. Flags passed on horseback and a line of go carts as neighbors cheered neighbors. They were not angry. There was not a scintilla of rage. They were grateful.
I am sure that this account will be scoffed at back East as some trite remake of how I came upon an American Whoville. However, living in Washington, you can easily succumb to the cynicism and tribalism of our politics. Patriotism is at best a soundbite to be used by politicians to satisfy the chumps in the hinterlands.
There is a dangerous conceit in every generation by those who believe that their problems are unique and require radical new measures. They are the same voices that we have heard for centuries; they are the voices of an age of rage.
In our debate, Professor Klarman stressed that he was not calling all Trump voters fascists because he believed many are simply ill-informed and “many do not read newspapers.” He added that any students in the room who had “not gone to a protest in the last eight months” were effective accessories in the rise of authoritarianism and autocracy.
I suggested another possibility: most citizens do not agree with the political, academic, and media elite. They are not unread idiots but people who see something that many in academia can no longer see or are unwilling to see in this country.
I respect that Professor Klarman is responding to things that he honestly views as threatening and harmful to the most vulnerable in our society. Yet, at Harvard, where there are only a handful of conservative faculty members, it is easy for students to conclude such views are the unassailable truth.
Outside of Cambridge and Washington, there is an entire nation that still believes in our Constitution. That is why this trip was so rejuvenating for this refugee from higher education. Many law professors today are like priests who have lost their faith but kept their robes. They lash out against a system for failing to meet their demands and an electorate that failed to yield to their collective wisdom.
When I was walking in the town, I came across two boys near the pavilion. They eagerly described their haul of candy and could not wait for the fireworks that night. I was about to walk away when one of them added “and I got this.” He then proudly produced a pocket Constitution. His younger brother immediately objected, saying, “We are sharing it.”
As a nation, we are all still sharing it after two centuries. It defines us as a people. Unlike other nations bound by common language and culture, we are a nation joined by a common legacy of ideas, a revolutionary faith in a free people bound to each other by a simple constitution.
It was hard to leave Grand Lake, but it felt better just knowing that places like this still exist.
Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Dear Mr. Turley, the professor had one thing correct..we have stopped reading newspapers. I gave them up in 2015 when everything was negative about Mr. Trump Every now and then I will gaze at the headlines at the local market and it is still the same thing. I began to understand why the people of Russia read their newspapers from back to front.
We need a great effort to educate the common man and woman about why the constitution protects us all and how well it has and continues to work. We need to publicize something like Hillsdale Colleges Constitutional minute much more widely across all media forms. I would gladly contribute to such a fund and I wonder if Professor Turley would chair such an effort?
Secondly we can no longer afford to allow these Universities to miseducate our future leaders. The ONLY answer is to require ideological balance of University facluties of ALL schools that receive any federal funding. Lastly we must ban all teachers unions as they are a great and negative influence upon our educational system and have ruined many good schools and stolen the futures of millions of poor young people.
It would be unconstitutional to ban Teacher’s unions. Unions are protected 1st amendment activity.
Please cite the supreme court case that found that.
Government employee unions in the US were illegal until I beleive the 60’s
I have no problem with teachers at private schools unionizing.
But even FDR chocked on unions of government employees.
An American law faculty opposed to the US Constitution makes as much sense as a business school faculty whose mission is to teach students how to lose money, a medical school faculty that teaches students how to make diseases and injuries worse, or a veterinary school faculty that lobbies for the abolition of pets. In these instances, the faculty would likely realize how ridiculous they are and change course, but not so for progressive law faculties. Why?
Because the human body, pets, and the things money can buy are tangible. The Constitution and the legal principles derived from it are abstract. Those abstract ideas, when put into practice by judges applying them faithfully and members of society organizing their affairs around them, have led to the greatest and wealthiest nation in history. But it is harder and more work to make the connection.
It follows, in my view, that the solution to this crisis — which seems to be limited to progressive law faculties and commentators — is to figure out ways to make the connection. If they can start to see the connection, their minds and hearts might change. In the meantime, it is important that the Constitution’s domestic enemies not gain enough power to overthrow it. If they succeeded in that, it would be a great loss for everyone, because we know it would be replaced by something far worse.
NotSoOld: A very nice comment.
(and we better get it together before the EC’s start working again!) (-really, truly laughed at your joke the other day.)
Thank you lin. Maybe you’ll revise your assessment of my age when I tell you: I can’t remember the joke.
Yours,
Uncle Henry
hahahaha. Touche!
But its OK. In a few days, I’ll have forgotten what EC stands for.
Extra-comfy? Erroneous comment? E.T.’s cousin? Extra-terrestrial communist?
Funny you should say that, I meant to ask you what EC stands for. Google only give me “electric conductivity.”
(now I can’t tell if you are being serious or funny. remember the joke you posted that I believe a young family member told you, about the two prisoners on death row who were given a choice?)
Ah, yes, that one. I do remember that now. When you said “we better get it together before the EC’s start working again” I somehow didn’t connect that to the joke itself. I thought you were using a modern, political term I had never heard of. (Maybe b/c you mentioned EC’s before mentioning the joke? That’s my story anyways and I’m sticking to it.)
It’s not the Constitutional Framework Jonathan.
It’s the People that occupy [It].
Both sides of the Isle, in both sides of the Bicameral system. The Financial Banking Institution, The Lobbies, The Brokers of Real Estate, The Legal Industry, all those whom ‘extract’ from [It] without adding any substantive Value. An ‘un-sound practice’ of decay.
The Framework is there and was intended to be ‘sound’. There is a group of People that believe in ‘Sound Principle’ and there is a group of People that do not believe in ‘Sound Principles’ and seek to exploit that ideology. They come is all shapes and sizes from all directions.
WE have a framework. It’s The Discussion (politics) that deters it from functioning properly and has circumvented the ‘sound’ intent.
This is a Building of Mighty Framework:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2023/04/28/building-goliath-the-making-of-the-sears-tower/
https://hiddenarchitecture.net/willis-tower-formerly-sears-tower/
Now Fill it with People of Sound Principles and it will thrive.
Can You Guess The Number One Challenge That Americans Believe They Are Facing In 2025?
We sure have seen a lot of really crazy things happen so far this year. But in the minds of most Americans, there is one crisis that far outweighs everything else. As I have been documenting for years, our standard of living has been collapsing as the cost of living has risen must faster than our incomes have. As a result, 67 percent of U.S. workers are now living paycheck to paycheck. We are in the midst of the worst cost of living crisis in modern history, and Statista has found that Americans consider it to be the biggest challenge that they are facing by a very large margin…
By: Michael Snyder ~ September 21, 2025
https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/can-you-guess-the-number-one-challenge-that-americans-believe-they-are-facing-in-2025/
Cost of Living Crisis is WORSE Than You Think in 2025
https://youtu.be/BlVOLQXhCM8
The reason is the loss of self reliance in agri ulture and manufacturing. The goods are imported and the economy is being gouged. It’s impossible to run a domestic economy with imports and with domestic corporations foreign owned. Inflation, weights and measures are in drain vortex.
The foods are contaminated with pathogens, radioactivity and heavy metals. There’s slim to none quality control. Hershey chocolate bars came in 1 lb bars for baking, 16 oz. At a very reasonable cost of 6 dollars not so long ago. Now the candle burns at both ends. Price up to 7-8 dollars and weight to 4 oz. 4 oz.!
Soon you’ll get 1 oz for 8 dollars laced with lead for weight. It’s not a joke. It’s a complete, total lack of values. Honesty and good will were domestic values.
It’s 3rd world dishonesty.
Love this Photo:
The Sears Tower is under construction on Nov. 24, 1972, as seen from the University of Illinois Circle Campus at Morgan and Harrison streets in Chicago.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/migration/2023/04/28/TTOSDIDUMNHGDLWFGUCF3HG2M4.jpg
Near the bottom you can see a Standard Oil Gas Station sign – 44¢ per Gallon – in Downtown Chicago (circa 1972 ~ 52 years, 10 months, 24 days ago)
I believe Professor Turley is observing a small community that is somewhat insulated from reality—living in blissful ignorance, to be honest.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but it highlights the Professor’s struggle to reconcile his denial of reality back home with his desire to feel comfortable within it. It’s reminiscent of an ostrich burying its head in the ground to feel safe.
Farmers in Arkansas are pleading for help from Trump after losing their markets due to his tariff policies. Iowa farmers are facing financial losses because they can’t sell their soybean crops. Ranchers in Wyoming are confronting tough times and potentially bankruptcy as immigrants leave the state or fail to show up for work. The economy is suffering under Trump’s shortsighted and disastrous policies. Now, we see the President directly attacking free speech, while Professor Turley strolls down Main Street, reminiscing about Norman Rockwell fantasies, perhaps because the harsh reality is too overwhelming for him to confront and defend.
It seems the Professor is slowly spiraling into a cycle of denial and rejection of reality and is seeking to wrap himself with a blanket of good ol’ fashioned patriotism to soothe his discomfort with his denial of reality.
Remember when Georgie tried to put down another commenter by accusing him of suffering from “Kruger-Dunning [sic] syndrome?’ (It’s actually Dunning-Kruger). That’s what happens when Georgie lifts information from the Internet and then tries to pretend he’s smart.
LOL.. Nice
“I believe Professor Turley is observing a small community that is somewhat insulated from reality—living in blissful ignorance, to be honest.”
Project much ?
Gerge Svelaz or what ever past and present ding bat you are – your the one living in the bubble divorced from reality.
“There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but it highlights the Professor’s struggle to reconcile his denial of reality”
The professor is slowly getting red pilled – by YOU and by actual reality.
“Farmers in Arkansas are pleading for help from Trump after losing their markets due to his tariff policies.”
ROFL.
There is very little elasticity in massive commodities markets like food.
If China is not buying from the US, then someone else is not getting their product from whoever is supplying China now.
Please proved a source and cite – preferably one that has a reputation for truth.
“Iowa farmers are facing financial losses because they can’t sell their soybean crops.”
Of course they can – do you honestly think the global consumption of soy has declined ?
In fact the rest of the world is weak economically and Soy is one of the cheapest sources of protein.
“Ranchers in Wyoming are confronting tough times and potentially bankruptcy as immigrants leave the state or fail to show up for work.”
So in a state with a population of less than a million people – all the immigrant cowboys are not showing up for work ?
No matter, if you are correct, ranchers will have to pay more to attract workers and the price of meat might rise.
“The economy is suffering under Trump’s shortsighted and disastrous policies.”
It is ? Sure don’t seem to be to me. People are worried about the economy – BUT they trust Republicans more than democrats on that issue.
“Now, we see the President directly attacking free speech”
No we see the president calling out vile and defamatory speech.
You have the right to speak.
You do not have the right to thwart others calling you out on your lies.
There is an answer – it is White Christian Nationalist Patriarchy. What we used to be, before the queers, feminists, social justice warriors, smart-a$$, know-nothing college students, and Liberals set the country on a downhill trajectory.
Unfortunately, we can’t go home again. It will take a tyrant to set the country right again.
Latest count discloses 768 Stammlager in the CONUS alone. Good news is that Stalag 769 is just around the corner.
JT, glad to see you back alive
Since legalizing recreational cannabis, Colorado has seen an increase in traffic crashes involving drivers who test positive for THC, though establishing a direct link to impairment is challenging. The data indicates that polydrug use is a significant factor in these incidents, and education and enforcement efforts are ongoing.
Most Colorado cannabis users have developed a tolerance. So these users turned to opioids for an extra buzz.
While in Colorado, an acquaintance heard that we were going to Pikes Peak. He offered to drive us up on the auto road. He was smoking a pipe with something in it, then a cannabis seed popped. He was in a car trying to put out the ambers.
The reply was no thanks. We are taking the railway cog to the top and back.
Progressives mean well but got this one backwards.
Jim Crow laws that punished and killed African-Americans and civil rights supporters was “Pure Democracy” (democracy operating outside of constitutional legal boundaries) at the local and state government level.
A local sheriff in the Jim Crow south was following the “pure democracy” of the mostly white racist town and refusing to uphold his Oath of Office to protect the constitutional rights of African-Americans, Jewish-Americans and any minority group.
Today the modern Democratic Party uses “democracy” as the noun, instead of the American “constitutional democratic republic”. We are a “republic” following the votes of citizens within constitutional legal boundaries. Being a “republic” doesn’t mean you follow the Republican Party.
James Madison warned about the “tyranny of the majority”. Madison was warning about the dangers of “pure democracy” which created Jim Crow type laws.
Conservatives that support gun rights and property rights should also oppose “pure democracy”. Do Conservatives want any government official appeasing voters demanding to violate the U.S. Constitution taking away their favorite rights?
On Trump’s first day in office, he attempted to rewrite the 14th Amendment through executive order and then suggested rewriting the 22nd Amendment to run for a third term – bypassing the constitutional amendment process. This is also what Madison termed the “tyranny of the majority” or “pure democracy” (which many Democrats seem to support).
California is going through a bit of a constitutional crisis. More than forty years ago, state supreme court Justice Stanley Mosk opined that supermajority requirements are “fundamentally undemocratic”. [Los Angeles Transportation Commission v. Richmond (1982) 31 Cal.3d 197, 205.] Now our state supreme court seems determined to wipe out all supermajority requirements in our state constitution for bonds and special taxes.
A statewide measure to reimpose a two-thirds requirement for special taxes was kept off the ballot last year by the supreme court. More and more local special taxes are being imposed throughout the state with simple majorities. How long will this go on?
Who gave us the Jim Crow laws & the KKK. That would be the dem-o-rat party
Perhaps if you two had been able to get around your egos you could’ve discussed how the SCOTUS has to be living in fear of right wingers ringing their doorbells in pizza delivery costumes. This has to exponentially add to the willingness of Thomas and Alito to sell out to billionaires with cases before the court.
^ Paid DNC troll. Ignore. ^
Thanks for reading, Cletus.
Gigi, you must be joking, the only Justices living in fear are the conservative ones that have been subject to assassination attempts and threats.
The Brett Kavanaugh assassination plot was bad enough as it was originally revealed when the assassin (Nicholas Roske, a man identifying as a woman in court proceedings, a fact first reported in 2022) A Justice Department sentencing memorandum filed on Friday, seeking a 30-year prison sentence, laid out more details, revealing the extent of the assassin’s advance planning:
A map saved in the defendant’s Google account contained location pins marking what the defendant believed to be the residential addresses of four sitting Supreme Court Justices. . . . [Defendant conducted] extensive research on guns and shooting, body armor, breaking and entering, and methods to be silent and avoid detection.
But then we are used to your deranged tirades.
Has anyone seen anything they offer up as an alternative to the Constitution? No sarc implied. I would be interested to see what that would look like.
Upstate, while they haven’t directly stated what form the alternative would be as a written document, they have made clear what that form would look like in practice. This alternative is not any different from the form the founding generation experienced from 1763-1776. With the 250th anniversary coming up next year, I was curious to find out what events led that generation to say enough is enough. What I discovered was an untaught history that deserves study. What I discovered drove me to write a civics book like nothing I’ve ever seen published. While I have no idea how to get a book published, I know people need to understand that history is repeating today. Here is my Introduction to that book:
Introduction: Reclaiming the Language of Liberty
Words matter. In the American founding, words gave form to freedom. “Unalienable rights,” “consent of the governed,” “tyranny,” and “liberty” were not ornaments. They were standards by which rulers were judged and citizens were formed.
Today those words are contested and often hollowed out. “Democracy” is invoked but rarely defined. “Rights” are demanded without the duties that sustain them. “Freedom” is confused with appetite. “Justice” is reduced to slogans. This book aims to restore clarity by returning to first principles and to the record of how a free people learned to secure them.
We begin where the American mind was shaped: the colonial century of self-government, the imperial turn after 1763, and the crisis that produced the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration’s preamble states the principles; its grievances supply the proof. Read together, they teach how a people measure rulers and when patience yields to duty.
The book then widens its lens. It follows the story beyond July 1776 into the long aftermath, where republics always live: in constitutions, habits, and institutions that either secure consent or erode it. Chapter 10 presents the grievances as evidence; Chapters 11–12 name the opponent within—the administrative habit that survives elections and grows by delegation, emergency powers, and public–private partnership. The test is constant across centuries: do our institutions secure unalienable rights by consent, or do they unmake consent by design?
This is not a book for specialists only. It is written for citizens, students, veterans, parents, and neighbors who sense that something essential is at stake and wish to judge with knowledge rather than with slogans. If we are to restore the American experiment, we must remember what it is, why it was built, and how it is kept.
We begin in Chapter 1 with the apprenticeship in self-government and the habits that made consent real.
😂 soon to see with mayor mamdani. I expect a honeymoon period with unions running themselves.
*. There’s a political system and an economic system. People are conflating them. The problem is in the economic system and as Judge Robert Bork pointed out, monopolies. Media is monopolies run by dollars and the net, AI fell in line.
Back on earth the US runs like a top. There are at least 10 opportunities for each person. A person has to work at failure. There remains the problem of consumerism.
People at the bottom of the econ system want to drive Jaguars, too, but drive Toyotas because of cost. It is a meritocracy and talent and gifts win out. The problem is consumerism.
Some have sworn off consumerism. Most likely because it produces the problem of trash. Waste management is big business.
It’s not the political system, PT. It’s consumerism. The US is great and heaven knows it. I have to go wash my Toyota now.
Btw, I truly hate Chinese engineering and what are they doing to the roads with roundabouts that firetrucks can’t maneuver and the steady increase of nonsensical road signs and the offramps that make no sense at all? I love the Chinese and the Iranians but their engineers don’t hold a candle to American efficiency and simplicity.
The Constitution is a fine set of laws. People have lost the idea of order. I can’t put my socks on over my shoes. The SCOTUS gets it.
Thanks Dr. Turley. Kudos to the folks at Grand Lake.
Saw the debate and what struck me was how enraged you both were. It locked you into the type of debate that was pure sleepwalking. In his question to you Klarmen kind of blew it. He should’ve asked you what your definition of a constitutional would entail, and to explain exactly how that doesn’t fit what’s going on today. This way you could’ve centered on the true cause of our crisis currently, which is a corrupt SCOTUS…
But instead you both went to your silos and accomplished nothing but an ego masturbation session.
Cry harder Gigi, we can’t hear you.
You clearly watched a different debate than the rest of us; Professor Turley remained “rage-free” in the face of nonsensical arguments designed to elicit an angry response. Think you are spending too much time pleasuring yourself.
You don’t know Turley then. The fact he did blow his cookies in the debate is why he’s trying to reconstruct it on the blog.
You could say the same about just any region of the US that is removed from the pernicious smog of prog indoctrination such as any blue urban cesspool or any area within a radius of 10 miles of a university. For the most part the sane people live elsewhere but are not given the bull horn that media gives to a very contemptuous and loud minority of grievance mongers. I don’t know why this came as a shock to Turley unless he just ignores most of real America.
We in upstate NY are the same, red, patriotic and sane except for Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany )( all dem run sh*tholes)- and most areas around SUNY colleges.
And Ithaca – known to locals as ten square miles surrounded by reality, or, the people’s republic of Ithaca.
Prof. Klarman and many others on the left will say the small-town people Prof. Turley met do not read newspapers and are not educated. How else could they be content with the state of the nation if those two claims are not true? That belief on the left must be countered, and until those who believe differently come up with effective arguments, the left will continue to hold sway in the institutions it currently dominates.
People like Prof. Turley are doing a very good job, but are minds being changed and are people adopting more nuanced views after hearing arguments different from those held by the left?
Outside of the DC/Academia cesspool real, patriotic people live, move and have their being. Your opponent is like a toddler foot stomping and screaming “I want what I want RIGHT NOW!” It’s another form of anal fixation. Sad.
I went to law school in the seventies. We loved the constitution. These professors are really raging against Trump as anybody who calls Trump and his supporters Nazai and fascists has a severe case of TDS. The constitution will survive Trump. I have to laugh out loud when people seriously think Trump is going to have a third term. They also thought he would not peacefully leave the White House on January 20, 2020. I won several bets on that one. TDS needs to be officially defined as a mental illness.
As Barry Goldwater spoke of in bastardized Latin, “Illegitimi Non Carborundum.”
It is easy to criticize and say the Constitution is just a piece of paper. It is much more difficult to point out it’s specific flaws. 250 years of success. Now some guy from Harvard says the piece of paper doesn’t work. Maybe his brain isn’t working. Maybe Harvard made a mistake hiring him. I don’t think he deserves any.respect. The piece of paper is subject to amendment so what part does the professor want amended?