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.”