Pennsylvania state representative and Democratic Socialist Chris Rabb is the latest Democrat to reaffirm his alliance with virulent antisemite Hasan Piker. What is most notable, however, is his attack on establishment Democrats as “institutionalists,” a new label reflecting the radical agenda for changing our constitutional system. It is a term that is now in vogue on the far left by those who want to tear down our institutions and scrap our Constitution.
Across the country, attacks are growing on Democrats and independents who are viewed as insufficiently radical. Those of us who continue to celebrate the Madisonian democracy as creating the most successful and stable republic in history are now “cultists” and “institutionalists” who are trapped in “nostalgia.”
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have drawn support from many who want a literal revolution. DSA Steering Committee member Cliff Connolly declared on one podcast that they are “famous for” “Our hatred of the United States Constitution.”
Even those who are not joining the DSA are denouncing the system and lashing out at those who want to preserve it.
On the web, radicals denounce institutionalists who “want us to defend and support the institutions we already have.”
At The Atlantic, Sarada Peri, the former senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, referred to institutionalists as “peculiar creatures” inhabiting Washington.
She added that:
“Many institutionalists simply have a reflexive distaste for change, preferring the enduring, if ossified, conventions that offer them inherited credibility. But perhaps in part because they are mostly old, white men, institutionalists are afforded significant deference by the media and the general public.”
Rabb joined his chorus of radicals opposing institutionalists in their party. He is the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District and is now virtually assured of being a member of Congress. He is also emerging as a dominant voice on the far left. He has established his bona fides with a growing radical movement within the Democratic Party, denouncing the Declaration of Independence, calling our constitutional system “the beast” to be slayed, and bizarrely claiming that the Framers had no notion of what “policing” means.
On Friday, Rabb tweeted “This is what the institutionalists are focusing their efforts on now: Disavowing Hasan Piker.” He added “Not White Christian nationalists? Not the broligarchs? Not the AI overlords? Nope, the guy encouraging young people to use their collective political power for good. F— that noise.”
Of course, Piker rose to national prominence after other Democratic Socialists and radicals brought him to their states to campaign against establishment figures. Much like the left’s focus on figures who associate with Nicholas Fuentes, Piker has outraged many with claims that America deserved 9/11, American Jews are asking to be attacked by supporting Israel, and mocking the murder of figures like Charlie Kirk.
Putting aside the fact that Rabb still supports this notorious hatemonger as someone organizing “young people to use their collective political power for good,” he notably denounces those opposing Piker as “institutionalists.”
It is an important reveal, highlighting the radical agenda to trash the Constitution and tear down our core institutions, including the Supreme Court. Rabb has been one of those voices in calling the system “the beast” and denouncing our own revolution.
In my book Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I discuss the French Revolution and its decline into what the Framers called a mobocracy. In France, “The Terror” began not with the working class, but with educated lawyers, journalists, and even aristocrats as part of the Jacobin movement. Eventually, after the mob had finished off the aristocrats, clergy, and merchants, they turned on their fellow Jacobins in a bloodletting that claimed the lives of thousands.
Even law professors and deans joined this movement in calling for the rejection of our Constitution on the 250th anniversary of our Revolution.
Mainstream figures such as Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law School, have published books such as “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”
The media eagerly publishes these radical views, such as the New York Times column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” in which Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale call for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
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.”
Now, to support our constitutional system is to be an “institutionalist,” a pejorative term that is as bad as being an “oligarch” in the new revolutionary lexicon.
Even establishment candidates like former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom are trying to pander to the mob by calling fealty to our traditions and institutions mere “nostalgia.”
It is a familiar strategy. After Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB agent who defected in 1970, revealed the four stages by which the Soviets hoped to bring about revolutionary change in the U.S., it began with undermining our institutions and values, with the help of journalists and academics.
The success of this counter-constitutional movement is reflected in the growing list of establishment figures like Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg throwing the Supreme Court to the mob. The problem with leading the mob is that you have to stay in front of it or be devoured by it. Packing the court is unlikely to be enough. After they come for the institutionalists, they will come for the incrementalists.
It appears that, if you are not campaigning with Piker, you could be next for the pike. El-Sayed declared in his campaign that moderates like Democratic Senator John Fetterman should have their heads cut off and put on pikes like ogres.
So much for the “Big Tent party.” For institutionalists, the message is clear. Lose your constitutional “nostalgia” or your political heads.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times bestselling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Institutions or chaos. There is no in-between.
Try to scrap the Constitution ad Supreme Court and it’s open season on anyone who enforces or supports the illegitimate regime that follows. I never in my wildest dreams thought there was even a chance I’d spend my later years fighting for an insurgency.
Yep. From the top down.
Same here.
The truth is most mainstream voters (Republicans, Democrats, Independents) have more in common than we disagree on. There are roughly 350 million Americans and all of us have different opinions – we will never agree 100% on anything and that’s a good thing to offer different vantage points in solving problems.
Real leaders (of any political party) try to unite Americans regardless of political party. Real leaders try to bridge those differences of opinion, not divide us for petty political reasons.
The opposing political party can always find the 1% extreme wing of any party. Weak self-serving leaders (not serving us) then try to stereotype 100% of any political party by painting them the same as the 1% extreme wing. This is dishonest and harms the nation.
The truth is we have more in common with the opposing party. Why aren’t leaders talking about the $40 trillion national debt or that the interest payments on the national debt exceed the total military budget?
Simply reducing the interest payments on the national debt would totally pay for every high school student to attend college or trade school for 4 years. We could pay for healthcare and Medicare much easily.
Why are our politicians not talking about America heading into bankruptcy?
The entire premise of what they wish to do boils down to totalitarian rule. Packing the Court with their cronies is not interpretation of legality against the Constitution, removing the Presidency removes the Executive Branch directing it to mob rule with the leader of their party deciding. Everything they offer up is an attack on the freedoms and liberties that are provided to us by our Constitution.
Have you heard any of these morons layout exactly how any of their “suggestions “ would actually work for Americans?
You will not!
Eight Ball,
You are correct.
The only thing they have to offer is hate and rage.
We see it by their words and by their actions.
There are legitimate ways and means to make changes within the Constitution. At the same time it is that very Constitution that is blocking these communists from achieving their goal. They want to do away with the Constitution to gain power, enact their own version of government, or should I say, remake it they way they want. They have said they want to get rid of the office of the president, the SC, and the Senate. Then pack the House with their party, pass laws to ensure no other party wins an election again, even if they are Democrats, but NOT their kind of Democrats i.e. DSA.
What a heap of shite. Dumb F.
This. This is why you guys are losing. Nothing to offer. that’s the basis of communism too.
That’s the same comment you post every fing day.
Go screw yourself you fing troll.
Not me.
Just annony, in a pathetic attempt to make himself relevant . . . and fails!
How marvelous!
“There are legitimate ways and means to make changes within the Constitution.” Then why don’t they use it?Z
Because 2/3rds ratification very rarely happen. If at all in a Lifetime.
re : Upstate Farmer
Any individual or group that obtains to grab power outside of America’s constitutional form of government are “Constitutional-Subversives”.
But using that standard, Trump fascists subverting the American constitutional rule of law have much in common with Communist subversives!
In real practice, the real problem is “Mission Creep” – once you unleash a government bureaucracy against any suspected “subversives”, that bureaucratic system usually punishes the wrong people.
In the 1950’s genuine Communist-Subversives (subverting America’s constitutional due process) were indeed national security threats. Back then J. Edgar Hoover and DOJ were extremely wreckless labeling anyone they disliked as “subversives”. Most targeted and punished were non-subversive Democrats that followed constitutional due process.
In 2026 the most constitutionally-subversive threat to national security is Trump fascism. A movement that subverts America’s model of government and subverts constitutional due process. This far right threat is way more dangerous than most Democrats who are non-subversive supporting the U.S. Constitution.
A great example of this is the tv ad created by former members of the CIA and DoD, telling American service members to refuse illegal orders that subvert the U.S. Constitution. Trump suggested the death penalty for them simply stating the law and America’s loyalty oath.
Prior to that, General Mark Milley at his retirement speech accurately explaining America’s supreme loyalty oath (Oath of Office) warning about Trump subversives trying to install a foreign style dictator (similar to Spain’s Francisco Franco).
The U.S. Constitution is a “wartime” governing charter, created during wartime and designed to be followed during wartime. Every American official swears an Oath of Office to the U.S. Constitution even during wartime. Trump has been trying to subvert this American model of government, exceeding his Article 2 authority. These subversives are far more dangerous than anything happening in the Democratic Party.
Makes no sense. Troll.
Sounds like a lefty ‘historian’.
A lot of these commie things are supposed to stay hidden until it’s ‘too late!’
And this rewriting of history is one of them.
“Not yet, the collective hasn’t taken control yet, comrade.”
useful idiots can also take down an entire revolution.
More dangerous than someone trying to tear down the structure that guarantees or freedom. You fricking Moro. To do away with our constitutional government and replace it with communism, which is the most repressive form of goverment there is. Just the fact it is always implemented with violence, imprisonment of its distractions and propaganda. And once they have all the pieces in place it can never be voted out. Many people will die in the implementation and then in the ouster of the sinister form of government
There are 40 Trillion (Debt$) reasons why the this is not working and that’s the Federal Government alone, not counting the 50 States (Debt$) modeled upon the US Constitution.
Wester Civ. – It’s a system of ‘expropriation’ is what it is. When the Europeans ran out of resources and began killing each other for control of scraps on their continent, They came to the New World and began stripping out the resources of this Contentment. The Europeans and their blood thirsty appetite for resources were the ‘existential threat’ to the Native North American Continent, and in so proved it to be true (Guns, Germs, and Steel – book by Jared Diamond).
The ‘Wealth of a Nation’ is its ability to ‘expropriate’ it own resources as well as Other’s. Venezuela, the Middle East, (Greenland ~ lol), are all prime examples of US ‘expropriation’ today. This includes the People, the Working Class at home and abroad.
So don’t fool yourself that this “Constitution” is for anything else. It is the Constitutional Legitimization of Corruption through the expropriation of Resources and Life.
“… “institutionalists,” a new label reflecting the radical agenda for changing our constitutional system. It is a term that is now in vogue on the far left by those who want to tear down our institutions and scrap our Constitution. …” -JT
There are “A LOT” of People (American) of all proclivities (Democrats, Republican, Independents, Religious, Vegans, Meat Eaters, etc…) that feel that way. WE don’t have a ‘Government’ (“It’s F-ed Up”), it is a legitimized-corruption (A Swamp). It is not a Democracy, rather a system of Media Controlled merchandising of political products (Politicians and Bureaucrats). ‘Politics and Crime’ are the same thing.
Streamlining it only enables the unsound-flow of legitimized-corruption. It is systemically broken.
Give it up Jonathan. Stop proliferating a myth, and give Us something new. You’re smart enough.
Replace it.
OK, OK, maybe ‘statist’ will suit you? We don’t care what you idiots call yourself, you’ll always be commies to us.
oh look, a lefty trying to control the use of ‘words’.
Land of the free. YOU give it up.
The Social Contract [K] is a “sociopathic-instrument” to ensnare people into a rentier life.
You see Jonathan, ‘You only Rent this Life’ (Money is an illusion – fiat. BTW – We’re all living on barrowed time.). But I’ll grant you this after a lifetime of Renting , You will receive ‘Total Consciousness’ upon your deathbed (Heaven).
Now that’s the “Art of the Deal”.
Professor Turley quotes Sarada Peri (at “The Atlantic”), who is a former senior speechwriter for Barack Obama: “Many institutionalists simply have a reflexive distaste for change”.
What does “change” mean to Peri and her boss Obama? Simple. “Change” means “my way, or else”. May we never forget the meaning of “change” for Charlie Kirk, Brian Thompson, and (almost) President Donald J. Trump.
All the more reason why the Constitution is so important. It keeps people like them out of power.
Democrats, the sane and normal ones, listen to what these people are saying. It is not some one off fluke. They mean it.
What is the reason you idiot?
It is time for Patriots to treat the DSA just like we treated the British 250 years ago.
“Our hatred of the United States Constitution.”
Because the United States Constitution was designed to prevent them from taking away your rights.
This is the death-knell of the entire left and a rebirth of respect for individual rights. Sorry commie!
All it takes to defeat them is a piece of paper. Try to violate that paper and we will lock you up!
Commies are the ultimate control freaks.