LET ME GUESS, HE'S NOT A CONSERVATIVE

Ordinary People (Interview with H. W. Brands, Atlantic, September 2003)

H. W. Brands argues that too much reverence for the Founding Fathers is unhealthy—and that it's time to take them down a notch or two ...

Brands: One of the things that strikes me as mind-boggling is this timid reverence toward the Constitution.... The Founders were willing to make drastic changes in the governance of America, yet we're not willing to make even the smallest changes. That's what I would like people to think about when they think about the Founders. They were a group characterized by courage and boldness. I don't think they were any wiser than we are, but they were a whole lot more willing to take risks on behalf of what they believed in.

Atlantic: What do you think should be the mechanism for this rewriting of the Constitution? Are you imagining that it would be rewritten within the existing process of amendments?

Brands: Well, that would certainly be a start. If we were really in the spirit of the Founders, people would just get together and call an utterly extra-legal convention, because that's what the convention of 1787 was. They had no authorization to do anything.

Brands's idea isn't new. Blackmun, Burger, Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, Marshall, and Powell have already held such a convention. Posted by Paul Jaminet at August 17, 2003 10:51 PM