Her originalism ignores the significance of the second American Revolution -- the Civil War and Reconstruction.
The Constitution even today does not offer an affirmative guarantee of the right to vote. If we truly want to build inclusive democracy, we must articulate an affirmative vision of an expansive right to vote in the Constitution itself.
Eric Foner, the pre-eminent historian of the civil war and Reconstruction, sees parallels with our own time but warns yesterday’s solution would be a disaster
“Most of all, I feel that I cannot be complicit in any way when I’ve seen so many examples of soldiers and police acting in bad faith,” he said via an encrypted text message.
This book argues the fight for true equality begun 150 years ago continues and draws clear connections between the limitations and loopholes written into these 19th century amendments and the most intractable debates dividing 21st century America.
My worst nightmare is that if it is not safe for folks in big cities in swing states to line up you see some state legislatures invoking the right under Article II, section 1 of the constitution to appoint Electoral College electors themselves.
The Thirteenth Amendment forbade slavery and involuntary servitude, “except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”
We will likely hear these false appeals to an imaginary history a great deal with the release of the Senate report on CIA torture. It seems to me self-evident that most of the members of the Constitutional Convention would have voted to release the report and also would have been completely appalled at its contents.
The Right’s policy nostrums are failing across the board – from free-market extremism to austerity as a cure for recession to continuing the old health-care dysfunction – leaving only an ideological faith that this is what the Framers wanted. But that right-wing “history” is just one more illusion, writes Robert Parry.
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