"The Excess of Democracy": Rebroadcast

Scene on Radio: Capitalism

Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University

Society & Culture, Audiodoc, Radio, Documentary, Stories

4.9 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2022

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the summer of 1787, fifty-five men got together in Philadelphia to write a new Constitution for the United States, replacing the new nation’s original blueprint, the Articles of Confederation. But why, exactly? What problems were the framers trying to solve? Was the Constitution designed to advance democracy, or to rein it in? And how can the answers to those questions inform our crises of democracy today?

By producer/host John Biewen with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Woody Holton, Dan Bullen, and Price Thomas. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's John. So for the last of our summer mini season of re-broadcasts featuring a few of my favorite things from the catalog,
0:10.0	I knew I wanted a post in episode from season 4, the land that never has been yet.
0:16.0	I confess to being pretty dang proud of that 2020 season. It's about democracy or not so much in the United States, past and present.
0:27.0	It was nominated for a Peabody Award just saying,
0:31.0	The question was, which episode to share here?
0:35.0	I was tempted to post episode one of the series, Rich Man's Revolt, sets the stage, frames the whole thing,
0:42.0	and explores what the American Revolution was really about, spoiler alert, not democracy.
0:48.0	If you haven't listened to that episode or any of the series, please do and sure start with episode one.
0:56.0	But I decided on episode two because the Constitution.
1:01.0	Are the US Constitution? It just keeps showing up in the news, especially given the radical right wing capture of the US Supreme Court.
1:11.0	The Court's main job, of course, is to decide, do we let this law stand in the face of a challenge
1:18.0	because in our learned opinion, the law comports with the letter and spirit of the Constitution. Or do we strike it down because it does not?
1:28.0	So in 1973, and again in 1992, the Court found pregnant people have a right to abortion.
1:36.0	Thanks to a right to privacy, the justice is found in the 14th Amendment.
1:41.0	The 2022 Court said, nope, the Constitution doesn't say that. States can ban abortion if they want to.
1:49.0	Other blockbuster rulings this year involved guns. The Court majority said the Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry a firearm for protection even outside the home.
2:00.0	Separation of church and state. Among other things, the Court ruled a public high school football coach may hold a team prayer on the field after games.
2:10.0	Throw in a ruling undermining tribal sovereignty that would have looked right at home in the 19th century.
2:16.0	And other decisions blocking the prerogatives of the executive branch and its agencies to issue vaccine mandates or to set rules reducing fossil fuel emissions.
2:28.0	All based on ideologically loaded readings of the Constitution.
2:33.0	Outside the courts, the document looms large in the wider public shouting match about US history, how much reverence we should hold for the so-called founding fathers and so on.
2:45.0	And it's been the season of the January 6th Select Committee hearings featuring frequent uses of the C word.
	...

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