“I’m very angry.” Last week, those words of Harvard Law Professor Michael Klarman were something of an understatement in our debate at Colgate University about whether our country is in a ‘constitutional crisis’.
Klarman took the affirming position and took over what he rooted in the current ‘authoritarianism rooted in old -fashioned white supremacy’. Analogies on Nazi Germany, he criticized President Donald Trump and his supporters as “fascists” as he called ice officers “criminals” “concentration camps” where immigrants are “essentially tortured”.
When I noticed that clarman demonstrated the license of what I called our ‘age of craze’, he easily agreed: ‘I am furious’. He said he “wanted to show anger” because the constitutional system “doesn’t work” and that he spoke “to alert you … to shake people out of their insomnia.”
The Constitution of the United States: Insight into the highest law of the US
Like many professors in law nowadays, Klarman doubted the viability of our constitutional system. However, what he described was not a constitutional crisis but a crisis.
A column in the New York Times denounced ‘Constitution Worship’ last year, adding that ‘Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us; A growing choir now wonders if we should be saved from it. “
There is indeed a growing choir of the faculty that calls us to delete our constitutional system:
- Corey Brettschneider from Brown University called the Constitution a “dangerous document” that drove this “threat to democracy”.
- George Washington University Law Professor Mary Anne Franks condemned the ‘cult of the Constitution’, of which she said it was used to promote ‘white male supremation’.
- In a column entitled “The Constitution is broken and should not be recovered,” Ryan D. Doerfler and Yale’s Samuel Moyn stated that we had to reclaim “America from constitutionalism”.
- Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, in his book: “No democracy lasts forever: how the Constitution threatens the United States,” argued that the Constitution is now a danger to democracy.
With many news shows, the Constitution is increasingly being rejected as “waste” and a vehicle for oppression.
A counter-constitutional movement spreads in the academic world, fed by election results and judicial statements that defy progressive requirements. The conclusion of many in the location: the system itself has been broken and must be thrown away. (Istock)
This counter-constitutional movement spreads in the academic world, fed by election results and judicial statements that defy progressive requirements. The conclusion of many in the location: the system itself has been broken and must be thrown away.
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For law students, this has become the academic echo room in which they learn. To support the Constitution – or to deny a “crisis” – is inviting the invite of spot and invite retribution. Suggesting that the most successful constitutional system in history is anything but a failed experiment is now considered naive.
Unlike other nations bound by a common language or culture, we are united by an inheritance of ideas – a revolutionary belief in a free people bound together by a simple constitution.
In my coming book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution“ I discuss this faith crisis and the dangers it presents to American democracy in the 21st century.
After years of participating in such debates, it can take a toll. Sometimes it feels like fewer and fewer people understand the great gift that the frameers have given us in this unique document.
During our debate, the students reminded the students that the Constitution is only “words on paper” if it does not work correctly. But it’s more than that. It is a covenant of a people with each other; A jump in a system that survived wars, economic And social unrest for more than two centuries.
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After Colgate I did not return directly to Washington. I had another stop: Grand Lake, Colorado, where I was invited to give the Constitution Day address.
Nestled in the Rocky Mountains, the city has an annual celebration. The invitation intrigued me – it said they could be a small town, but they believed in something very big: the Constitution of the United States.
An image of the statue of John Harvard on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 8, 2024. (Maddie Meyer)
I arrived almost midnight and after two weeks I asked my decision to take the journey. The next morning, still worn out, I joined the parade for the speech.
What I found was exactly what I needed. The entire city had been shown, accompanied by visitors from as far away as Wyoming, to share their love for our nation and its constitution.
Facimile of the Constitution for the United States of America, dated September 17, 1787. (BotoSearch/Getty Images)
Before we started, I met three young boys dressed in revolutionary robe and wore American flags. They were part of the local FIFE and Drum Corps.
We marched through Main Street while families stood by the sidewalks and encourage the constitution. Riders on horseback wore flags and go-karts through rolled when neighbors encouraged neighbors. There was no anger. No anger. Only gratitude.
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I know this account will be mocked in the east as a Trite remake of an American Whoville. But life in Washington can easily be collapsed for cynicism and tribalism of politics. Patriotism is at best a good bite for politicians to feed what they reject like ‘the chumps in the hinterland’.
Each generation has its conception – in the conviction that his problems are unique and require radical new measures. But these voices are the same that we have heard for centuries. They are the voices of an era of anger.
In our debate, clarman emphasized that he did not mention all Trump voters fascists. He said that many are simply poorly informed and “don’t read newspapers.” He added that students who had not attended protest in the last eight months were in fact accessories for the rise of authoritarianism.
I proposed another possibility: most citizens disagree with the political, academic and media elite. They are not unread idiots, but people who see something that much in the academic world no longer see – or refusing to see.
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I respect that clarian responds to things that he regards as really threatening and harmful to the most vulnerable of society. But in Harvard, where only a handful of conservative faculty remains, it is easy for students to conclude that such views are inviolable truth.
Graduated on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Mass. In an undated photo. (Getty Images)
Outside Cambridge, Mass. And Washington, however, there is a whole nation that still believes in the Constitution. That’s why this trip was so rejuvenating for me. Many professors nowadays are like priests who have lost their faith but have kept their robes. They extract in a system because it does not meet their requirements, and with an electorate that refuses to surrender to their collective wisdom.
The Capitol building of the United States can be seen in Washington, DC, on September 16, 2025 (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty images)
Walking in the city later I met two boys near the pavilion. They eagerly described their Candy trek and could not wait that night for the fireworks. While I turned around, one of them stopped me: “And I have this.” He proudly took out a pocket constitution. His younger brother quickly objected: “We share it.”
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As a nation we still share it after more than two centuries. It defines us as a people. Unlike other nations bound by a common language or culture, we are united by an inheritance of ideas – a revolutionary belief in a free people bound together by a simple constitution.
It was difficult to leave Grand Lake, but I felt better, just knowing that places like this still exist.
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