Constitutional Chats Presented By Constituting America

Constitutional Chats Presented By Constituting America

Picture this:  You are a young child growing up in a suburb of Boston.  You happen to a big fan of the musical “Hamilton” and through an educational TV show, you learn that the park where you regularly ride your bike and your neighborhood is portrayed in the musical you love!  This is exactly what happened with this week’s special guest, Sabrina Bhattacharjya.  Now a 14-year old historian, Sabrina has dived deep into the history of her town, Lexington, Massachusetts.  This is where the infamous “shot heard ‘round the world” took place that started the...

Constitutional Chats Presented By Constituting America

The electoral college is one of the most important characteristics of our republic, but it is also perhaps the most misunderstood.  Every time we vote for President the merit of the electoral college is debated. But what is it? Why was it created?  How does it protect small states, and preserve state identity?  Should we view it as a problem itself or an effective solution to a problem? To address all of these questions and so much more, we are delighted to have Michael Maibach, electoral college expert and Distinguished Fellow for Save Our States, as our special guest this...

Constitutional Chats Presented By Constituting America

It’s 1787 and you are a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.  You represent a midsize state and arriving 3 days late, you encounter James Madison’s Virginia Plan to allocate representation among the states proportionally.  You realize how this would be a detriment to smaller states who are needed to ratify the Constitution.  What do you do?  You are Roger Sherman from Connecticut and you draft the Connecticut Compromise which allocates representation in the lower chamber based on population but guarantees equal state representation in the upper chamber.  Why...

Constitutional Chats Presented By Constituting America

He was an actor, governor and our 40th president.  Today, we are discussing the presidency of Ronald Reagan.  Though now a modern icon of conservatives, Reagan’s political leanings were originally democrat as a supporter of FDR and Truman.  During his presidential term, through what lens did Reagan approach the limitations placed on government?  In what way was he a Constitutional originalist?  How did this belief factor into navigating a constitutional crisis like the Iran Contra Affair?  To guide us in this chat, we are pleased to welcome back an alumni of the...

Constitutional Chats Presented By Constituting America

Today, we are discussing our country’s 34th President, Dwight Eisenhower.  A Texan by birth but raised in Kansas, Eisenhower graduated from West Point and during World War II served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and was promoted to 5-star General of the US Army. Twice elected President, Eisenhower notably led our country as we entered the Cold War. In what ways did Eisenhower’s military experience shape his views on domestic and foreign policy?  What civil rights advancements were made during his tenure?  What was his overall sense of...

Constitutional Chats Presented By Constituting America

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt served as the 32nd US President and was our longest serving president, having run for and won four elections to the presidency.  FDR was President during two tumultuous events in US history, the Great Depression and the outbreak of World War II.  Pulling a page from the Woodrow Wilson playbook, FDR expanded the administrative state even further.  In what ways did FDR expand the scope and size of the federal government?  Why did the American people elect him four times to the office of the presidency? What did he mean when he spoke of...

Constitutional Chats Presented By Constituting America

In our chat today, we are focusing on our 31st President, Herbert Hoover.  Born poor to a Quaker family in Iowa in 1874, Hoover was one of the first graduates of Stanford University in 1895.  He earned a fortune as a mining engineer and had business interests on 6 of 7 continents.  He rose to public prominence during World War I and joined the Woodrow Wilson administration as the leader of the Food Administration.  He successfully ran for President in 1928 but his administration was quickly stained by Prohibition (which he inherited from the previous administration) and the...

Constitutional Chats Presented By Constituting America

The administrative state, the professional bureaucracy in our federal government, has not always been such a feature in how government functions.  Did you know President Woodrow Wilson helped  precipitate the rapid rise in that bureaucracy? How did this happen and why? What did Wilson mean when he spoke of an elastic constitution, and how does it threaten our freedom? To walk our student panel  through this topic, we are delighted to have William Morrissey, Professor Emeritus at Hillsdale College, as our special guest constitutional expert.

Constitutional Chats Presented By Constituting America

In 1831, a 26 year-old French member of the aristocracy arrived in New York City to examine our prison system.  Alexis de Tocqueville would do that and so much more.  Over 9 months, he and his travel companion, Gustave de Beaumont, traveled extensively and in 1835, he published “Democracy in America.”  De Tocqueville studied and answered what it took to perpetuate our political institutions, what the “habits of the American heart” are and what it means to be an American.  In fact, it was De Tocqueville who coined the term American Exceptionalism.  To guide our...

Constitutional Chats Presented By Constituting America

Perhaps no Founding Father exemplifies the ideal of a citizen-legislator quite like John Adams.  Never a wealthy man, Adams dedicated his life and contributed greatly to our country in its infancy: as a lawyer, as a delegate to the Continental Congress, as our first Vice President and as our second President.  What was the basis for Adam’s beliefs in how our country should be structured and why does our guest today argue John Adams was the greatest of our Founding Fathers?  Join our student panel as we welcome C. Bradley Thompson, Professor of Political Science at Clemson...