It's an interesting article and if you bounced off it because you had a visceral reaction to the premise, like I did at first, I'd recommend taking another whack at it. Jill Lepore, if you're not familiar with her work, is a historian with a reputation as a more rigorous version of people like Howard Zinn.
I don't think it's a good article though. In particular, I don't think it coheres. It's about how the modern Constitution has become "un-amendable", but it spends a big chunk of the middle of the piece demonstrating the Constitution was never really all that amendable: successful amendments are extraordinarily rare, especially when they're about big-ticket issues. Our biggest structural changes occurred after an enormous civil war.
There's a sort of obvious framing to the piece that the Constitution should be more fluid and easy to amend. I think 2022 is a very weird time to prioritize that. I'm not a doomer about US politics, but they're not in a very good state right now. Lepore talks about national abortion, immigration, and firearms policy and how they'd be impacted by a more readily-amended Constitution, but I think she should take a wider view and look at things like how speech and free association would be impacted.
I'm a liberal, in a cohort of people this article portrays as atypically open to changing the Constitution, and I think the rigidity of the Constitution is probably it's greatest strength.
I don't think it's a good article though. In particular, I don't think it coheres. It's about how the modern Constitution has become "un-amendable", but it spends a big chunk of the middle of the piece demonstrating the Constitution was never really all that amendable: successful amendments are extraordinarily rare, especially when they're about big-ticket issues. Our biggest structural changes occurred after an enormous civil war.
There's a sort of obvious framing to the piece that the Constitution should be more fluid and easy to amend. I think 2022 is a very weird time to prioritize that. I'm not a doomer about US politics, but they're not in a very good state right now. Lepore talks about national abortion, immigration, and firearms policy and how they'd be impacted by a more readily-amended Constitution, but I think she should take a wider view and look at things like how speech and free association would be impacted.
I'm a liberal, in a cohort of people this article portrays as atypically open to changing the Constitution, and I think the rigidity of the Constitution is probably it's greatest strength.