Building a Country on the Ruins of a Post-Constitutional Order
A two-part series on where Americans go from here
Paid subscribers may recognize
. Several months ago, I interviewed her about her brush with the radicalized extremist Catholic cult Opus Dei. She asked me to talk about Protestant End Times beliefs and educate her viewers on the Protestant side of Christian Nationalism. Given that US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee is aggressively aligning US foreign policy with his radicalized End Times apocalyptic beliefs, it’s a very timely discussion.Last night, I had the honor of speaking alongside David Graham at Big Tent USA. I’ll share a link to the recording when it is available.
Today and tomorrow, my newsletters will cover the final minutes of our discussion: What can we do to stop this regime and get our country back?
While my answer may seem depressing and defeatist at first, please bear with me for the full duo of newsletters.
In the wake of the November election, I was physically ill for more than a week. I probably slept one or two hours per night. I had panic attacks. I suffered a host of stomach ailments brought on by severe stress.
The reason? I understood what Americans chose (or were too apathetic to vote against) on 5 November 2024: Americans jettisoned democracy in favor of theocratic dictatorship, whether they realized it or not. The United States of America as it had existed was over. Because of careful planning of multiple groups across five decades — culminating in Project 2025 — we would not be able to return.
I was grieving the downfall of my country.
Grief isn’t a linear process, but at some point, grief makes space for begrudging acceptance of a new reality: This person we loved; this thing we valued; this country we relied upon is gone, and nothing we do will bring it back.
Those realizations can yield a fierce kind of clarity.
For me, clarity came in realizing that I wasn’t interested in “going back to the way things were” or “upholding the Constitution and rule of law” or “just wanting to live in a place where I don’t have to think about politics all the time.” In the blast crater of this unfathomable loss of my country, clarity gave way to recognizing this OPPORTUNITY.
Why did so many people still cling to a set of founding documents written by rich white men, some of whom had no problem with owning people? And the rest who didn’t see the fundamental problem of asserting “all equal” while forming a country in collaboration with a bunch of men who thought owning people was okay? And the whole of them who were fine withholding rights from one-half of the population because of their gender?
For our entire existence, our country has fought over this fatal flaw in our founding structure, one we have never resolved: What does “all people are equal” really mean? Because “I believe it’s okay to own people and classify certain people as not-people” and “all people are equal” CANNOT CO-EXIST.
I don’t want to go back to that. I refuse to fight for it. We can do better.
This staggering destruction of our country is an opportunity to work together to create the country we want, a multi-cultural, multi-plural democracy where ALL PEOPLE ARE EQUAL. Where everyone has a seat at the table. Where a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is the only acceptable way.
This kind of work won’t be accomplished with a few protests of any size. We won’t vote our way to it in next years’ midterm elections, if they even happen. It will be a messy process, because it has to be an inclusive one. Most likely, it means some kind of national divorce because again, people who fundamentally believe all people are not equal cannot co-exist with people who are committed to treating all human beings equally.
This is a long-term project. It may take the rest of our lives, or longer. It will be bigger than us, but to get it done we have to believe in US. While I don’t have all the answers, tomorrow I’m going to outline how we can come together to create the country we want. The path lies in reverse-engineering how radicalized Christian Nationalist extremists highjacked our country.
I understand what they did. I’m going to propose a way to do it better. I hope you’ll join me tomorrow.
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I'm interested in what you are going to publish tomorrow. When a founding document says "men are created equal" and also defines a race of people as 3/5 a human being, the foundation is flawed. We know John Adams considered it humorous when his capable wife, Abigail, urged him not to forget women when rights were being distributed. We know a Southerner thought (wrong, it so happened) he could defeat civil rights legislation drafted to address racial inequity by adding "sex" to the kinds of discrimination to be prohibited. Out of many, one, assumes different groups can unite around a common principle. Propaganda divides our society and poisons us. I remember gender dividing propaganda of the 1990s that spread the poison that men were somehow harmed by women having equal opportunity, that expecting people to conduct themselves professionally in the workplace was some sort of "political correctness" scheme to control how people think and restrict their First Amendment rights. Women who objected to sexist treatment at work were diagnosed by eager defense lawyers as "nuts" or "sluts." That trend might not have been so powerful if Congress had declined to consent to the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court after Anita Hill's testimony. To refer to oneself as a feminist meant you hated men. It was all a barrage of messaging to shut us up about inequality - and women are still paid less than men for the same job. Yet, I've had hope for the future because I believed in justice. As a lawyer, I've believed in Constitutional amendments expanding the foundation and repairing flaws. I bet your essay tomorrow will be thought-provoking. Thank you for what you do.
This is the kind of sacred rage we need—grief transmuted into clarity, not as nostalgia for a broken past but as fuel for building something just. Thank you for naming the fatal flaw so clearly. The Constitution was a compromise with injustice from the beginning, and clinging to it as scripture only guarantees more suffering. We don’t need to restore the ruins—we need to compost them. May what was rotten fertilize the soil of what could be holy.