S3 E2 Constitution-Making in America with Sanford Levinson

S3 E6 SYSTEM CORRUPTION with Camila Vergara_Part 1

Welcome to another episode of the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast. I want to begin today with a passage that has been sitting with me for some time. It comes from the Swiss scholar Pascal Lottaz, host of the Neutrality Studies podcast, in his March 2026 introduction to an interview with the political scientist Dr. Aaron Good. Lottaz opened that conversation this way. "Crime in the United States is not a bug; it's a feature. That actually explains a lot also about its illegal foreign policies. The US as a political entity is deeply intertwined with crime syndicates and explicitly illegal acts under international and local law. Epstein was not at all an exception. These shady dealers are part and parcel of how US politics works." Good's argument, in brief, is this. After the Second World War, the United States built what he calls a "tripartite state" — the public democratic state we learn about in civics class, the national-security state of the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, and, behind both of them, a deep state that he defines as an obscured, dominant, supranational source of antidemocratic power. That deep state, he argues, did not emerge from any constitutional design. It emerged from the pursuit of empire — from a postwar project that required, in his words, an endless exception to the rule of law in order to function. That's quite a diagnosis. And it is a powerful one. But it leaves an obvious question hanging. If the rot is structural, what do we do about it? That question is what brings me to today's guest. Dr. Camila Vergara is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Research and Innovation at the Essex Business School at the University of Essex. She is the editor of Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, and the author of Systemic Corruption: Constitutional Ideas for an Anti-Oligarchic Republic, published by Princeton University Press. Where Aaron Good gives us a forensic account of how the American state has been hollowed out by elite criminality, Camila Vergara takes a longer view. Drawing on Machiavelli, Condorcet, Rosa Luxemburg, and Hannah Arendt, she argues that the corruption we are describing is not a recent betrayal of an otherwise sound design — it is the predictable trajectory of representative government itself. Republics, she contends, decay into oligarchies. They always have. And the question is not whether the United States is corrupt, but whether the constitutional architecture we inherited contains the tools to push back against that decay — or whether we need to build new ones. Her answer, of course, is the latter. She proposes what she calls plebeian institutions — a network of local assemblies, independent of parties and government, designed to give ordinary people a permanent, structural check on the power of the few. Today, we are going to walk through that argument. We will talk about how she defines systemic corruption, why she thinks reform from within is unlikely to be enough, what plebeian power could actually look like in twenty-first century America, and whether the U.S. Constitution — as it stands — is part of the cure or part of the disease. Dr. Camila Vergara, it is a pleasure to have you on the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast. Welcome to the conversation. Quick Links SYSTEM CORRUPTION by Camila Vergara https://a.co/d/0eEmbDAF [https://a.co/d/0eEmbDAF] Pascal Lottaz, Neutrality Studies: https://youtu.be/WjgvH8xCbv4?si=gjQVXmbCbwhk3al1 [https://youtu.be/WjgvH8xCbv4?si=gjQVXmbCbwhk3al1] YouTube: https://youtu.be/0KUlGYE6apw [https://youtu.be/0KUlGYE6apw]

S3 E5 The Model Constitutional Convention with Dr. Stefanie Lindquist

Welcome to another episode of the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast. In this episode, I will be exploring one of the most important and timely questions facing our country today: What would it look like if Americans were to rethink the Constitution? For a long time, the thought of holding a constitutional convention has been dismissed by most Americans, something debated by historians and legal scholars, perhaps, but rarely engaged in by ordinary citizens. Recently, that conversation has begun to emerge. Across the country, citizens are asking deeper questions about whether the political system we inherited is capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century.  Stephanie Lindquist serves as the Nickerson Dean and professor of law at Washington University School of Law.  She is also the founder of the Model Constitutional Convention.  In May 2026, in St. Louis, this groundbreaking initiative will bring together participants from more than 80 universities across the country. Modeled on the Article 5 process of the US Constitution, the convention is designed to simulate national deliberations over our most basic law.   Beyond these deliberations, there is a growing national conversation concerning real-world constitutional reform.  Organizations like Unify USA, Braver Angels, Better Together America,  CELDF, Alliance for Democracy, Citizens Take Action, and many more are drafting their own amendments, forming their own citizen assemblies, and considering the possibility of calling for a popular national convention.  Thomas Jefferson once suggested that each generation should have the opportunity to reconsider the constitutional framework under which it lives. If that is true, this moment may represent an opportunity, especially for younger generations, to help shape what comes next.  The Model Constitutional Convention is an attempt to explore these questions in a serious, thoughtful, and constructive way. In this conversation, Stephanie Lindquist explains how the project began, how delegates will develop their proposals, what kinds of ideas are emerging, and how everyday Americans can follow along. Stefanie, it's a pleasure to have you on the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast. Welcome to the conversation.

S3 E4 Movement Building with Ben Price

When people talk about democracy in America, we often focus on elections… on candidates… on the latest headlines coming out of Washington. But the deeper question—the one that shapes everything—is this: Who actually holds power in our society? Is it the people? Is it our communities? Or is it wealth… concentrated power… and institutions that were never designed to answer to ordinary citizens? Today’s episode is all about movement building. Not the kind of movement-building calling for protests or boycotts. Not the kind of movement building that fades when yet another crisis emerges …But the kind of movement building that reshapes the legal and political foundations of our society. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, or CELDF, has been at the forefront of a remarkable experiment in democracy. An experiment that asks a simple but radical question: What if communities had the legal authority to defend their own environment… their own health… and their own future? Ben Price serves as the National Education Director at CELDF, where he has spent more than two decades helping communities organize, learn, and take action. He has mentored local leaders across the country as they developed ordinances asserting community rights and the legal rights of ecosystems. His book, How Wealth Rules the World: Saving Our Communities and Freedoms from the Dictatorship of Property, examines how modern law has evolved to prioritize property and wealth over democracy and community self-government. The book earned the Independent Publishing Award’s Silver Medal in Finance, Investment, and Economics, and it has sparked important conversations about the relationship between law, economics, and democratic power. What makes Ben’s work especially important for our conversation today is that he doesn’t just analyze problems. He works directly with communities trying to solve them. Communities asking: How do we organize? How do we build durable movements? How do ordinary people reclaim authority over decisions that affect their land, water, and future? And perhaps most importantly, how do we build movements that are strong enough to challenge systems that have been in place for generations? These are exactly the kinds of questions we need to explore if we are serious about creating a more democratic constitutional order in America. Constitutions don’t change simply because people write some ideas down on a piece of paper. They change when movements emerge that are powerful enough to demand something better for everyone. Ben Price has spent years helping communities wrestle with the practical realities of movement building—what works, what doesn’t, and what it really takes to transform political power from the ground up. Today, we’re going to talk about organizing… democracy… and the long road toward structural change. Ben, welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast. LINKS: https://celdf.org/ https://celdf.org/resources/multimedia/ https://celdf.org/resources/blog/ https://celdf.substack.com/

S3 E3 Confronting the Climate Emergency with Dr. Peter Carter

S3 E3 Confronting the Climate Emergency with Dr. Peter Carter Nov 24, 2025 Welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast. Dean of Law at UC Berkeley, including UC Berkeley Dean of Law Erwin Chemerinsky, Sanford Levinson, George Van Cleve, and many others have been calling for constitutional reform for a long time. They say we will not solve the Climate Emergency until we change our now-outdated and dangerous Constitution. Climate scientists, more than most political scientists, understand our climate is in serious trouble, and governments are failing to address the gathering threat of global warming. Johan Rockstrom, Michael Mann, David Suzuki, James Hansen, and Paul Beckwith foresee a pretty grim future for humanity. The chronology of climate-related unnatural disasters is rapidly escalating. Unprecedented Crime, by Dr. Peter Carter and Elizabeth Woodworth, is a rich, legally grounded indictment of our government's failure to act. Peter is concerned, and like many, getting more concerned every day. I want to understand his frustration over the failure of government to respond to this unprecedented crime, and to discuss his thoughts on game changers for survival.  Confronting the Climate Emergency with Dr. Peter Carter takes listeners deep into the link between ecological collapse and political malfeasance. From David Suzuki’s call for a climate revolution, to COP 30 in Brazil, people are struggling for answers. This episode asks the hardest question of all: Can we confront the climate emergency before it is too late? Dr. Carter and I explore the crime scene, the power of citizen action, the technologies shaping our future, and the necessity of constitutional reform in this episode of the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast. Because democracy, like all living things, must evolve—or perish. I hope you get a lot out of this episode

S3 E2 Constitution-Making in America with Sanford Levinson

Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast. Today, I will be talking with Sanford Levinson. Levinson is the W. St John Garwood and W St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law. He teaches Law at both Harvard and the University of Texas Law School in Austin. Sanford is the author of over 450 articles and book reviews, and seven books, including Our Undemocratic Constitution, Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance, and Democracy and Dysfunction. Sanford is an early proponent of replacing our Constitution with a more democratic one, and for several good reasons; he knows more about our outdated and increasingly dangerous Constitution than almost anyone in America. I first interviewed Sanford in May of 2022, at which time he offered to come back to talk about his experience with the Democracy Journal project to draft a new model constitution for the United States.  Levinson chaired the project, calling upon several prominent legal scholars to contribute to the contents and style of this ambitious document. My hope is that this conversation might shed some light on the process and pitfalls of constitution-making in America, as we uncover some of the challenges even the best of planners have encountered. You may not know that in 2020, the National Constitution Center had also commissioned the drafting of three new models, each reflecting the values and goals of three very different worldviews. Specifically, these models were designed to reflect a Progressive, Libertarian, and Conservative worldview.  None of these models got much attention. In Sandford's own words, they just fell flat. Apparently, the American public had no interest, and the media graciously obliged by ignoring the whole thing. Was it the process, the results, or American hubris that led to the failure to engage the American psyche in the deliberations, or was there a deeper, and even more concerning problem?  I began our conversation by asking Sanford why no one had simply proposed to draft a more democratic model.  Outro Persuading the people that a convention is thinkable should be easy in a democracy. After all, that's what democracies are based on. I can think of a lot of things that are more unthinkable than a convention, like what our world will look like in a post-3-degree world. Tune in next time for a heated discussion about the failure of government to confront the Climate Emergency, with Dr Peter Carter, climate scientist and founder of the Climate Emergency Institute. This conversation is about to heat up!