Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise, Decline, and Recovery of American Greatness

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American politics grows embittered because it is increasingly torn between two rival constitutions, two opposed cultures, two contrary ways of life. American conservatives rally around the founders' Constitution, as amended, and as grounded in the natural and divine rights and duties of the Declaration of Independence. American liberals herald thei

Reviews

Charles Kesler is one of Americas foremost conservative intellectuals, and in this hard-hitting, thought-provoking but witty analysis of the United States present discontents he reminds us why. His laser-like pinpointing of the profound dichotomy between the Founders constitution and the Progressivists constitution explains much of what ails America today, but it also provides the key to the way out, when people recognize how profoundly superior the former is to the latter.Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny

Despite its conceits of bow-tied eccentricity and rugged individualism, American conservatism too often traffics in lockstep groupthink: Never Trumpers mechanically affirm the idol of Reagan while MAGA boosters indiscriminately applaud Trumps celebrity. What these bitterly opposed factions share is a disregard for the substance of the problems we face a candid acknowledgment of which was the key achievement of Trumps revolutionary 2016 campaign. Charles Kesler is one of the few conservatives to transcend the factionalism that distracts us from our problems. He ably connects the legacy of conservative thought to the situation of the present, and he does it with wit and good cheer. This volume is an essential corrective for our desperately distracted time.Peter Thiel, entrepreneur, investor, and author of Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Almost any one of the thousands of paragraphs herein could be the subject of a three-hour seminar that would seem to pass in an instant. The book traces an elegant arc beginning with the deepest, most erudite Constitutional philosophy and ending with brilliant, novel, and profound political analysis. All the while, it is historically authoritative, cool, balanced, and witty. Herein you will find striking revelations about the deepest and most complicated roots of the American experiment, as well as masterful, often magisterial, historical and contemporary political analysis. No one loves the Constitution more than Charles Kesler, except perhaps James Madison. Mark Helprin

Author Bio

Charles R. Kesler is editor of the Claremont Review of Books and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. He is the Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, the author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism, and the coeditor, with William F. Buckley, Jr., of Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought. His edition of The Federalist Papers is the best-selling one in the country. In 2017, Politico magazine named Kesler to its annual Politico 50 list of the key thinkers, doers, and visionaries who are reshaping American politics and policy, and in 2018 the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation awarded him a Bradley Prize.