A cogent, thoughtful argument about a topic that may be unfamiliar to many Americans.
The history and meaning of a problematic constitutional provision.
Feingold, a senator for nearly 20 years and president of the American Constitution Society, and attorney Prindiville examine Article V of the U.S. Constitution with the aim of provoking discussion about its “dangers and possibilities.” Article V, they explain, allows for changes to the Constitution by creating “a two-route amendment method,” by which amendments can be “proposed both bottom-up by the people of the states and top-down by Congress.” If two-thirds of states concur, they can apply to hold a convention to revise the Constitution, restructure elements of government, and create or limit constitutional rights. Such a convention has never been held, and only 27 amendments—out of more than 11,000 proposed in Congress—have been ratified. These, the authors note, “have advanced freedom, equality, and prosperity by strengthening federal power” and enabling government “to address new challenges.” The authors are alarmed, however, by far-right proponents who see Article V as a way to enact radical proposals, including “new state authority to veto federal laws, onerous federal spending limitations that would eviscerate most national policy, and a complete restructuring of the country’s lawmaking and regulatory powers.” Feingold and Prindiville acknowledge that success in enacting these proposals requires building “exceptionally mature, cross-group coalitions and well-funded, savvy advocacy efforts to secure the support of thousands of state legislators and (sometimes) hundreds of congresspeople across a diverse political terrain. Such advocacy is hard, expensive, and can take decades. Most movements cannot do it.” Nevertheless, in an increasingly partisan political atmosphere, the possibility exists, and the authors find that Article V “provides inadequate guardrails to foster and guide the dialogue of constitutional change and places ultimate constitutional authority in the hands of institutions too far removed from the popular will.” The authors argue convincingly that Article V needs revision, and they recommend the establishment of a bipartisan congressional commission dedicated to assuring citizens’ power.
A cogent, thoughtful argument about a topic that may be unfamiliar to many Americans.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5417-0152-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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