Peaceful Political Revolution in America

S3 E3 Confronting the Climate Emergency with Dr. Peter CarterzNov 24, 2025Welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast.Dean of Law at UC Berkeley, 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 They say we will not solve the Climate Emergency until we change our now-outdated and dangerous Constitution.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 Henson, 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, from Bill Gates’ inequality blind spot to the visionaries behind the Venus Project, 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 constitutional reform in this episode of the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast. Because democracy, like all living things, must evolve—or perish.

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. OutroPersuading 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!

Welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast. I’ve been on a kind of sabbatical this past year. So much has happened, and I really needed to take the time to explore some of the major developments which, in several important ways, relate directly to the issue of our Constitution.The first was the issue of UAP disclosure. In a stunning announcement, members of Congress revealed that UAPs have most certainly been retrieved and reverse-engineered by our own government—in secret, with the cooperation of a handful of very significant, and very private aerospace corporations. This revelation is profoundly significant, especially as it relates to government transparency and public accountability.Emerging from that conversation was a broader discussion about the nature of reality itself. It turns out that what we call “reality” is not as concrete as we once believed. Quantum entanglement, quantum fields, gravitic propulsion, consciousness, telepathy—all these topics have profound implications for humanity, which led me to reflect on the kind of society we are, and the kind of society we might become as we enter the 21st century.Our current systems—economic, political, and ecological—are literally collapsing before our eyes. We are entering a profound transformation. As futurist Peter Leyden has often stated, we are in a period of system collapse which will give birth to entirely new systems—ones that could enable us all to create a better world. What and how these next systems arise, requires us to understand something about the nature of change. That is why I thought it would be a good time to talk to Ben Manski.Ben studies the participation of ordinary people in the deliberate constitution of their societies. His work encompasses social movements, law, politics, climate and ecology, technology, and corporations, focusing on democracy, constitutionalism, and system change.  Manski  practiced public interest law for 8 years and managed national nonprofit organizations, direct action campaigns, and political campaigns, and parties for 25 years. Dr. Manski is an assistant professor of public sociology and director of Next System Studies involving research into the relationships between, systemic crisis, system design, social movements, and American constitutionalism. https://libertytreefoundation.org/https://www.benmanski.com/https://nextsystem.gmu.edu/abouthttps://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1362848/full

Welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America PodcastThe Anthropocene will be a doozy from what I'm hearing. Even if new technologies and new systems replace the ones currently falling apart, it will be a bumpy ride. It looks as if severe climate-related events will be occurring much more frequently. Monthly events could turn into weekly events, until eventually, those might even become daily events somewhere in the world.Megatrends appear to be rather obvious at first glance. Autocracies are on the rise. Democracies are being tested. There is a genuine contest of political systems being played out on the global stage, Freedom is being contested. Is it even necessary? So how much better than being at the mercy of a tyrant or a mere autocrat? Maybe not, at least that's how it all appears to be going.Russia remains a shining example of what can go wrong in a constitutional democracy. After all, reforms were once a thing in Russia, political lines were actually shifting for a brief moment in time. But then Putin rose to power, with imperialist ambitions, and a desire for supreme power and wealth. Corruption is not foreign to the former USSR. It runs rampant, and the concentration of wealth in Russia today is as bad if not worse as in the US.Inequality remains a serious problem in the world, regardless of the political system. For the vast majority of human beings, daily life is a struggle, while a small if not tiny fraction of society remains engorged on the fat of excess of wealth and power, mobility, and security.Alexander joined the Department of International Relations at Central European University in 2022. He previously taught at the European University Institute at Florence (2013-2022), the University of Cambridge (2004-2013), and the European University at St Petersburg (1999-2004). His current interests are the political aspects of the Anthropocene, global decarbonization, and security in Eastern Europe. A Fellow of King’s College Cambridge, Etkind was the Leader of Memory at War: Cultural Dynamics in Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, a European research project (2010-13). He is the author of Eros of the Impossible. The History of Psychoanalysis in Russia (Westview Press 1996); Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience (Polity Press 2011); Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (Stanford University Press 2013); Roads not Taken. An Intellectual Biography of William C. Bullitt. (Pittsburgh University Press 2017); and Nature’s Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources (Polity Press 2021). Alexander coedited Remembering Katyn (Polity 2012), Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe (Palgrave 2013), and Cultural Forms of Protest in Russia (Routledge 2017). His new book, Russia Against Modernity, was released by Polity in April 2023.

Welcome back to the Peaceful Political Revolution in America podcast.In America, "We The People" are the constituent power, "the actor which always remains outside the government" as Seyes defined it. Or, as James Wilson put it, the people are simply "above" their Constitutions of government. The framers were well aware the people were watching. They were very clear the legitimacy of the government came from the consent of the governed. That is what made our framers revolutionaries, and why our Constitution is so remarkable. But, how do the people, if ever necessary,  improve or replace their constitutions of government? It is true the peaceful transfer of power is the hallmark of any democracy, however, even more significant is the peacefultransition from one political system to another. All the framers understood this would be necessary, sooner or later. After all, this was the revolutionary example they were leaving to posterity. It is a lesson we should not take for granted. As Americans, we should all take great pride in and be humbled by this achievement. Without the peaceful exercise of the right to establish, abolish, or simply improve our form of government, there is little left of our democracy.As Sergio Verdugo points out however, many kinds of political actors may have a motivation for co-opting this power and for using it to their own advantage. Nevertheless, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and according to Christian Fritz, the author of American Sovereigns, most Americans in the 18th century believed this power was the people's power, theirs alone to invoke. So, how and why could it be taken from them, even used against them?This question remains one of the most critical questions of our time, as more and more scholars and "political actors" begin to assert that our Constitution is broken, and should be changed if not entirely replaced. How that is done matters. People like Mark Levin and Donald Trump think we should be afraid of our government. “Stand back and stand by,” for now, but what happens tomorrow? They believe the deep state is the enemy, not the Constitution. They project a dystopian vision of our society, as do many liberals on the other fringe, and the control for power is far from over. If Americans think their political system has run amock, why are they not calling for a peaceful transition to a new and improved democracy? After all, this is what the framers did,  and it is how our democracy was intended to work.The question of legitimacy is the first and last question we must answer. Who has the power to alter and replace our basic law, and how does that power organize to express itself so that Americans might agree to establish a new constitution and replace our broken political system with one that works?In his recent op-ed in the NYTimes, Samuel Moyn and Ryan  Doerfler argue that our Constitution should not be reclaimed and that we should also reclaim America from what is referred to as constitutionalism. These ideas and these terms are not all that familiar to most Americans, yet they are the sort of ideas and words that may empower America to become a full and effective democracy.Samuel Moyn is Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University. He received a doctorate in modern European history from the University of California-Berkeley in 2000, and a law degree from Harvard University in 2001. He came to Yale from Harvard University, where he was Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law and Professor of History. Before this, he spent thirteen years in the Columbia University history department, where he was most recently James Bryce Professor of European Legal History.

In season one, I spoke with Arend Lijphart about democratic political systems. He had a number of recommendations on how Americans could improve our democracy if they really wanted to do. The question as always remains, how would Americans do that? I also spoke with George Van Cleve on his book, Making a New American Constitution. He had a pretty simple idea. Americans would form a national convention coordinating committee, for the purpose of raising funds for the endeavor, establishing the rules for the election of delegates, and perhaps setting guidelines for the convention itself. Ultimately, it would set a date for seating a convention to deliberate over a new constitution for the United States.As Madison so aptly put it back in 1787, "AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency* of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America.“ Those were weighty words then, but there was a palpable need to reform the political system. So, I thought we should talk a little bit more about Constituent Powers.Sergio Verdugo is an Assistant Professor of Law at the IE Law School, where he teaches Constitutional Law and Human Rights Law. He is also an editor of the International Journal of Constitutional Law and the Secretary General of the International Society of Public Law. Dr. Verdugo holds a doctorate in Law from the New York University School of Law and a Master’s Degree in Law from the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds a Master in Public Law from P. Universidad Católica de Chile, and I am very happy to have him here to talk about his recent papers on Constituent Powers and the uncertain future of Constitutional Democracy.*The original might have been" inefficacy" tho I might be mistaken. 

In the last episode, I talked with Juliano Benvindo about the similarities between the January 6th Capitol Insurrection and the more recent attack on all three branches of government in Brasilia. It turns out that Brazil has the greatest level of inequality in Latin America. Inequality in North America has also reached historic highs. It was bad enough that America had imported over 300,000 slaves from Africa. Brazil imported over 5 million. Inequality remains a serious problem for the 2 most populis Democracies in the Western Hemisphere, and that should alarm us all, especially when America is thought to be the leader of the free world. We might not think inequality is such a dangerous threat to our democracy when it is normalized by public policies, and an economic system based on profit, which is then reinforced by corporate donors and advertisers promoting a pretty lavish and carefree lifestyle. But, is it leading to the collapse of democracies around the world? Do Americans believe in equality anymore? I wanted to talk to someone who might give us a little insight into the history of inequality.  Frances Chiu completed her doctorate in English Literature at Oxford University and currently teaches literature and history at The New School in New York City. She is the author of The Routledge Guidebook to Paine’s Rights of Man (2020) and has written extensively for Occupy.com. She taught the first class in America devoted to Thomas Paine and his contemporaries, and she is currently completing her book on The History of English Inequality.I am happy to say that she is also the first woman to be on the podcast, and I am fully aware that's long overdue!

Events in America like the 2021 United States Capitol Insurrection are not unique to America. Brazil also suffered from a similar crisis on Jan 8, 2023. The attack there, on all three branches of government in Brasilia, was largely the result of the former president's insistence the election had been rigged. His supporters believed him, and although he lost by almost 2 million votes, the crowds turned out to overturn the election, in much the same way Trump supporters did on Jan 6, 2021.I thought we should have a look at what's going on in Brazil and take a deeper dive into Brazil's constitution for a sense of what is driving the rise of populism in Brazil. The United States and Brazil enjoy broad political and economic relations. Brazil is the second most populus democracy in the Western Hemisphere, and the world’s twelfth-largest economy. The United States is Brazil’s second-largest trading partner, second only to China.It may surprise some of you to find out both the United States and Brazil are considered “flawed democracies," but there are differences. Whereas the promise of democracy in America is considered to be our birthright, Brazil has had to overcome a monarchy, as well as a dictatorship established by a military coup, which was supported by the United States and then president John F. Kennedy. That dictatorship lasted 21 years, until Feb 1, 1987 when a popular constituent assembly composed of elected representatives of the several political parties in Brazil, drafted a new democratic constitution, which was then formally ratified in 1988.  Juliano Zaiden Benvindo is Professor of Constitutional Law and Head of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies at the University of Brasília. He is also a fellow at the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and Capes-Humboldt Senior Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany. His books include: On the Limits of Constitutional Adjudication; The Rule of Law in Brazil, The Legal Construction of Inequality; and, Constitutional Change and Transformation in Latin America, co-authored by Richard Albertand Carlos Bernal.

Welcome to the Peaceful Political Revolution in American Podcast.In Season 1 Episode 2  last year, I spoke with Professor Emeritus of Democracy & Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Harvey J. Kaye. He is an award-winning author and editor of 18 books on history and politics -including Take Hold of Our History: Make America Radical Again and FDR on Democracy.  In S1 E2, we talked about his book Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. He's a really gifted speaker and a real pleasure to talk to.  At that time, Harvey suggested he come back for another conversation, this time about FDR's Economic Bill of Rights.  I'm really happy to say that that conversation has finally arrived. In addition, we will be joined by his friend, activist, and Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America, Alan Minsky. Alan is a lifelong activist, who has worked as a progressive journalist for the past two decades. He was the Program Director at KPFK in Los Angeles from 2009-2018. He also has coordinated Pacifica Radio’s national coverage of elections. Before that, Alan was one of the founders of LA Indymedia. He is the creator and producer of the political podcasts for The Nation and Jacobin Magazine, as well as a contributor to Commondreams and Truthdig.Alan’s activism began in college with union solidarity work and opposition to US involvement in Central America. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Alan was active in the counter-globalization and media democracy movements. In 2011, he began organizing for Occupy Wall Street in the months leading up to the occupation of Zuccotti Park. Alan began working with PDA in 2014.This country has seen its share of opulence and struggle. But what about its share of democracy? We live in an era, not unlike the Gilded Age, which flourished from 1877 to 1900. The Gilded Age was marked by extreme concentrations of wealth and the rise of powerful industrial titans known as the Robber Barons; men like Jay Gould, JP Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie. Corruption, unprecedented immigration, and the concentration of wealth by the 1% were just a few of the things that characterized that period of American history. This explosion of economic prosperity for a few arose only 12 years after the Civil War, which raged between 1861 and 1865, and only a few months after Reconstruction which lasted until 1877. The Age of the Robber Barons or the "Gilded Age" was followed by a very different set of challenges, including events like WWI, which began in 1914 and ended in 1918. Along come the roaring twenties, then there was the Great Crash of 1929, and the Great Depression which lasted until 1939. In addition to all these hardships, Americans had to confront the Great Dust Bowl, from 1930 until 1936, caused by shortsighted federal land policies, changes in regional weather, and new mechanized farming techniques which led to the erosion of vital topsoil.FDR won the election to the New York State Senate in 1910 as a democrat and quickly became associated with the progressives of the party.  He was elected governor of New York in 1928 and again in 1930. He was first elected President in 1932. He was re-elected President in 1936, 1940, and once again in 1944. He died in office during his historic 4th term in office and is largely credited with bringing the United States out of the worst economic disaster America had ever faced, as well as a devastating World War.Harvey, Alan, it's an honor to be able to share your insights into FDR and as importantly, your proposal for a new Economic Bill of Rights. There's a lot to get into, but first, how are you doing?