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The theme of this series is that the United States Constitution is a good instrument of government, worthy of defense. It is not perfect, of course, but perfection is unattainable in government. To borrow a concept from James Madison, men are not angels and thus are incapable of designing a flawless constitution. So, we should appreciate a constitution that works as well as ours does.But this does not require conservatives to reject any and all alterations to the constitutional regime. Indeed, the Constitution has been amended some 27 times, and most of these amendments have been for the better. That raises the question: When and how should conservatives support amendments to the Constitution? This report will present general rules that can serve as a framework for conservatives to evaluate whether to enact proposed amendments.

The purpose of this report series has been to defend the Constitution as an effective instrument of government. This is not to say we should be at all satisfied with the state of American politics. There is widespread agreement in the nation that the country's politics is in poor shape.Legislative inertia has emboldened the other branches to involve themselves more in the process of governance, distorting the Constitution's original vision, which had made Congress paramount. Presidents effectively legislate through executive action, and the courts peer at statutory language written half a century ago to resolve today's conflicts. Meanwhile, Congress does practically nothing.This dysfunction has prodded many on the left to call for fundamental changes to the Constitution. They argue, following in Woodrow Wilson's footsteps some 120 years ago, that our instrument of government is too old and obsolete. It must be updated—altered to fit the exigencies of the present crisis. Power is too dispersed, numerical majorities are not empowered to govern, and the result is aimlessness and drift.In the previous report in this series, I suggested circumstances in which constitutional amendments may be prudent. But everything depends on the goal of such changes. Is it to make it easier for the Constitution to facilitate consensus? Or is the ambition to tear down existing structures to empower majorities to govern in the absence of consensus? Oftentimes, it seems as though contemporary critics are more animated by the latter than the former.

The Constitution undoubtedly was, in its origins, a racist document. It recognized the continued enslavement of African Americans and granted slaveholders political and legal advantages above what owners of other property enjoyed. The Civil War Amendments removed these defects from the Constitution, and the civil rights legislation of the postwar era has in many respects made good on those promises. Nonetheless, some progressive critics of the Constitution see racism embedded much more deeply in the document and argue these changes have not been sufficient. This report attempts to examine what is the appropriate conservative response—not just regarding progressive's critiques but the general view that, while the racist parts of the text of the Constitution may have been done away with, it still possesses a racist subtext that demands sweeping reform.

In June 2016, the people of Great Britain shocked the world and permanently altered the international landscape by voting in a popular plebiscite to leave the European Union by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent. That vote set off a chain reaction that ultimately swept out two British prime ministers—David Cameron and Theresa May—until finally Prime Minister Boris Johnson brokered a deal with the European Union to secure Britain's economic and political independence from the continent.Such a quick turnaround could never happen in the United States. The British system as it has evolved over the past 200 years is effectively a unicameral system, in which the people rule through the House of Commons. This is what enabled such decisive action: The Commons set the plebiscite, the majority spoke through it, and thereafter, the Commons pursued Brexit until it was achieved. In our system, not only does no single institution have such sweeping power, but such a narrow, 52–48 majority in a single election is also rarely sufficient to bring about decisive change. Instead, our system of government, as was described in the previous report in this series, is premised on the idea of consensus, whereby the government usually takes action only when it is approved (or at least not objected) by a wide, large, and deliberate majority, expressed consistently after multiple elections.As the title of this series no doubt implies, our constitutional system of government has substantial benefits. But there are also significant costs. To make a comprehensive case for the Constitution, we must recognize and assess the costs of consensus. That is the subject of this report.Generally speaking, the burden of consensus prevents the government from acting expeditiously. This creates three specific problems. First, policy outcomes are often inefficient, as bargains have to be struck with factions to garner support. Second, the demands of consensus make it more difficult to address public problems

In the previous entry in this series, the author enumerated the main disadvantages of a government premised on consensus, emphasizing the difficulty of expeditious action. Whenever justice or the general welfare requires the government to change policy quickly, a government like the American Constitution will perform less ably than one like the modern Britain system. When weighed against the main virtue of a system based on consensus—namely, reducing self-interested factional policymaking—a bit of an impasse appears. We seem to be left to pick our poison: a government that is reasonably fair but grossly inefficient or one that is expeditious and potentially unjust. However, consensus holds a decisive advantage as the foundation of our government because it is a necessary condition for holding together a nation as large and diverse as the United States.

In the Donald Trump era, progressives have taken their ire out on not only the former president and the Republican Party but also the Constitution. The progressive critique of the Constitution suggests a fair question: How would a conservative case for the Constitution look?This series of reports intends to encourage conservatives to think through the progressive arguments and formulate a response. It will help us better understand our own views, identify legitimate progressive criticisms, and perhaps devise solutions to existing problems in our system of government.

In the second report in this series, the author posited that consensus was the central premise of the American system of government—as opposed to alternatives such as simple majoritarianism or a government of mixed estates.Before reviewing consensus' advantages and disadvantages, it is important to examine how the Constitution forces factions in society to bargain with one another. Some of these are familiar to students of American politics from James Madison's explanations in the Federalist Papers. His notion of the extended republic in theory secures consensus through the nation's size and diversity. America would be too large for any single group to dominate, forcing factions to find common ground. Madison's theory of checks and balances, discussed in Federalist 51, has a similar effect on the agents in government: They will not be able to accumulate undue powers for themselves, because each can check the others. They will have to work together if they want to enact policies.While Madison forcefully advocated for consensus, he was far from the only one. Many of Madison's opponents at the Constitutional Convention worried that his proposals would not do enough to forge consensus in the political community. Their concerns are partly responsible for the federal nature of the American system. Moderate nationalists from small states—such as John Dickinson of Delaware and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut—agreed with Madison that the national government had to grow more powerful. But they worried that Madison's idea of the extended republic would not prevent dangerous majorities from forming. Thus, the Senate, in which each state receives exactly two votes, was created to protect smaller states and further ensure that public policy receives broad support. Likewise, the efforts to limit the scope of national power made common ground easier by limiting the scope of conflict in federal politics.

The United States federal government is a complicated system of interlocking branches, widely dispersed powers, and confusing lines of authority. No other feature of the American system has attracted more criticism. During the ratification debates of 1787–88, Anti-Federalist critics of the Constitution complained that it was overcomplicated, too difficult for the average person to understand, and thus likely to be dominated by economic and social elites. They believed republics should be simple in design so the people can exercise their sovereignty. Progressives such as Woodrow Wilson offered similar critiques from the end of the 19th century into the early 20th century. Progressives in the 21st century echo these older grievances when they talk about how the Constitution, through its intricate array of checks and balances, thwarts "democracy."As it is, none of the Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in defense of the Constitution, offer a comprehensive response to this critique. "Publius," the nom de plume they used to publish the essays, focuses on the need for a national union and then a more detailed defense of particular governmental institutions—as these were the main critiques leveled by the opponents to the Constitution in 1787–88.One may be forgiven, therefore, in thinking that the whole of the Constitution is less than the sum of its parts and that there is not an underlying logic that animates the creation of not just a national union but also this specific form of a union. However, there is a unifying principle to the constitutional system, one grounded in the framers' particular understanding of republican government. The system is purposeful in its demand that consensus among the people be achieved before government action. In that way, the Constitution reduces the chances that the government is corrupted into a majoritarian tyranny.

This report traces the antiestablishment roots of populism, arguing that it is a manifestation of the principal problem inherent to representative government. In the Anglo-American political universe, it first appeared in the early 18th century in the ways the Country Whigs modified the English Commonwealth tradition to attack the economic policies of Robert Walpole. Migrating to America after the Seven Years' War, it manifested itself in the Anti-Federalist opposition to the Constitution, Jeffersonian complaints about Hamiltonian economics, and Jacksonian democracy. In all these instances, populist antiestablishment sentiment envisioned a kind of conspiracy of the wealthy, well-born, and connected to hijack republican government, denying the rightful rule of the people and ensconcing the elite in permanent power. As industrial capitalism facilitated vast inequalities of wealth and power, the ancient anxieties have been notably persistent—such as the agrarian Populists and Bull Moose Progressives, the George Wallace phenomenon, and finally the tea party and Trump movement. While the complaints of each faction are different in the specifics, the underlying grievance, that the privileged few have interfered with the connection between the people and their elected leaders, has been notably consistent.