Dr. Paul Street presents: “Reflections on the Authoritarian Absurdity of the U.S. Constitution and Why it Matters Today.”

The Following Alternate Location Has Been Scheduled For This OUL Event:

Join Open University of the Left on Saturday March 23 at 2:30 pm at the Logan Square Branch of the Chicago Public Library 3030 W. Fullerton Ave. Chicago, (Cross Street Sacramento) free parking, wheelchair accessible (Bus route: 74 Fullerton, Blue Line: Logan Square)

The nation is already descending into yet another preposterous, precisely time-staggered quadrennial major party big money candidate-centered electoral extravaganza—one that could very well re-elect an aspiring fascist leader to the imperial presidency. It is an apt moment to reflect on the all-too-rarely noted problem that the United States is authoritarian by constitutional design. U.S. politics and policy are poisoned beyond all democratic recognition by an explicitly anti-egalitarian charter drafted and passed by 18th Century slaveholders and merchant capitalists for whom popular sovereignty was the ultimate nightmare. Street will discuss how U.S. politics and policy are badly distorted by the nation’s exceptionally durable charter and how we might finally and productively stop playing “Simon Says” with militant anti-democrats like Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.

Paul Street is an independent radical-democratic policy researcher, teacher, journalist, historian, author and speaker
based in Iowa City Iowa and Chicago, Illinois. He has authored seven books to date and essays and commentaries have appeared in a wide variety of media venues such as CounterPunch, Truthdig, Black Agenda Report, the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and CNN to name only a few.

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