At Law & Liberty, Charles Kesler (Claremont McKenna – Government): America’s Constitutional Crisis (responding to Shep Melnick's review of Professor Kesler's book). From the introduction:
Law & Liberty turned over a lot of space (“Claremont’s Constitutional Crisis,” March 29) to Shep Melnick’s review of my recent book. I wish he had made better use of it. Looking over the dozen pieces he has written for me over the years at the Claremont Review of Books, I find a sobriety and balance that he seemed to misplace in this one.
Perhaps it’s because he can’t help illustrating the thesis of Crisis of the Two Constitutions even as he deprecates it: that American politics grows embittered because it is increasingly torn between two rival constitutions, cultures, and accounts of justice. At any rate, I shall return the favor by asking Law & Liberty for considerable space myself.
…
[Melnick's] argument is threefold: (1) there are “serious flaws in the American regime” that I ignore; (2) the influence of “progressive historicism” is not as baneful as I claim; and most dramatically, (3) the book as a whole “constructs a narrative that encourages anti-constitutional extremism” à la Trump. The three are connected. Because I have too high an opinion of the founding, Melnick asserts, I take too negative a view of progressivism, and end up imagining a crisis where none exists—thereby helping actually to create one.
Professor Kesler's book is Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise, Decline, and Recovery of American Greatness (Encounter Books 2021).
Posted at 6:38 AM