This episode is the second half of my conversation with George William Van Cleve. Last week, we explored the chaos of the 1780s following the American Revolution, as told in Van Cleve’s 2017 book We Have Not a Government, and how the U.S. Constitution emerged as a last-ditch attempt to hold the country together. We then began discussing his follow-up, Making a New American Constitution (2020), which proposes not only that a new Constitution is necessary today but outlines how a modern constitutional convention might actually work.

Here we go deeper into the practical and political obstacles to such a convention—and why, in Van Cleve’s view, nothing else is equal to the scale of America's dysfunction. As he argues, the country’s most pressing problems didn’t begin with Trump and won’t end with him; they’re much older, and deeply embedded in the constitutional order itself.

If you’re new here, welcome; and if you’ve been listening a while, thanks—and please consider rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts to help others find it.

George William Van Cleve, A Slaveholders’ Union:  Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic (2010)

— We Have Not a Government: The Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution (2017)

— Making a New American Constitution (2020)

*** NOTE: I erroneously stated in the introduction to this episode that George William Van Cleve has taught at Georgetown University. In fact, he was a Dean’s Visiting Scholar from 2020-2025, but as a researcher, not a teacher.

Get full access to Think Back at www.thinkbackpod.com/subscribe