#1509 A Constitution for the Living with Beau Breslin

Listening to America

Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2022

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Clay Jenkinson speaks with Beau Breslin, author of A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation's Fundamental Law. The book examines an idea that Jefferson shared with James Madison in 1789: "What would America's Constitutions have looked like if each generation wrote its own?"

Books mentioned on this episode.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Good day, Thomas Jefferson, our podcast listeners. And thank you so much for listening.
0:04.8	Thank you to those of you who have decided to support the show. You can do so at JeffersonHour.com
0:11.2	Click on donate. There's a number of ways to do it. We really appreciate it.
0:14.6	While you're there, you can find out more about Clay's cultural tours. Everything he's got going on in and there's a lot there. Oh my, it's a rough
0:23.9	scattered hectic time in my life loving it. You've been saying that for two years. No longer.
0:30.0	10 how long we've been doing this 15 17 20 on to the show. This is the somebody permanent guest horse for a generation. Yeah. Yeah.
0:38.5	Did you say horse? I did. I met host host host.
0:42.7	I got free and slipper. Um, this is a really fun show. This one you did as a one on one
0:48.5	conversation. You're doing more of those and I love them. Um, it's really fun to go back and listen to them.
0:53.0	This was with Bo Brezland. He's an author. I'm going to leave it to you to read the title of his book.
0:59.0	It is a really interesting book called a constitution for the living.
1:03.3	Imagining how five generations of Americans would rewrite the nation's fundamental law. So it's in it's available. Yeah.
1:09.9	It's a Stanford University press. Get it from your local independent bookstore or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble and so on.
1:17.0	But here's what's so interesting about it. David, I saw the title and I thought that's interesting. So I ordered the book and read it and liked it a lot.
1:24.0	Then I thought I wonder if this guy Bo Brezland would submit to an interview.
1:29.8	So I contacted him and I said, you know, in my in kind of a Uriah heap way.
1:34.7	I said, I know how busy you must be and the end of the semester and so on.
1:39.4	But I would you be willing under any to be sit for an interview?
1:43.0	I'm like, Hey, I'm a big fan of the Jefferson hour. This is an honor. Let's do it.
1:46.8	And so I was so flabbergasted to think that he was great. That's great. That's great.
1:50.4	So and we hit it off because I believe that I believe strongly that we need national renewal that our constitution isn't it was not meant to be a suicide pact.
2:02.0	And then some ways it has become one. Yes. I mean, take the second amendment. Our constitution as suicide pack.
	...

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