This is The Ben Shapiro Show. It's an honor and a pleasure to have on George Will.

He writes a twice-weekly syndicated column on politics, domestic, and foreign affairs for the Washington Post. He's been writing since 74. Received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1977. He has a brand new book out that is a compendium of many of the columns he's written over the years. George, thanks so much for joining the show. Really appreciate it. Glad to be with you. So let's talk about the state of all things, since that's really what your book is about over the course of the last several decades. I know that the Constitution seems to have gone largely by the wayside in all of our political conversations these days. But what strikes me always when people on both sides talk about the Constitution is the specific

focus on the Bill of Rights and the complete lack of focus to the actual structural underlying

constitution. And it's that structural underlying constitution that seems to be most in danger

to me. And it also seems to be the thing that people care the least about these days.

Well, you're quite right. First of all, to my strict constructionist friends, Constitution Day is unconstitutional because

they can't find any enumerated power justifying this.

But beyond that, as you know, the framers in Philadelphia did not include a bill of rights,

largely because they argued that the structure of the Constitution itself, including the idea of enumerative powers, was such that,

it would be unnecessary to have a Bill of Rights.

And furthermore, once they said, once you begin to enumerate the rights we have, where do you stop?

Do we have a right to wear a hat? Yes, but do we have to put that in the Bill of Rights?

And they thought it might disparage other rights, hence the Ninth Amendment. But you're quite right. The big problem today isn't the enforcement of the Bill of Rights, although there are

a problem with that. It is the utter disequilibrium that's been injected into the Constitution

by the administrative state,

Congress giving away its powers.

People carelessly say, oh, the president is usurping powers.

Well, if only presidents had to usurp them, the legislature is all too glad to hand them over

on a silver salver, thereby ducking responsibility for the actual governance of the United States.

And the executive branch itself then is encouraged by a too lackadaisical court,

too lackadaisical to enforce the non-delegation doctrine, saying that you cannot delegate essentially legislative powers to non-legislative bodies,

and also by being far too deferential under the Chevron doctrine and all the rest to administrative interpretations of the law, which are often vague.

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