Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

joining me on today's show is Charles Kessler. Charles is the Dangler-Dythma Distinguished

Professor at Claremont Mechanic College of Government in California. He's a senior fellow at the

Claremont Institute, and he's the editor of their fantastic quarterly, The Claremont Review of Books,

which I read from cover to cover whenever a copy lands in my mailbox. He's speaking with me today,

however, to talk about his powerful new book, Crisis of the Two Constitutions, The Rise, Decline,

and Recovery of American Great greatness. It's published by

encounter, and it's on sale now. So, Charles, thanks very much for joining us. Thank you, Brian.

It's a great pleasure to be here, editor to editor. Yes. And I'm a great admirer of City Journal,

the wonderful quarterly you edit.

So we're actually quarterly to quarterly, as it were.

Yes, yes, that's right.

Well, I'd love to get into this book, which I'm, you know, just finishing up today.

I think it's a really terrific volume.

It's a kind of wonderful overview of American political history,

of some of the key issues that we're facing in the country in the 21st century.

And it's written in this kind of clear and luminous prose.

So I really recommend it to all of our listeners. So let me start off with just a basic question. Your book describes an America that's divided between two different

visions of the nation and its past and future and two very different approaches to understanding

the Constitution. On one side is to understanding the constitution.

On one side is the founder's constitution, as you call it,

and then on the other,

...