8/19/2024

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal features a notable news item from the Jack Miller Center: Jack Miller has been awarded The American Legion’s prestigious Distinguished Service Medal. Mr. Miller is receiving the award “for his outstanding philanthropic contributions and unwavering commitment to advancing American citizenship and education.” In a statement upon receiving the award, Mr. Miller said, “I am humbled to accept this award on behalf of both myself and The Jack Miller Center, from one of the finest civic organizations representing our nation’s veterans.” A May 2024 resolution describes Miller’s civics and entrepreneurial work over the course of decades as being “consistent with the principles, purposes and traditions of the award.” “Miller’s successful business career and investment in strengthening America’s youth were highlighted as key factors in the decision.” Miller will be recognized in person during The American Legion’s annual convention held in New Orleans on August 27, 2024.

At Law & Liberty, David Lewis Schaefer reviews the latest book from the famed legal theorist Erwin Chemerinsky, who faults the Constitution for not being more democratic. Schaefer argues that far from the Constitution’s compromises with slavery being the product of an immoral group of white men as Chemerinsky posits, the founders universally “regarded slavery as an intolerable evil, which they hoped would disappear within the foreseeable future.” Quite simply, “getting voters in the heavily slave-owning states to agree to ratification required making certain compromises.” Coming to Chemerinsky’s main critique of the Constitution, Schaefer notes “that the Founders aimed to establish a system in which the people’s ‘deliberate sense,’ rather than passing whims or uninformed snap judgments, would govern us.” The founders’ ultimate aim was “to protect liberty and promote prudence through deliberation”—not simply promote a degraded, pure majoritarianism. All told, Schaefer argues that a broadside against the Constitution like Chemerinsky’s is clarifying in that it lays out in clear detail that a certain influential group of progressives have little love for America’s system of government.