As part of the Hoover Institution’s ongoing USA@250 celebration of the founding of the American republic, a live GoodFellows episode recorded on the campus of Stanford University focusing on the US Constitution – in tech terms, America’s “operating system”. Goodfellows regulars Sir Niall Ferguson, John Cochrane and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster discuss the root causes of the American Revolution (taxation without representation, though the Scottish-born panelist contends the colonists in fact had a “fantastic deal”), the Constitution’s underlying principles (recognizing but not granting rights), why a document that’s more “machinery” than “visionary” in its design has stood the test of time, plus whether several provisions within the original framework and its 27 amendments (presidential eligibility, gun rights, “birthright citizenship”) need updating a world the Founding Fathers couldn’t imagine.
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