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To respond to the challenging times we are living through, physician, humanitarian and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified “Revolutionary Optimism” as a new cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. Revolutionary Optimism is itself an infectious, contagious, self-created way of living and connecting with others on the path of love. Once you commit yourself as a Revolutionary Optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, #unify with others, and accelerate action for our collective repair, justice, and peace, always keeping love at the center.
[00:00:00] Announcer: Welcome to Revolutionary Optimism.
Issues like economic hardship, a teetering democracy and the worsening climate emergency have left many Americans feeling more despair than ever.
Fortunately, physician, humanitarian and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified “Revolutionary Optimism” as a new cure for that hopelessness and cynicism. Once you commit yourself as a Revolutionary Optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, #unify with others, and accelerate action for repair, justice, and peace.
On this podcast, Dr. Zeitz is working to provide you with perspectives from leaders fighting for equity, justice and peace on their strategies for overcoming adversity, and driving forward revolutionary transformation with optimism.
In this episode, Dr. Zeitz is talking with Osita Nwanevu.
Osita is a contributing editor at The New Republic, a columnist at The Guardian, and the Democratic Institutions fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He is a former staff writer at The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Slate, and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Harper’s Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, In These Times, Flaming Hydra, and Gawker.
His debut book, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, will be published by Random House in August 2025. In it, Osita makes the case that America doesn’t just need reform, it needs a reinvention, built on a democratic foundation for the 21st century.
Here’s your host, Dr. Paul Zeitz.
[00:01:37] Paul: Osita. Welcome to the Revolutionary Optimism Podcast. It's a great honor to have you here today. Thank you for joining.
[00:01:43] Osita: Yeah, thank you so, so much for having me.
[00:01:46] Paul: You're an amazing writer. I've had the honor to read your book and really dig into it. I've spent the last week immersing myself in your, synthesis.
It's a really profound tour de force, honestly, In that you really introduce concepts and definitions of democracy in a holistic, comprehensive way, and I really want to dig in on that. So congratulations on the new book, The Right of the People, and I strongly recommend that my listeners, take the time to read this book because it's very important for the times that we're living through right now, in my view.
So, ota, you're a, you're a top-notch, journalist and writer, and, I wanted you to start off with asking if you could help us make sense of this moment that we're living in. We're recording this at the end of July, 2025. We're seven months into what I call the Project 2025, movement, running the government.
Some people believe that we're in the midst of a authoritarian, takeover. The playbook is being implemented. I wanted to get your assessment of the moment that we're living in to give us the context for our discussion that we'll have about your book.
[00:03:06] Osita: Sure thing. Well, I think that assessment is correct.
I mean, I do think I'm one of the people who believes that we're now an a fascist administration and administration that has an authoritarian character, and we shouldn't really be surprised by that. I mean, that's the person Donald Trump has said he is openly, for many, many years now. He made promises about overturning certain things in the federal government, you know, moving, blowing past the rule of law that he's now fulfilling.
And so I think that, that the wildest, I think actually negative prediction people made in November or last year about what would happen have actually been surpassed to a large extent. I mean, I, I think that people were surprised, but to see people being taken off the streets in un into unmarked vans were being activists.
You know, I think people were surprised by the scope of what do Get was able to do in the federal government, just in the span of a couple of months. So we are living in a kind of, to my mind, worst case scenario, worst case version we could have expected from Donald Trump and should have expected from Donald Trump.
But I, I wrote the book because I think that democracy and the tensions around democracy and the threats of democracy, precede this moment considerably. So I've been working on covering American politics for about 10 years.
[00:04:19] Paul: Hmm.
[00:04:20] Osita: and I think basically throughout that entire time democracy has been a central issue.
Obviously, Donald Trump comes in during his first administration having won an electoral college victory while losing the popular vote. That's the second time that's happened. just in the last 25 years or so. I remember being in second grade during the 2000 election and absorbing how angry my parents were about that outcome, about Bush winning despite losing the popular vote.
I didn't really grasp all of the technical aspects of what was going on, but I, I did feel this basic sense of unfairness, like as I've carried with me into the present day. And so that, that was kind of how I read the first Trump election, that there's something fundamentally wrong with the system that allows us to happen in the first place.
And I think in the last decade too, obviously, in 2020, we saw efforts to overturn the free and fair election, that I think can reasonably be called a coup that culminated in an attack, an actual attack on our legislature. And I, I've also thought a lot about on the Democratic side, you know, I covered the 2020 Democratic primary and people had all kinds of ideas from Medicare for all, Green New Deal, immigration reform.
But I found myself having to say over and over again, well, even if Democrats win Congress, even if they win the presidency, these things probably aren't going to happen for a lot of structural reasons. Hmm. and I thought that I owed readers an explanation of why that was the case and a real interrogation of whether that was just, and whether that was fair.
Um, you'd say this to conservatives and they respond, well, you know, United States is actually not a democracy at all. It's a republic. It was not intended to reflect the will or the preferences of majority of majority of Americans. And so these structural inequities you're talking about, and the people took an interest in resolving to some extent early in the Biden administration.
Those aren't actually problems at all. Those are features of the system that we should actually. Cherish and value. And so over and over again for various reasons, over the course of the last 10 years, as I've written about American politics, I found I had reason to explore, reexamine, revisit the basic concept of democracy.
Do we have a democracy? What does that even mean? and also to answer criticisms, about the fundamental premises here are, is democracy even desirable? The way that we kind of casually sit is and talk about it. And frankly, I've seen a lot of people who spent the last 10 years, you know, arguing for expanding voting rights, arguing for protecting the right to vote, come out and say, because Trump happens to win the popular vote this time. "Well, actually, maybe the American people aren't smart enough for this system to work. Maybe we should, we shouldn't be so gung ho about democracy working." that to me, it's alarming to hear from people who I think ought to be defending democracy in this moment. We can't have a fair weather commitment to it.
But developing that sense and developing understanding has to come from a real principled, grounded understanding of what makes democracy valuable to begin with. And I should say too, that one of the reasons why Trump, I think prevailed in this last election, that's because a lot of Americans don't take, the value of democracy for granted.
Uh, I think the Harris campaign made a real effort to say, look, Donald Trump is an authoritarian. He fundamentally disagrees with base of democratic values and you should cast your vote on that, on that basis. And people abs I think people absorb that message. and they decided, well actually, you know, I think, you know, the price of groceries is more important or, or my financial situation is more important than that.
You know, so that, that is, that is a critical threat to democracy as well. It's kind of lack of faith in a system. The sense that democratic institutions haven't worked in the way that people believe that they should. If you look at the polls, people are very, very down on whether American democracy is even a model for other countries to follow.
And so all of this is, is I think, ample reason to really get down to first principles, what is democracy? Do we have one? What makes it valuable and what will pull us in a more democratic direction if it is in fact valuable and we should have a democratic system, as I believe we should.
[00:08:16] Paul: Okay, thanks. That was a lot to unpack.
Um, I appreciate your, sense making of the moment and giving us that historical context, about, the 2016 election and 2020. So the challenges of our democracy actually go way back to the, our original, founding of the country, which your book really describes. So let me just, the first part of the book is really a deep dive into, what is democracy.
Uh, I really found this part of the book extremely helpful. I think you have, tried to, and you in your, what you just said, you also talked about the distinction between a democracy and a republic. I wondered if you could take a minute and just briefly give my listeners your definition or you're the distinction that you, have clarified.
You said very clearly the United States is not a democracy. and that was an important declaration of the book. And so I want my listeners to, we have to break out of the imagination or the illusion that we think we've been living in a democracy. Yeah. So if you could really succinctly give us a definition of the difference between a democracy and a republic and, a democratic republic, right? Which is what I think we, kind of aspire to be, and an authoritarian, fascist republic.
[00:09:39] Osita: Right.
[00:09:40] Paul: So that's an important, if you could unpack that, those definitions of that make it crystal clear Sure. What, what we could, where we are, what we could become, you know, in, in that context.
Sure. Yeah.
[00:09:52] Osita: So most simply, this is like at least two and a half chapters condensed.
[00:09:56] Paul: Yes, please.
[00:09:57] Osita: Democracy is a system in which the governed govern. Governance is not given enough to some other alien authority or higher authority, not to a king, not to a class of oligarchs. The people themselves of their subject to governance are the ones that are doing the governing, or in Abraham Lincoln's formulation government of by and for the people.
That is the simplest and most succinct definition of democracy I could find in doing all of my reading and all of my research. I think that that still holds.
[00:10:23] Paul: Yeah.
[00:10:24] Osita: And you can tell a system is democratic to my mind if it has three basic characteristics. The first characteristic is political equality. If the parties to a collective decision are not in fact equal, you leave the door open to minority rule. Everybody who is a party to a Democrat decision has to be equal in standing.
The second thing is responsiveness. Democracy is not a suggestion box where you put your ideas in and you hope that something might happen. The people have real authority in democracy, when they come together to make a collective choice that actually matters, that actually does things in the world.
And the third thing is majority rule. There are a lot of different rules and, and ways in which we could make collective choices from unanimous agreements all the way to some version again, of minority rule. The only one that's really consistent with the principle of equality is majority rule. If you have two people who want something and three people who want some other thing. The two people can't win out unless there's some kind of fundamental inequality at work there. Um,
And we should also be troubled by super majority requirements, which you see obviously in our government, in, in certain places, that ends up being ruled by the most stubborn people, the last holdouts, the last people you have to win over beyond a bare majority end up having so much more power than all the other people who participate in the process.
So majority rule is really, really important. Now, you, you say these three things to people and they sound kind of common sense. Well, of course we all believe that of course the democratic system would have these characteristics and features, and yet the American political system flouts all of them in in fundamental ways.
You know, I've already done a couple of talks on the book and a lot of them have been in Washington, DC where I make a point of saying to people, look, we are now in a city in America of about 700,000 people who do not have a full, equal voice in the federal government. Right. they have a delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, who ha doesn't have the right to cast a final vote in the passage of legislation.
[00:12:21] Paul: Yeah. It's literally taxation without representation.
[00:12:24] Osita: Well, that is, that is literally the case. That's why their license plates say that. and DC I mean, it, it's, it's, it's a, it's one particular place, but there are 4 million Americans for whom this is true, most of whom live in Puerto Rico.
[00:12:36] Paul: and US territories would be the other thing
[00:12:38] Osita: that is correct, Puerto Rico and the other US territories. There is no conception of democracy. I think even, you know, not having read the book for people, people, in which that makes sense as democratic, you, you can't call the system that those Americans are living in democratic by any reasonable definition. So that's one extreme flaw with the system.
[00:12:57] Paul: Yeah.
[00:12:58] Osita: But as I talk about in the book, even those of us with, you know, curatively full representation federal level have that representation, very eq, unequally distributed. California is a state of about 40 million people. If it were its own country, it'd be one of the 40 largest countries, in the world. I believe one of the largest economies in the world.
[00:13:19] Paul: Yeah.
[00:13:19] Osita: It gets the same number of senators as Wyoming, our smallest state, with fewer than 600,000 people. Fewer people, as a matter of fact, than dc, which again, has no, does not have full representation of federal government, at all. What that means functionally is that a resident of Wyoming has more than 60 times representation in the US Senate, than the resident of California does when you, when you look at things by population.
That matters concretely, it flouts one of the basic principles that we talked about. and it's not just an academic point. I think that speaks to why it's been so hard to, for instance, pass the climate policies, that majorities of American people say that they want pass immigration policies and gun policies.
That's a concrete impact. I would say too, that it's one reason why the presence of the United States can send troops into Los Angeles without having to worry about the political blowback that might have for him or the Republican party, or what the residents of Los Angeles might think about that. he's not really beholden to those people.
And I think that that, that's just one kind of, again, extreme, but I think indicative example is some of the basic inequities that shape the system. The other thing to say too about the Senate is, you know, we tell ourselves, or we're told in civics classes, we still take civics classes. the, all of this inequity in the Senate, because we equal apportionment is balanced out in some way by the House of Representatives, which is supposed to be the population apportioned body.
As I get into in the book, there are all kinds of problems with the house from gerrymandering on down. But it's also not true that the chambers, even in their basic design, have equivalent powers. I mean, the Senate alone between them has the power to shape the judiciary. It has the power to shape the executive. It proves executive and judicial appointments. And so they see the impact of the Senate's inequities in particular, spread out across the federal government. It's one of the reasons why the Supreme Court has been conservative tilt now.
So, you know, the Senate, I think is, is, is probably the place where some of the fundamental anti-democratic features of the system are the most apparent. And again, if you, if you have a conception of democracy where equality, responsiveness, majority rule are the things that we should desire, that that matters.
[00:15:28] Paul: yeah. So I mean, on the characteristics, let's just like, summarize this by saying that the United States, government and our society fails on all three of those.
We're not equal, we're not treated equally under the law. Right. the government is not responsive by advancing liberal rights in that, you know, like you said, people all want gun rights common sense gun law protection. People want action on the climate emergency. You named a, you rattled off a few.
These, we, our government is not responding to those. No. And you talked about majoritarianism, but then you, defined the rules of the Senate and its disproportionate power. really minoritarian rule being, was really the structure from the beginning and that was the intent of the founders.
Your book really goes into this quite nicely. Yeah. I really, found the history and the synthesis of history that you provide very, affirming of what I knew, but also deepening my own understanding of various, events and, and, dynamics that happened that led to that me, the bottom line is our founders did not intend to create an authentic democracy.
In fact, they articulated opposition of that. Yes. You know, and it wasn't like they didn't know, because in the states, there were democratic populist experimentation. Yeah. There was like women had the right to vote in some states, there was other progress being made, made on representative democracy at the state level before the Constitution that all got squashed.
Is that right?
[00:17:05] Osita: Yes. I think that's right. And, and I think this ties in with the question that you also asked before, that didn't in my, in my digressions didn't, didn't fully answer which is, what is a republic? You know? Yeah. And when the conservatives say, you know, we are a republic, non-democracy. What does that mean?
Is that true? Was that the founder's intent? and I think you, you only get there by sort of understanding the definition of republic and, and my definition is drawn from the work of Philip Petit, John McCormick, some political theories, I site in, in the book. A Republic basically is a system in which power is distributed.
Again, you don't have a king necessarily that can do whatever they want. You don't have kind of unaccountable authority couch somewhere. Power is distributed in some way, and there are rules that determine how power is distributed and how it, how it functions and how it works. There might be a written constitution, you have a rule of law, you have certain rights.
And I think all of those things conceptually are good for their own reasons. but republics are not intrinsically and inherently democratic as I talk about in the book, the Roman Republic for instance had certain elements of it that incorporated, the public. But it was not a, a simple majoritarian representative democracy by any stretch of the imagination.
Uh, the Italian maritime republics were basically democracies for ruling elite class. Elite, yeah. Merchant elites, right? It wasn't ordinary people that got to make the decisions. and so there think there are features of Republican government that I think are quite important and quite valuable, including the rule of law, the enumeration of rights and this kind of thing.
Um, but a Republican government is not intrinsically a democratic one. And this is, I think, one of the mistakes that I see people making with good intentions when they try to counter conservatives On this point, you see people writing, well, Republicans just a representative democracy, or it's justice system where people elect the representatives rather than having a direct democracy like they had in Athens.
I don't think that's quite true, and I don't, I don't think that really gets at the heart of, of what Republican government means. And I think that we misunderstand what happened at the founding if we cue to that kind of conception of things.
[00:19:05] Paul: Now get, take us right to the heart of it.
[00:19:07] Osita: Sure, sure, sure. So the immediate context people need to know about the politics of the founding is that the United States leaves the American Revolution in a state of total economic catastrophe. I think most people don't, don't hear about this in the school. It's kind of, rah rah, we won against the British, and we sort of move on with the process of becoming America.
Well first there was this depression that people say is the worst economic depression that we face until the Great Depression, right, of the 1930s.
[00:19:37] Paul: Right.
[00:19:38] Osita: And so there's a tremendous amount of economic strife, economic discontent in the country amongst poor farmers, especially. Now the government that we have after the revolution, of course, is the government under the articles, articles of Confederation, which is not a good document. This book that I'm writing is not a defense of articles of Confederation in any way. There are certain basic deficiencies like the fact that you needed super majorities to do anything of real import there.
And so most of the active lawmaking, or much the active lawmaking that happens after revolution happens at the level of state government, which as you say is democratically accessible in all kinds of ways. And so people begin turning to state governments to solve this economic problem, the economic, strife that they're facing.
They ask for the ability to pay their debts or pay their taxes maybe in kind with certain goods, to make it easier to offload their debts and also to print paper money to sort of allow for the circulation of more money in the economy because hard currency at that time is so scarce. Wealthy people in the country are totally, appalled by all of this.
They, they think it's a threat to the sanctity of contracts. They think that it undermines the credit worthiness of the United States. and they think simply that people aren't being frugal enough. That if they, they, they don't have enough money, they probably spent it on gambling or luxuries, and they need to demonstrate a kind of fiscal and personal financial restraint.
But people turn anyway to the state governments, and the state governments do end up passing a lot of debt and tax relief measures for, struggling people in the country. This happens in most states, with the exception of conservative states like Massachusetts. It was one of the last states to, to acquiesce to this, because it has a conservative, a more conservative government.
There's an uprising that I think people do read about in school called Shea's Rebellion, where there's, you know, people from the back country of the state do have this uprising that's eventually put down. and it's an uprising that scares the founders to bits. Hmm. there's an understanding that, you know, the existing status quo can't stand the, we need, they perceive that there needs to be a strong federal government capable of acting directly upon the American people, capable of asking the American people directly for things like their taxes.
And they also know that that federal government should be at some remove from democratic power, democratic authority. and so there are all kinds of quotes we have from the convention. We have from the, the notes that Madison took, we have from letters, we have from the writings that they actually put out there in defense of the Constitution
um, but people are very, very adamant and explicit that the main problem with governance. post-revolution was that there had been too much democracy at the state level,
[00:22:30] Paul: right?
[00:22:31] Osita: And so we needed a new kind of system, a new kind of framework, in which the people would be governed with less power to directly influence the economic policies of, of the country.
And I go into that at some length in the book. So what, what the founders set up is a Republican government. I don't think there can be any doubt about that. I mean, there, there is a written constitution, there is a system, for policy making. It's not arbitrary. There are rules you have to follow,
[00:22:57] Paul: right?
[00:22:57] Osita: They do end up grafting a bill of rights onto there partially 'cause people want it as a condition for ratification. So there, there's a Republican government that sets up, but it is not a democratic government by the standards that I've laid out already. And also I think by their own understanding of what democracy meant and was about, and you can read the Federalist papers about this.
You can read their, you know, their, their, their own testimony and letters about this, but they created a government that they hoped would not be subject to, easily subject to at least democratic authority and democratic politics. I think that's, that's part of,
[00:23:34] Paul: that's the paradox, which people do not understand. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, your book is a synthesis of the history and the philosophy and the review. So I don't encourage people to go read all the Federalist papers, read Osita's book and to get the best, synthesis out there. So I think, we're not a democracy. We are a republic. and now we are, as you said earlier, we're in an authoritarian, governance, dynamic.
So we're basically an authoritarian republic is what we've tipped in, tipped into now. and that is really, you know, kind of alarming to all of us. in your book you talked about the democratic values of participation, representation and deliberation. Mm-hmm. You also touched on the history from Athens of citizens assemblies, which actually were not necessarily, representing all the people, but they were, lottery based, approaches where the people, at least some of the people were given authority rather than representatives being elected, and then they decide everything.
Um, as you know, there's a huge deliberative wave around the world for the past 20 years globally in response to the quote unquote democracy, crisis that countries are facing, citizens assemblies, which is a form of deliberative democracy modeled after the Athenian, yeah, approach have been adapted in the modern era.
In fact, in some, countries they've been used to modify and update constitutions. And that is actually a central, thesis of, my work with #UNIFYUSA and the, the citizens movement that we're building is that we need to, restructure our democracy to get a balance between representation and authentic, uh, participation from actual citizens with lived experience.
That's very different from the elites that get elected and, and that their deliberations have an impact on government policy decision making, and even we are, we're arguing or advocating for rather, the idea that this could be used for constitutional transformation or refreshing the US constitution now.
So can you talk about these democratic values of participation, representation, and deliberation in your mind about where, you know, how could we, how could we imagine that those critical values could be enhanced and improved, in a, in a new founding? The second part of your book is called The New Founding, right?
I really don't, I, I, I could spend a month on this stuff from the past, but I really want us to shift into the future and help my listeners, imagine a new founding. And that is really the goal, I think of your book, the right of the people. You're unlocking the political imagination of, the the American public about the opportunity that we have for a new founding.
So I think these values, participation, representation, deliberation that you articulated are central to that. Yes. Can you, can you, can you bring us to that?
[00:26:54] Osita: Sure thing. Somebody, I talk about this values because I think it's important to understand why democracy can look all the different kinds of ways that it can look.
As you mentioned in Athens, there was a very, very different democratic system. You had an assembly where if you were a citizen, you could go in and directly participate in policymaking. And the policies that you came up with, would often be implemented to a large extent by people who are randomly selected by the populace.
Right. That's a very different kind of democracy or understanding of democracy than you go to the polls every two to four years and you elect somebody to do this kind of stuff for you.
[00:27:27] Paul: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:28] Osita: So, I, I think that liberation, participation, representation, these are the, the values that shape the different ways democracy can look.
I think it's, it's worth keeping them all kind of in a balance and, and trying to sort of tease out what makes sense for a given context, given level of government. but I think that we could do more, certainly in this country, to have participatory and deliberative, mechanisms at the heart of our, our policymaking process.
I think this is a place where we can think big. One of the ideas that, I talked about in the book, it's not my idea, but it's, it's something that, something that somebody else raised was, well, if we were to replace the Senate, maybe we could replace it by, with a deliberative assembly of some kind, some kind of randomly selected, body of Americans that could have a say in the policymaking process more directly than they could with, with representatives.
I think that's worth exploring, that's worth considering, certainly at the level of local government.
[00:28:23] Paul: Just, just on that one, can I pause you for that? our movement is advocating, for a fourth branch of government. Right. A permanent citizens assembly To balance out the elected chambers.
Right. We are, I mean, I haven't gone as far as what you just proposed To replace the Senate, but I wanna make sure my listeners know. There's a very exciting campaign underway in the United Kingdom where they're, working aggressively to replace the House of Lords, which is kind of like the Senate, although it's not an elected body, but it's elites that have a lot of influence and control In similar way with the house of the people. So they're, they're already like convening the house of the people as a counter, current. So Osita's idea about replacing the Senate with the house and assembly of the people is something that's already happening in other parts of the world. Right. And I think Americans need to wake up and, and, imagine what we could do here to make our government more effective and more responsive.
[00:29:24] Osita: Yeah, I mean, these are, these are all ideas worth considering. You know, I, there's no blueprint that I offer in this book of here's what the ideal democratic system looks like, this is what we should do instead. Rather, I think it's worth talking about ideas like that, just so people have a, a sense of the scope of the changes that are possible and that we don't have to be tethered to governance and politics as we've known them.
And as we sort of work through these values, we should, we understand, you know, there, there are trade offs and drawbacks with, with all kinds of things. Elections obviously very elite dominated. you're choosing somebody else with the hopes that they're going to represent your interest. As we know from experience that is often an optimistic hope.
At the same time, you know, deliberative assemblies, who gets the access to them, who has the time, who has the resource to participate in them? when it comes to public speaking, when it comes to making your voice heard, who does that most easily? So there are all kinds of factors and, and values to weigh, but I think that any good system is going to have a real mix mm-hmm. Of these different elements. and I think we should consider this point of crisis as an opportunity, as we imagine the future, to think big, to think differently about how governments can, can look and, and really experiment, and experiment particularly I I say, I think outright in the book at the state and local level.
So state constitutions are much, much easier to amend than the federal constitution as we're working toward, and we'll talk about this in I think in just a second, probably, as we were hoping for working towards large scale federal constitutional change, I think there's a lot we can do at the state and local level to try out different methods of government, try out different democratic experiments, see how they work, show them to other Americans, and learn by doing kind of what would be best, what we we'd be, would be reasonable improvements.
But also sort of grounding ourselves in the confidence that democracy can work, even if you have more direct participation for ordinary people. And when it comes to that large scale federal constitutional change, as you say, people have looked at deliberative assemblies, for constitutional change in other countries.
You know, I don't know exactly what another convention would look like or, or how, even by the mechanism by which we come to that. But I do think, when I imagine it in my head to the extent that I do, it looks a lot like a deliberative assembly. You definitely, definitely, definitely have already the Americans at the table, hearing from experts, hearing from scholars about different ways the system could work, how different ways it could function, and having real debates amongst themselves, about what would be best.
That's a fundamentally different process than coming to, Philadelphia in 1787 in a closed door environment and, you know, the wealthiest and, and most educated people in the country alone being part of that process, we need to have a more open, and I think deliberative.
[00:32:09] Paul: Yeah, we're very aligned. Time to hear this aligned. You and I, are thinking, I think is aligned. I'm not a scholar in the way that you are about all these issues.
So I'm a doctor and I'm an advocate, so I'm like, I have like a, I don't have as deep a Philosophical and academic understanding of everything that you do, but we are in the same place in that we're advocating for a mix of elected officials, which are representatives. We want them to be more accountable and not to corporate interests and to wealthy elites, but to the voters that vote them in.
There's a big gap there. I've been out in the country talking to groups. That's really what people are upset about. They can't hold their elected leaders accountable for what they say they're gonna do, and then having a, a mix of selected fora, Like, assemblies permanent. We think there should be permanent assemblies at the federal level and state level.
Um, in your book, you talked about fixing the House of Representatives and you talked about gerrymandering. I think one of the most important models is in Michigan where they do have a citizen selected, panel that does, review the districts and makes, determinations about that. And it has led to a whole, and that it's not a permanent group of citizens.
It's a rotating selection of, citizens. So it's a sortition or lottery base approach to redistricting, which I think is an important idea and innovation. So that experimentation that you're calling for is already happening, right? I mean, we've had, 12 or more citizens assemblies in the United States at the local and state level.
More are coming. There was a state one last year in New Hampshire that led to significant, elect, election reform processes, in, in that state. There are many other examples of people working on that. Now we wanna bring that to the federal level urgently. 'cause the United States is so behind other countries in understanding the power of citizens assemblies.
And I think you, you went into this, This really intrigued me. I had to read this a couple times. I must say this, folk theory of democracy and, the, you know, the juxtaposition between, the truth of, the benefits of collective wisdom. and I, if you could just give us a quick, understanding of the people that are opposed to participatory are assembly based or, yeah deliberative democracy really involving regular people.
Our theory is that we trust the people. Yes. And that we believe that they have the wisdom, and especially when they're in groups, they can, we can bring forward collective wisdom. Yeah. But there's a counter, a narrative. Yeah. And a counter perspective that is really dominant.
I think if you could explain that, you know, oh, these people are too stupid. And I'm, we're hearing that now, even in our work, look, the, the people elected of authoritarian regime, that's evidence that what I'm saying about a citizens assembly being part of our government is nonsense, is what I'm being told.
So if you could help, my listeners, digest that or understand that more deeply, more deeply.
[00:35:28] Osita: Yeah. So I think this is actually really, really important to talk about. Obviously, I think the most extent in threat to democratic values in this country right now is Donald Trump, is his movement on the right.
I do think there's a lot of skepticism and hostility, latent hostility to democracy. You see all over the place. You see in academia, you see among people who say they oppose Donald Trump, and I think genuinely do, but also harbor doubts as to whether further empowering, ordinary people is desirable or, or wise.
And this is a long intellectual tradition. I, you know, you can go back at least to, to Plato in the Republic, right? you know, do ordinary people actually have what it takes to make good democratic decisions? I'm not arguing in the book that the public is, is perfect. Certainly the election of Donald Trump in this last November, suggests they're, they're far from it.
But I do think for all kinds of reasons, I get into the book that democracy is still the most promising system of the available alternatives, and that there are things we can do to improve the public's capacity to participate meaningfully in democracy. one simple thing that I, I talk about a little bit in chapter two especially is public media.
In Europe especially, they have a real robust system of funding, news that is not partisan, that is not captured by corporate and elite interests, that gives people information reasonably straight or at least there's a commitment to doing that. As a matter of, of broad public interest. They commit public dollars to it.
We don't really, except for a very minimal amount in this country that is now, as we all know, under attack. what if we did that? Could that change the public's character and the capacity to, to participate meaningful in democracy? Maybe. Could we improve civic education? I think so. So I don't think we should be fatal about the public's ability to make good decisions, for those reasons.
And also because, you know, we actually had, as I point out in the past, mass entries into the electorate of people who would not have been as well informed as plugged in as people who were already participating in politics. That happens when we granted African Americans the right to vote when granted women the right to vote, right?
People who were excluded from the political sphere, who, you know, on average would've probably known less than white men about what was going on in politics and, and what policy was all about. And yet, I think that those experiments, we can call them, worked out pretty well both in the interests of women and African Americans, but also in the interests of the country as a whole.
Over the course of this period, we grew wealthier, stronger, more powerful. And so, you know, I, I, I think that there's, there's a tendency to be cynical beyond reason about the public capacities here. that is, is directly worth challenging because if we ourselves don't have full confidence and democracy, understanding that the people are not perfect, understanding the political system, not perfect.
If we don't still nevertheless come away with a real bedrock commitment to it. that's a kind of vulnerability that ex authoritarians are going to exploit. One other thing that I talk about in, in the book, the Democratic theorists write about quite a bit is this idea of collective intelligence, which you talked about in, in your question. Yeah. The idea that when people come together in large groups, there's something about that process that makes it, or that leads to better decisions that will be made by a smaller group or an individual person.
Um, that can be attributed to a lot of things. But one thing that I find particularly compelling is, distributed capacities or distributed, diversity perspectives being valuable. So the theorist, Helaine Landimore makes an analogy, to the film 12 Angry Men, where by virtue of everybody in the room in the jury having a different experience that speaks to the question of guilt.
In that particular case, they come to a fundamentally different conclusion than they had at the outset and a more informed conclusion. And she thinks this is a way that basically public deliberation and policy might work, you know, as an ideal. I think that's worth considering. I think that that might be something to that idea.
But I also know that even if you don't fully buy that, it's not like there's a group of experts we could consult in society that would give us the right answers to all the questions that we face in, in, in politics and then governing ourselves. Experts clash on fundamental issues, where they're asked to make predictions.
There are, these experiments are done by a man by the name of Philip Tetlock, where you asked experts to predict, future outcomes on a variety of fronts. Experts were not very good at this, it turns out
[00:40:00] Paul: Right. Right.
[00:40:01] Osita: And, you know, even people who are well-informed and who have a wide body of knowledge on particular subject can conflict on basic values that all of us kind of share.
Um, you can know a lot of things, for instance, about the death, the death penalty, how many people we put to death in a given year, the likelihood of people being sentenced to death for a gun crime and so on. That information doesn't tell you whether it's right or wrong to put somebody to death. That that is a value judgment from my perspective.
Um, and there are so many issues of politics that are like that where as much as you might know, as much as information you might have, the real questions we have to adjudicate are questions of values that we're better off having everybody, given that everybody has values, participating in discussions about rather than leaving those judgments off to some kind of elite minority group.
So, you know, I, I, in chapter two, I, I try to go through all of these arguments and, and these tensions as thoroughly as I can because I didn't wanna write a book that was unresponsive to, I think, intelligent criticisms Of democracy. intelligent questions about democracy. We don't wanna be resting on our laurels.
We don't wanna be sure of ourselves and arrogance about whether this is a good system. We wanna really know. I think we, we wanna really respond to critiques and questions, I think even ordinary people have
[00:41:14] Paul: Yeah. In our capacity. Yeah. Fair. If, if we don't answer them very. I think Slaine landor's, uh, work is really critical.
I'm a big student of hers and her experience in, participating in leading citizens assemblies and studying them, she has convinced me that you can restore trust and love, trust in politics through deliberative citizens assemblies, and that, you know, by, you can bring people into a deliberative process and harness what you're talking about, that collective wisdom.
And actually you can get better solutions. Then you can in deliberations through elites that are actually controlled by political forces or political parties or dark money that's totally controlling our political system right now. So I, we, we only have a few minutes left and I want to, you did mention in your book that concept of constitutional revolution.
Mm-hmm. Which of course that was my favorite two words together. Right. and, I and you talk a lot about a new founding. We don't have time to go through all your really great, I really recommend readers, take the time to go through all your detailed solutions for fixing the house, fixing the Senate, fixing the electoral college, fixing the Supreme Court.
It's really super important information that you, provide and, synthesize there. You talk about the 1200 amendments that have been pro, proposed since the founding. we talked briefly about the, article five, the Amendment process in, in the Constitution. I argue that it's completely broken. The last amendment was 30 years ago to raise a congressional salary.
The amendment before that was 50 years ago which, lowered the voting age to 18, which was an expansion of rights for those people that got the right to vote from 18 to 21. So that was an important, improvement, I would say. I wanted to ask you, what is your vision of constitutional revolution? And I, I know I want to get to this, so I'm gonna throw it out there.
You talk, you, you, you talk about economic democracy Yeah as being central to constitutional transformation, and we totally agree with that. And so why don't you, to give you a few minutes to talk about, what you put forward in your, agenda, which is as part of this, constitutional revolution, we really need to create an economic democracy.
Yeah. As part of that, how do we do that? And what is your vision for that?
[00:43:53] Osita: Oh boy. In a few minutes, well, I should say first the concept of a new founding is is something that I derive from the work of Eric Foner, who thinks that the reconstruction amendments, basically fundamentally reordered the American political system.
It wasn't a revolution like the, the, the first American Revolution, but it was a kind of revolution in, in governance,
[00:44:13] Paul: definitely.
[00:44:13] Osita: that's kind of what I'm arguing for and I'm arguing for it on kind of a long timescale. I think if there are things we can do in the next couple of years, even to dramatically improve the democratic character of our system.
But I, I do envision that the process of constitutional reform is a revolution in, in scope in terms of what it tries to do, but it's a, it's a gradual kind of movement towards a more democratic society. And, and one of the reasons why I think that that's going to be necessary is because, as you say, I think that economic democracy and the power that people have in the economy is going to be an important part of building political democracy up.
As we just talked about at the founding, the people who were party to that discussion were the wealthiest, most educated, most privileged people in American society. If we want a more democratic government, one that actually reflects, and, and respects the equality of all Americans, I do think that we need to have a, a process in which the people who are party to it aren't just the wealthy, aren't just the powerful, aren't just right, the well connected and privileged.
You need to have a wide body of Americans who can have a say. and I think functionally the way that you do that is by building their power in the economy, making them difficult to ignore, basically. You know, when I look at the, the, the efforts that have been made in the last couple of years to move us towards another convention, to move us towards a new constitutional arrangement or, or new amendments that would change the structure of things.
I think that progressives have done this. I think there's been progressive work here. But a lot of that time and energy and money has been spent on the right to the point where I think if you had a political convention in the next year or so, a constitutional convention, that would be a process to be dominated by the likes of the Koch brothers and people who've really invested in getting the resources out there.
While I think most Americans are still asleep to the need for this kind of large scale change, that consciousness has to be built. And I think we have to counter weigh that money and that that economic power people are going to use to direct the constitutional process. And I think the building that Power up is gonna take some time.
Um, I think it's, it's partially a function of empowering the labor movement in particular, you know, materially, I think as much as we know that this movement is the right thing to do. We know that we want a more democratic society, we can muster the argument and so on.
[00:46:32] Paul: Can I just build on your point on the labor, because I, I sure was really struck by the data in your book about that.
Uh, and I, I totally agree. You're right. The labor movement is so weak right now in the 1940s and fifties, you said in the book that one third of labor were in unions. Mm-hmm. And now you said it's like only less. It's 10% of the workforce and only 6% of the private workforce are in unions. Yeah. Yeah. So people, you know, there was a period of time less than a hundred years ago, where collective union power was significantly increased to protect the citizens of the country to get, make sure that they could earn a fair wage, that they could only work one job instead of three. That they could have a house and they could send their kids to college, college and so forth.
That was the kind of the American dream as we understood it. Yes, and labor was central to that. And your data really just woke me up to the Yeah. The imperative to find a way to reawaken those people who have lost their voice in policymaking.
[00:47:40] Osita: Yeah. So, and I think, I think, you know, that's important story to tell when it comes to understanding why inequality's taken off.
Right. It's an important economic story to tell, but I find it's also an important political story to tell. Mm-hmm. So unions, when they were powerful, they were instrumental in pushing forward some of the social programs we take for granted today.
[00:47:57] Paul: Right.
[00:47:57] Osita: empowering people, not just at workplace by big, by being advocates for ordinary working Americans in Washington dc
[00:48:05] Paul: Right.
[00:48:05] Osita: And so when we think about what it would take to institute or implement large scale constitutional change, I think it's important for people to have leverage. One of the reasons why unions did as much as they could for American workers is because people knew that if they were not respected, respectful of the desires of unions, if they didn't take unions seriously, people might go on strike.
There would be an economic cost to that, frankly, to speak you know, as, as candidly as I can, I think that if we come to a point where we need, or we, we were, we are considering constitutional change, the people in that room need to understand that if we come away from this with a less democratic system or a system that is not democratic as it should be.
People might go on strike, people might slow the economy to a halt. We will need leverage beyond just hoping that the representatives are going to do the right thing.
[00:48:55] Paul: Exactly.
[00:48:55] Osita: and so that means building a level of economic power that ensures that ordinary Americans are being listened to it. I think that partially or substantially a function of, of, repowering the labor movement.
And so this is why I, I, I, I think that this is a long tail movement. okay. So you keep saying this long.
[00:49:16] Paul: Let's, let's, let's, let's to this point. Yeah, yeah.
[00:49:18] Osita: Yeah.
[00:49:19] Paul: So while I loved your book, I must say I was, felt I was misaligned or unstrategically misaligned with your conclusion, which you've said now Yeah about that This is gonna take a long time. Yeah. And while there are elements of truth to that, which I understand, I do also believe that we're in, we're at a crossroads right here and right now, and that, we're building a movement, unified, USA, we're actually adv, we're going to catalyze a National citizens assembly and a national civic renewal convention.
Yeah. We're hoping to get this, implemented by June of 2026. Yeah. To preempt, what we expect is the Right, the groups that you described. Yeah. Their effort to do election capture and to entrench their authoritarian rule. They will actually use the constitution and the rules of our democracy. They will wrap themselves in the flag and they will eviscerate the rights of the people and protect their own entrenched rule.
They're not waiting decades to do this. They're actually gonna do it within a year, probably before the midterms. So all these theorists out there that are, you know, sometimes I hope I'm really wrong, people are hoping that the midterm election in 2026 or the 2028 election is gonna fix this. We're like saying, no, we can't go back to a, an old normal that doesn't even exist anymore.
Yeah, we need this constitutional revolution now and, we're advocating for it to happen next year through a National Citizens Assembly. We wanna have deliberations all the way through the next year. Consultations, bring together our collective wisdom. There's so much wisdom out there. Yeah. I'm getting amendments and constitutions sent to me, people have ideas.
That's not the problem. People agree on most issues. As you said earlier, we we're lacking is the will and mm-hmm. The people's understanding that they have the right, as your book is titled Yeah. Not only the right, but the responsibility to act. Yeah. You talk about the Declaration of Independence in part one, in the intro about it's co it, we have the right, the people have the right to, form a new form of government when our interests are not being met.
And we're in that moment, as you said. Yeah. So why should we wait 20 or 40 years? Why can't we do this now?
[00:51:39] Osita: Yeah. I definitely don't think it should be the case that we have to wait. Okay. I, I do worry and wonder. If we might have to, I mean, first of all, I think that everybody should be doing all they can to counter the rights
efforts.
Yeah.
[00:51:52] Paul: The hike. Yeah.
[00:51:53] Osita: At a con convention that they're going to direct, that they're going to determine that they're going to. Right. I think that everything you guys are doing is absolutely wonderful not to ought to continue. And maybe, you know, I, I ought to be more optimistic and maybe, you know, there'll be things that happen in the next couple of years, next couple of months that make me more optimistic than I am in, in the book.
I think it's gonna take a long time for, I think you can chalk it up to two basic reasons. One is because I think there needs to be a change in consciousness amongst the broad American public for these constitutional changes to happen.
[00:52:27] Paul: Right.
[00:52:27] Osita: To the extent that I've seen polling on things like the Senate, for instance, if you ask most Americans, I think Q did this a few years ago, do you think that the structure of the Senate is, is fundamentally unjust in some kind of way? Would you like to see the Senate change?
People will really say yes. People will argue in other polls that they want big structural, you know, institutional change. They think things don't work in Washington, but when it comes to challenging basic elements of the system that they were taught in school made sense where the products of the genius of the founders and so on, people get very resistant.
Yeah. And I think people get resistant too, even in spaces now where people are rightfully standing up against the authoritarianism of Donald Trump. the extent that I've been to these protests or heard from the people at them, you know, the, the, the driving message is what Donald Trump is doing is wrong because he's violating the constitution.
Politicians say this, ordinary people say it. It is, it is the dominant way people are framing what's going on right now.
[00:53:24] Paul: Yeah.
[00:53:25] Osita: And look, I think that there are elements of the Constitution that are important, that are, you know, essential guidelines and guardrails, or just the basic infrastructure of governing.
I think the Bill of Rights is the best thing in the Constitution, you know, so I think there are things that they're worth respecting, constitution, that Donald Trump is absolutely violating that we should, you know, oppose and reject even as we argue for constitutional change in the future. but I think the main thing you wanna say about what's happening now is that what Donald Trump is doing is wrong because we are fundamentally entitled to democratic governance, right?
You have to change the register from Donald Trump is violating this kind of sacred thing we did in 1787, that we have a duty to preserve and protect, change that to we are fundamentally entitled to a certain kind society. And Donald Trump is abrogating those rights and privileges that exist beyond the Constitution, then that in fact, we hope someday our governing system will better reflect.
If you change that way of talking about what's going on, I think that you'd make it more easy for people to imagine moving beyond the constitutional system.
[00:54:32] Paul: Mm-hmm.
[00:54:33] Osita: And I feel like we're not actually there yet. People, I think, very movingly and passionately will come out to these protests and rallies and say, look, I'm a federal government worker, or, I served the military.
I swore an oath to defend the constitution. I'll defend it till we die. You know, I think those people are very earnest and, and they mean obviously incredibly well. But if you and I are sitting here talking about we need a new constitution, that's, we gotta, there's, there's something there that has to shift.
And I don't think we're there yet. I think it's gonna take some time and, take people like us making these arguments.
[00:55:03] Paul: Yeah.
[00:55:03] Osita: To pull people in the right direction. That's, that's the first thing I would say. The second thing I would say is kind of repeat of what I said before you asked the question, which is, okay, concretely, how does this big movement.
This big revolution
[00:55:16] Paul: Yeah.
[00:55:16] Osita: Happened. What's it going to take on a level of political power?
[00:55:19] Paul: Yeah.
[00:55:20] Osita: And I do think it's going to take people, ordinary working people having an amount of leverage that they don't currently have.
[00:55:26] Paul: Right.
[00:55:26] Osita: To have their will or have their, their ideas in politics respected Yeah. By the representatives.
[00:55:33] Paul: Yeah.
[00:55:33] Osita: it won't be enough to have a convention where, you know, you expect or you hope that the people who representatives there are going to act in your interest and going to act in the interest of democracy. You, we really need to be sure that there are consequences for people not addressing these basic problems and the consequences I think, that are most, most durable or the consequences that have the most impact or often economic consequences.
[00:55:57] Paul: Yes. Yes.
[00:55:58] Osita: and so as I said before, I think that labor power and rebuilding labor power ought to be an important part of this, journey. I don't think you impose. the public's preferences or, or imposed democracy upon a system, uh, process of constitutional change at 6% union density. I think that you need much more labor power, than we currently have in order to really ensure that, that we, we come out of process of constitutional change with a generally more democratic system.
[00:56:30] Paul: Yep.
[00:56:31] Osita: so that's, those are the kind of two things that I think about. Again, I could be totally wrong. I could be, I could be off base and we are generally, you know, in the next five, 10 years, maybe in the next year or so, on the cusp of something that will lead us more directly, more quickly into grand scale.
You know, replacing the constitutional level, change. but to my mind this is, this is a movement that needs to be built. and movements take time to build. And I feel like, you know, apart from people who are listening to your podcast or already you plugged into the Democratic discussion. most Americans are not really thinking about this stuff, that they're worried about Donald Trump.
You know, they're angry about Donald Trump, but when it comes to, what is the fundamental nature of the American political system? Is it right or is it wrong? And how can we change it dramatically?
[00:57:23] Paul: yeah,
[00:57:23] Osita: the politics for that have to be built, and I think it'll take time, but maybe it'll take less time than I, than I, I'm sitting here imagining it.
[00:57:30] Paul: I don't think we know. And I think thank you for your openness. To consider. I agree with your analysis of all the factors that need to happen. And I believe that we need a cultural and political revolution. We need an economic revolution. And I think there is a ripening happening. We're building on decades of prior efforts and a lot of that preparatory work is under has happened already.
Yeah. And maybe, maybe the democracy emergency, creates the opportunity and the threat of the rights effort, 'cause they're not waiting for us to figure it out, will get us to like converge and coalesce and bring ourselves together because we have the ideas for an authentic democracy. Yeah. So that, that wraps us up.
I think we've okay. Encouraged our audience to dig, dig deep into these questions. And I thank you for your intellectual leadership, your passionate, brilliance. And, I learned so much from you. And I, I hope that this is the beginning of more and more conversations. as we go forward in the years ahead, or the year ahead.
[00:58:36] Osita: Well, thank you so, so much for having me on. This was a great conversation. Thank you.
[00:58:47] Paul: Thank you so much for listening in on my long interview and discussion with Osita Nwanevu, who is a journalist by training, who has done a deep dive in the right of the people for Constitutional revolution, constitutional transformation, and he really, offers a deep understanding of our principles and values and traits of our democracy in ways that I had not understood before.
He advocates for our understanding that collective wisdom can be, accessing of the public's collective Wisdom can be built into a core component of our government, which is currently missing. Then he advocates for a new founding and offers reform ideas and, and ways that we could make our government and our society more democratic, including, an economic democracy to ensure fair wages and fair taxation and economic equality as a central part to the constitutional revolution.
where we diverged, I think, is around timing and, how long this will take. I believe that we're ready to do this now, and even in the next year, he believes this is gonna take maybe decades. So I think I unlocked a bit of revolutionary optimism in him about the possibility that this could happen sooner than later.
I think he is a potential revolutionary optimist, but he's certainly a brilliant journalist and a book, writer, that I highly recommend for all of us to see. Revolutionary optimism is about seeing the best ability of all of us to take action right now, right here with a sense of urgency tapping into the fierce urgency of now of the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. Well, thanks for joining us and have a great day.
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