Listening to America

One of Clay’s favorite guests, Beau Breslin, talks about the early National Period as rife with conspiracy theories. The Declaration of Independence, for example, argued that the ministry and crown of England were engaged in a systematic conspiracy to “enslave” the colonists. Beau argues that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was a conspiracy—even a cabal—of self-selected white men aiming to tear up the legitimate Articles of Confederation without authorization and begin again. The existing Articles authorized a few amendments but not a wholesale rewriting of the nation’s social contract. We also discuss the South’s paranoid (but sometimes legitimate) feeling that the faraway national government, dominated by commercial and industrial interests, was destroying Southern state sovereignty and meddling with an institution they could not possibly know enough about. And, at the end, we take a quick look at one of the enduring conspiracy theories in America: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.