Scene on Radio · Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University

"The Excess of Democracy": Rebroadcast

August 10, 2022·51 min·5 clips

In 1787, Massachusetts farmers marching on the Springfield Armory were mowed down by grape shot, turning a tax protest into a deadly confrontation.

This episode explores the U.S. Constitution's origins, focusing on Shays' Rebellion as a catalyst and revealing how the framers designed the document to curb democracy, protect property, and attract capital. It examines class conflicts, minority rule, and the economic motivations behind the Constitution, challenging traditional narratives of democratic progress.

As heard by us

A constitutional argument that uses Shays' Rebellion to show how democracy gets narrowed.

Scene on Radio uses Shays' Rebellion and the Constitution to ask what American democracy was built to protect, and what it left unsettled. The episode keeps that question grounded by tying Supreme Court privacy and abortion rulings to taxes, force, and political power, so the…

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Why you'd press play

You want the Constitution unpacked through Shays' Rebellion and abortion privacy fights.

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