Email this article Critical perception by the leaders of the populist party of the US Constitution (turn of the 19th–20th centuries)
- Authors: Smirnov I.V.1
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Affiliations:
- Lomonosov Moscow State University
- Issue: Vol 26, No 195 (2021)
- Pages: 341-352
- Section: FOREIGN COUNTRIES’ HISTORY
- URL: https://bakhtiniada.ru/1810-0201/article/view/298535
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.20310/1810-0201-2021-26-195-341-352
- ID: 298535
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Abstract
The subject of this research is the criticism by the populist party, which went down in history as one of the most radical farmers’ organizations in North America, of the text of the US Constitution, which for many generations of Americans has been considered the “holy book” of freedom as the standard of building a democratic state. The views of a number of party ideologists on the process of adoption and on the essence of the Basic Law of the American state are considered. This study is the first study in the domestic literature in which, on the basis of archival and published sources, it is shown the reasons for the negative perception by populists of the foundations of a federal structure, which, in their opinion, serves exclusively the interests of corporate capital, from which it is concluded that the US Constitution is not intended to protect human rights, but to reduce them to a minimum through a number of means designed by the “founding fathers” (creation of a strong federal government, indirect elections of senators and the president of the country, irreplaceability of Supreme Court judges, as well as the right to judicial review of laws for compliance with the Constitution, etc.). In the conclusion, the methods proposed by populist ideologues to correct the shortcomings and democratization of the US constitutional order are described in detail.
About the authors
I. V. Smirnov
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Author for correspondence.
Email: mioo@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2977-1381
Post-Graduate Student, Modern and Contemporary History Department
GSP-1, Leninskiye Gory, Moscow 119991, Russian FederationReferences
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