The Grouchy Historian - Ed Asner

   2017; 262 pages.  Full Title : The Grouchy Historian: An Old-Time Lefty Defends Our Constitution Against Right-Wing Hypocrites and Nutjobs.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Politics, Commentary.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Quick.  Tell me everything you know about the United States Constitution.

    Hmm.  Well, it was given by God Herself to our Founding Fathers.  It starts out “We, the People”.  No, wait; that was the Declaration of Independence.

    Not bad.  When was it written?

   A long time ago.  I think they wrote it the same time as they did the Declaration of Independence.  In fact, now that I think about it, I think the Declaration of Independence is the preamble to the Constitution.  Whatever a preamble is.

    What about the Amendments?

    I forgot about those.  Despite being an infallible document, God, in Her Graciousness, allowed us to make some changes to the Constitution.  The most important Amendment allowed us to get drunk again, after an earlier one said we couldn’t.  The other important one is the Second Amendment, which says everyone should carry an assault rifle with him at all times.

    You’re amazing.  One last question.  What about the Bill of Rights?

    Oh, I forgot about those too.  I’m pretty sure it was written at the same time as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  It gives us the right to Life, Liberty, and the Happiness of Pursuit.  And a couple other things.  Including assault rifles.  And slaves.

    You are truly in a class by yourself when it comes to American History.  Can I interest you in Ed Asner’s new book, The Grouchy Historian?

What’s To Like...

    Ed Asner is an outspoken and unashamed voice for the Political Left, and The Grouchy Historian details his study and research into the history and content of the United States Constitution.  In fairness, he admits at the very beginning of the book that he is politically biased, and thus he is not presenting “both sides” of the debate.  Instead, he is an unabashed apologist for the Left, addressing and refuting the various skewed assertions proffered to us by the titular Right-Wing Hypocrites and Nutjobs.

    The book consists of 24 chapters covering 262 pages of text, plus another 73 pages of extras that includes notes, a bibliography, acknowledgements, and the full text of the Constitution itself and all the Amendments.  If you want to double-check anything that Ed Asner asserts, it is easy to do.

    The main topics are separated into seven sections, namely:

    1. The Constitutional Convention – Who was there and when they met.  (Chs. 2-3)

    2. God and the Constitution.  (Chs. 5-6)

    3. The Writing of the Constitution.  (Chs. 7-9)

    4. The Amendments: Ed’s Open Letters to prominent Right-Wing Nut-Jobs.  (Chs. 11-14)

    5. The Bill of Rights.  (Chs. 15-16)

    6. The Supreme Court Right-Wing Nut Jobs.  (Chs. 18-21)

    7. The Second Amendment: Guns and the NRA.  (Ch. 23)

    The other chapters are dribs and drabs of information that Ed Asner found intriguing, but which didn’t fit into any of those seven broader categories.  The book lists one Ed Weinberger as a co-author.  It is unclear what role he plays; I suspect he took the points Asner wanted to make and polished them into a readable form.

    I enjoyed the writing style – it’s a folksy, easy-to-read sort, that kept the contentious subject matter light and oftentimes amusing.  This also made the book a fast read, so if you need to do a book report for Civics class, and it’s due tomorrow, this may be your saving grace.

    The literary format is varied, which kept things from bogging down.  The writing of the Constitution is presented as a diary of one of James Madison’s slaves.  The Amendments section includes Ed presenting some of the right-wing proposals, balanced by some of his own.  The section about the American eugenics experiment (pg. 180) and the chapter about how often the Bill of Rights failed to protect citizens are both sobering and scary.

Excerpts...

    For the record: I do not pretend that what I say here is an objective study of the Constitution and the men and events that went into its creation.  I come to the subject as a citizen with my own strong point of view, believing that “objective historian” is a contradiction in terms, like “compassionate conservative” or “Fox News”.  (pg. 5)

    An early example of how natural law was used can be found in Bradwell v. Illinois (1873), a Supreme Court case in which Myra Bradwell had been denied admission to the Illinois State Bar because she was a woman.  The Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling, its Chief Justice stating:

   “ …that God designed the sexes to occupy different spheres of action, and that it belonged to men to make, apply and execute the laws, was regarded as an almost axiomatic truth.”

    Which goes to show how stupid you can be when you’re sure you know what God is up to.  (pg. 212)

 “Scalia’s cultivated vision of the Constitution made him unquestionably one of the great minds of the thirteenth century.”  (pg. 208 )

    There are some quibbles.  First, while I enjoyed learning the author’s points-of-view, if you happen to be of the right-wing persuasion, you will probably hate those very things.  However, you can’t say Ed doesn’t warn you about this, and right at the very beginning.

    Similarly, he can get quite snarky at times, particularly when talking about the nut-jobs.   Since that’s the right-wingers’ favorite strategy when dealing with us liberals, there is a certain amount of karmic satisfaction here.  But it also feels a little like we’re mud-wrestling with pigs when we adopt their same dirty tactics.

    Finally, Chapter 8, wherein Ed gives short biographies of all 55 Framers of the Constitution, can get tedious and repetitive.  See the next paragraph for why.  Ed recognizes this, and gives the reader permission to skip this chapter if it bogs down.  I read the whole chapter anyway, but feel free to take him up on this offer after reading the first couple bios.  They don’t vary much from there on.

    8 Stars.  Highly informative and highly recommended.  If I had to sum up Ed Asner’s main hypothesis in The Grouchy Historian, it would be that those who wrote the Constitution did so to further their own fortunes (they were all rich white businessmen, whose fortunes depended heavily on speculating on frontier lands and near-worthless IOUs from the Revolutionary War).  And that the right-wingers who champion it today are doing the same.