Does the Constitution Still Serve Us?: A Talk With Prof. Rich De Prospo

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In a moment when democratic institutions are under renewed scrutiny, Rich De Prospo offers an intense critique of America’s foundational narratives in his latest book, Exceptionally Backward: Economic, Racial, Gender, and Generational Inequality in a Neo-Colonial U.S.

De Prospo is Director of American Studies; Ernest A. Howard Professor of English and American Studies at Washington College. During his tenure there, he has written more than six books often challenging the standard academic “take” on the roots and ascension of American literary history, and now offers an interpretation of the founding documents as what WVU Professor of Literature Timothy. Sweet calls “an anticipatory reaction against Europe’s emergent humanist modernity

De Prospo says the project began in the early days of COVID lockdowns, during a chance sidewalk conversation in Pennsylvania. There, a colleague mentioned an obscure Soviet-era book titled Marx and Engels on the United States, a compilation of 19th-century commentary on American inequality. Intrigued, De Prospo returned to Marx’s observations and found unsettling continuity between the past and present.

What followed was a sustained inquiry into the ideological framework of the U.S. Constitution, which De Prospo argues was never meant to promote equality or popular sovereignty. Instead, it was meticulously designed to entrench elite control.

“The so-called Revolution of 1776 had no intention whatsoever of altering inequality,” he asserts. “What the Constitution protected wasn’t liberty—it was elite rule.”

Throughout the book, and in his interview with The Spy, De Prospo confronts a number of cherished civic beliefs. He draws on the writings of Jefferson and Hamilton, the Federalist Papers, and recent scholarship by legal experts like Erwin Chemerinsky and political scientists like Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. His conclusion: systemic inequality in the United States is not a deviation from its founding ideals—but rather their logical outcome.

This interview explores the persistence of Founding Father mythologies across political lines, the illusion of American “moderation,” and the cultural tug-of-war over who gets to define democracy. As De Prospo puts it, “This is not merely about originalism. It’s about whether a document built to preserve elite power can survive the demands of a democratic society.”

This video is approximately fourteen minutes in length. Exceptionally Backward: Economic, Racial, Gender, and Generational Inequality in a Neo-Colonial US can be be found on Amazon.