Heidi Schreck's play, What the Constitution Means to Me, has been out and about for a year and a half.

It opened off-Broadway in the spring of 2019 to generally rave reviews.  It opened in Los Angeles this week.  Theater people, especially the critics, are reliably leftist and so revere any production that trashes America (as does the Los Angeles audience where I saw the play).   

It's wretched. The play opens with the explanation that its author, when she was fifteen years old, earned her college tuition by entering contests sponsored by the American Legion.  Contestants would give a speech on how the Constitution affected their own lives and then they had to speak extemporaneously on one of the Amendments.  Fifteen -year-old Heidi loved the Constitution but as her own family's history of domestic violence is revealed, a great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother, at the hands of brutal men (though not her own father) she blames the Constitution for its lack of protections for victimized women. 

Most Americans are willing to say that the U.S. Constitution is not "perfect," but it is more perfect than most others.  Schreck contends that the constitutions of 179 other nations are better!  She mentions none by name nor does she say whether or not they are enforced to any degree or at all.  The middle bulk of the play is about how women, especially black and Native American women, were guaranteed no protections by our Constitution.  There is of course some truth to this assertion.  But she would have us believe that to this day, women are mere subjects of the state or objects of cruel men rather than fully acknowledged citizens.  Clearly, her family's history of violence against women has deeply affected her perspective.  Her own mother had to testify against a rapist step-father when she was fifteen because her mother would not. 

The author does cite several Supreme Court decisions, including Dred Scott which was indeed a travesty contrary to every word of the Constitution.  She also cites Castle Rock vs. Gonzales  (1983) which does seem to have been wrongly decided, too.  Jennifer Gonzales had a restraining order against her husband.  When he kidnapped her three daughters, she went to the police who declined to search for him.  The husband then shot and killed the three young girls.  She sued the police department but lost in the Supreme Court, the decision ruled that the police were not required to enforce a restraining order! This surely does seem a case wrongly decided.  Schreck blames Antonin Scalia.  She plays a short recording of him and leftist Justice Stephen Breyer arguing over the meaning of the word "shall."  For Schreck, this case indicts not only the Constitution but the SCOTUS.  She fails to mention any of the hundreds of cases that have brought greater and greater protections for women, persons of all races, creeds and sexual orientation.

She addresses abortion, of course, and tells the story of her own at age 21.  Then she veers into sexual assaults on women.  Her statistics are frightening  if true:  "One in three American women is sexually assaulted during their lifetime.  One in four American women is raped during her lifetime.  Ten million American women live in violent households.  Forty million adult Americans grew up with domestic violence."   If these numbers are true, it is a cultural crisis, not a constitutional one.   Schreck, like Obama, favors "positive rights," that dictate what the government must do as opposed to negative rights which lay out what the government cannot do.  This is perhaps the principal difference between the political left and right in America:  The left wants greater and greater power and control over the American people while the right embraces the individual, self-reliance and liberty!  The left cares about identity groups, the right about the individual without regard for race, class, or gender.

The author recounts her own experience with a young man while in college with whom she has sex with after only knowing him a few hours because she did not feel safe!  She admits she was not raped nor hurt in any way.  It is abundantly clear that the family stories of abuse made her somewhat fearful of men.  At this point the play seems headed for that tired trope about toxic masculinity.  But then it veers off the rails to "Should the Constitution be abolished?"  She lures her audience into the drama of her family's grim history, bares her soul and then cuts to the chase.  The Constitution is an old, outdated document written by old white man and should be abolished! She presents the proposition as a debate question.  Her debate opponent is a fifteen year-old African-American girl who of course supports abolition of our most sacred document.  This lovely young actress is of course extraordinarily articulate but her character, like fully two generations of young people, has been carefully taught to hate her own country, to believe in the fantastical hoax of anthropogenic global warming, that this is still a racist, homophobic nation, etc., etc.  Like the poll of Millennials the other day, they've been taught that nearly every other nation is better than the U.S.  They have been taught that their health care should be free but not that they may have to wait three years for treatment they need.  No one has told them that Canadians and Brits who need urgent care come here.  They are so mis-educated they think socialism is a good thing.  Show them Venezuela or Cuba and their eyes glaze over with ignorance. 

At the end of the staged "debate," they select a "judge" from the audience to decide which debater won.  Of course, the person they choose from the front row says: "Yes, the Constitution should be abolished!"  A plant?  Don't know.  The Los Angeles crowd of course cheered wildly though there were a few boos. Very few. Throughout the play, there were several obvious hits at President Trump without mentioning his name but certainly not lost on the audience.  

The saddest takeaway from this production is the astonishing lack of gratitude! This playwright, who seems to have led a fairly charmed life and has achieved theatrical success at a young age, is stuck; she is focused on everything she believes is wrong with America, especially in the distant past. This lack of gratitude is the single, most destructive aspect of these last two generations and the tenured radicals who have filled their heads with anger, fear (climate hoax), and ingratitude.  What is to become of this grand experiment that is America if the academic and media indoctrination mills are not exposed for the malicious misinformation they promulgate in nearly every classroom and newsroom?  Cal Thomas may just have the answer:  America's Expiration Date:  The Fall of Empires and Superpowers....and The Future of the United States.

*An earlier version of this piece misstated the author's name.