My most downloaded work of all time, Gödel’s Loophole, describes the logician Kurt Gödel’s discovery of a logical contradiction in the United States Constitution, a discovery he reportedly made while he was studying for his U.S. citizenship exam in 1947. To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the publication of my loophole paper, I wrote a “prequel” titled Gödel’s Interbellum. My prequel surveys the demise of three Central European democracies through the eyes of Gödel: King Aleksandar’s “January 6” dictatorship in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929, Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß’s declaration of the “self-elimination of Parliament” in March of 1933, and King Carol’s seizure of emergency powers in Romania in 1938. In short, I conjecture that Gödel was not only aware of these dramatic events in his corner of the world (Central Europe); I also surmise that the possibility of a self-coup–what I refer to as a “recursive” transfer of power–must have informed Gödel’s discovery of a loophole in the U.S. Constitution.

Bonus video: MetaMaths video on “Gödel’s constitutional Loophole”: