Actualizing “More Perfect” | Julie Silverbrook | BRI’s Constitutional Conversations
An optimistic, hopefully, yet realistic vision of what unifies America, by Julie Silverbrook, Executive Director of the Constitutional Sources Project.
0:00 so we’ve talked a lot about people coming together and our theme for Constitution Day is EEP Lourdes unum so Julie silver Breck what is e pluribus unum mean to you yeah so there’s the actual definition which is out of many one I and we are one American people we are very very
0:22 diverse today there was less diversity back then but there still was diversity and I think it’s embracing all that it means to be an American embracing all parts of our history the good the bad the ugly the same way we do as individuals so I always try to analogize this to self-actualization it’s like how
0:46 do I become a fully actualized citizen as I have to grapple with the negative and the positive and to come out and say this is who I am and I would like to become more perfect and it’s right there in the Constitution that we are ever becoming a more perfect union that’s part of it part of that eeep laura vez una that that’s what we’re doing and so
1:06 I have I think a very realistic sense of American history and it wasn’t always you know sunshine and rainbows i but that we are always becoming or trying to become more perfect we are always trying to become more United and that’s beautiful and optimistic and I prefer to
1:29 look at America in that optimistic way while being very realistic about some of the wars in our past