Constitution Day Live! | United We Stand?

constitution day live 2020 we’re here at the bill of rights institute and we want to welcome you to our celebration of the constitution on constitution day and our theme this year is united we stand question mark we’ll be having a four hour live stream over the course of the day as part of our celebrations of constitution day and for those who do not know me my name is gary coletti and i’m a director of teacher and student programs here at the bill of rights institute and with me is mr kirk higgins droid my name is kirk higgins i’m the director of content here at the bill of rights institute and we’re very excited that you’re all joining us on september 17th which marks the day that the philadelphia convention sent out the constitution their final draft for ratification to the states now that is significant a way of looking at the constitution on constitution day that we are celebrating a document and that we are celebrating a day that this document was given or sent to others for ratification and by ratification can we talk about that for us a moment right so ratification meant that the document was going out to the 13 states uh that they needed nine of those 13 states to approve the constitution before it would be valid by law according to article 7 in the constitution so when the constitutional convention finished their months of work in drafting they then sent it out to those states who formed conventions popularly elected conventions uh to decide whether or not that state would approve the document uh as the governing charter for a national government well that’s incredible so so on this constitution day already what we’re talking about is it takes a it took a number of people to create this document but even more so a number of people to approve to to have trust in this document uh to say unite together around this document yeah that’s right so united we stand with a question mark is our theme for the day uh because there’s a lot of things that unite within the constitution there’s a lot of disparate elements so you’re talking about this coming together but even within that there’s a conversation right it’s not a uniform agreement on something it’s a debate it’s a dialogue and so throughout the day today we’re going to look at how the constitution facilitates that but also how we do it within civil society what is it that we do in our everyday lives that help bring about this unity and help bring about us as a nation in creating uh the society in which we live that’s right so expect a lot of deep dives into these big ideas of unity and of dialogue but then actual dialogue uh throughout the day we’ve got a series of interviews uh dialogues conversations with with people from all over society uh that are are really going to inform and and really deepen this conversation we are having today and the conversation we’re having with you by being live among those conversations that we’ll see are u.s senator mike lee from utah who served in congress since 2011 who’s got a deep respect for the constitution and as a real expert on constitutional law

that’s right we’ll also be joined by evelyn marquez who is from commerce city colorado and she is an entrepreneur and an immigration activist so it’ll be really exciting to hear from her that’s right and a really good series of interviews also include joel peterson who’s chairman of the board of overseers at the hoover institution at stanford and a professor there as well as chairman of the board at jetblue airways and so his conversation will inform a lot of different perspectives that we have that’s right and we’ll also be joined by dr daniel allen who is a professor at harvard university and she’s a political theorist and uh has published widely in democratic theory and political sociology and political thought um and i’m really excited um she met with uh our president dr david bob um and really got to what we talk about a lot here at the bill of rights institute which is sort of the constitutional principles and uh the the underlying themes that really bring together our constitution how it functions and how we think about how it functions um from a governmental level but also from a societal level that’s great so i mean in addition we’ve got conversations with teachers uh bri staff members um but i really like what you were saying just now about the conversation between uh president bob and uh daniel allen uh and i think it’s a really interesting way to start off our interview sections uh about uh our big theme which again is united we stand question mark right and i think thinking about that in each of those parts is interesting united what does it mean to be united we who is the we in in that statement um and then stan what are we standing for what does it mean to stand together um and so to kick that off i think we’re going to hear from dr alan first that’s correct and um we’ll be right back afterwards with some conversations and analysis that’s right well let’s check it out in our fractious moment today that uh we’ve talked about there is the peril you’ve noted of the articles of confederation kind of like existence creeping back into american life that was one that greatly concerned those learned people madison in particular but also wilson it has concerned many today it’s the the genesis of some of those uh solutions that you just pointed out uh in three spheres of of of uh of life as we think today and go forward in our in our many in sundry directions there’s sometimes a thinking about the constitution that we’re going to have to come to national unanimity what’s the difference between unity of the sort that matters and unanimity in other words what’s what’s where’s the the pluribus part as it relates to the uno that’s a great great question the difference between unity and unanimity is like the difference between wholeness and oneness okay so

wholeness is a word we used to describe an organic entity that has an integrity it continues in being in time as a single living thing that doesn’t make it homogeneous doesn’t mean it’s the same in all of its dimensions and aspects and that in that regard sort of different from the concept of oneness so i prefer to think that our goal is wholeness i also love the fact that the word whole in its etymology it’s an anglo-saxon word it goes back to the word for heal for health so a whole society is also a healthy society so again unity is about that bond where we are committed to being a society together even in our diversity even in our disagreement we will see an outer bound to our disagreement at the point where it would break us all right so that there come moments where we’re having a substantive debate even about something as important as climate change or immigration or economic policy and we have to stop and say actually the more important thing in this moment is that we remain a single society desiring to make decisions together i’m going to stop short of my fullest policy goal because the the possibility of being a member of a democratic society is so valuable to me that i don’t want to lose that so that’s the challenge and for me that’s what wholeness is about it’s accepting sometimes being on the losing end of a policy question accepting sometimes stopping short of the fullest of one’s substantive goal because one has another substantive goal and that is ongoing participation as a decision maker in a democratic society so it’s really recovering in essence the the idea of compromise it’s recovering compromise i mean i think it’s really important when one talks about compromise to be able to understand the difference between good compromises and bad compromises and that’s i think one of our greatest challenges our single most prominent example of compromise in american history is of course the compromise over enslavement i think that fact makes it very hard for us to accept compromise as something that’s valuable in a democracy so what i like to point out is that both the constitution and the declaration have two compromises in them one was about enslavement and one was about religion and i think if you look at both of them you can see the difference between a good compromise and a bad compromise so with regard to religion in both the declaration and the constitution there was an effort to open up space for a diversity of religious experiences and positions and commitments to all play a role in the formation of the political body including the views of those who were atheists or deists rather than being christians for example now when they formed that compromise they really took into account the perspectives of all those embraced by the body politic all who were relevant to the formation of society in other words the compromise was based on inclusiveness all right i think that’s what makes it a good compromise if you look at enslavement

you can see where i’m going clearly the enslavement compromises did not take into account the perspectives of all affected by them namely the perspectives of those who were enslaved were not included in the structuring of the compromise so there you go that’s your bad compromise so we do need compromise in a democracy but we need compromise that is based on or rest on a foundation of inclusiveness in decision making inclusiveness of the perspectives considered as we work our way towards compromise what an excellent conversation you know we’re very familiar in the constitution with the preamble we the people and and words are so important and and what i really enjoy is thinking a lot of the words that that they’re zeroing in on um the idea of wholeness and oneness uh and unity itself and and the meaning of those words do you feel that there is distinction there yeah i think you know it’s interesting to point out united we stand is not in the constitution and yet it’s been a phrase that has been used in the united states um since its beginning i mean even back i think john dickinson wrote a song called the liberty song at one point where he has this refrain of united we stand divided we fall but in the constitution itself uh there isn’t that phrase and yet the preamble kind of points to it right it says we the people of the united states in order to form a more perfect union so in that you both have we the people us as sovereign individuals coming together to form a union so individuals and union it’s an interesting tension and yet very deliberately placed i think at the very outset of the constitution yeah it’s worth taking time you know to even just zero in on a sentence like that right and and to say it requires almost an appreciation of the the word choice right this idea of interpreting it as that maintaining individuality and coming together as a whole versus being uniform in some way but and yet this this coming together is is driven towards something right something in common or something that that is being sought in some way yeah that’s right and it is that active choice that action it’s us acting in a political form so we act in lots of different ways in our everyday lives and we’ll explore that a little bit today but us choosing to become a part of that political association is significant and but in that we don’t lose our individuality and that’s why you see different documents protecting those individual rights or individual liberty as it’s referred to all across sort of our you know our history right so the bill of rights being the biggest example of that we are the bill of rights institute so we think a lot about those individual liberties but it’s important that we’re not just individuals we come together and when we come together we’re able to accomplish amazing things yeah and that’s that’s a really incredible thing for constitution day itself right right from the outset of this conversation there’s the idea of how do you balance that individuality with coming together for some kind of common cause or direction you’re going to and speaking of going together in a

common direction some of our bri staff are out there in washington dc right now that’s right they’re touring around the capitol today we are fortunate to be just adjacent to uh the district of columbia uh and so we’ve sent out several pri staff members to go to a few different gathering places around the capitol um and uh tell us their thoughts and reflections start today so uh chris and natalie are you guys there yes yes we are can you hear us guys we can hello yeah can you tell us where you are well uh i’ll let you guess can you see what’s behind us it looks like the supreme court it is indeed kirk so first of all happy constitution everyone thanks for joining us today as kirk and gary said we’re going to be visiting various locations around dc and i’m so grateful that uh that natalie and kathleen who work on our development and ops team were able to join me this year um one of the things that all of these locations one of the many things all the locations are going to have in common is that they’re all gathering places so we’re going to talk a little bit about that but first i’d like to introduce my colleague natalie merced and she’s going to tell you a little bit about herself where she’s from hey guys my name is natalie as chris said um i am born and raised from jersey and i actually moved down here about five years ago and the supreme court steps was actually one of the first places i visited and reading it in history class when i was in high school middle school and seeing it live is two different things and i’m just so happy that we live so close to the supreme court steps where we can actually visit it and with no problem so this is definitely an experience for me that’s fantastic so in keeping with our theme of united we stand you you chose to start off your your tour of dc at the supreme court um so the supreme court’s known for its decisions over the years right um multiple sides uh some kind of uh often conflicts you know some disagreements but the decisions come out of that and then each time there’s dissent can you tell me a little bit more about your uh your choice to go to the supreme court and what that means in terms of our theme of united we stand sure well a couple thoughts um one if you i don’t know if you can see it but over the the uh the freeze i think you call that uh over the pillars it says equal justice under law and uh you know we’re starting today kind of moving backwards with the third branch in the judicial branch we we hope uh and the constitution lays out this concept that we all are treated equally before the law in spite of our differences our backgrounds and so people come here when there’s an important court case being decided that they feel uh it affects them personally to protest to let their voices be heard

to practice their first amendment rights and i think the other thing uh that that we often see in this very space are people coming together to celebrate you know i think uh for example we saw that recently uh that the supreme court decision uh uh around um workplace protections for lgbtq people you know there was a lot of celebration right here even in this time of covid uh people are still coming together both to protest and to celebrate so the first amendment is definitely one of the things that unites us and brings us together and uh yeah you have any thoughts freedom of speech that’s one of the greatest things that we have and that we can actually practice and it’s a school that we can practice it so close and do you think right in front of the supreme court stuff so you always appreciate freedom of speech speech everything yeah yeah i think that’s really powerful i mean it’s really powerful just to think about the fact that you can walk right up to the supreme court building as any individual can um that you can go in and listen to the proceedings of the court if you’re able to um get in it is limited seating right but it is powerful that we as citizens can can come and gather there um and that the law which is another thing that we’ll return to the constitution being sort of the fundamental law of the united states um is there for people to understand interpret um and think about the reason about so i’m excited to see where you guys go throughout the rest of the day thank you so much for joining us um and i think uh our next clip is coming up here and i think we’re gonna talk to uh joel peterson about the idea of trust and i think trust is something that does happen um as chris and emily both alluded to at the supreme court we trust that our courts are going to read and interpret the law fairly and justly that’s right so joel peterson sat down with our stan swim and had a conversation i think that we’re going to continue the dialogue of the day so let’s take a look at that all right we’ll see you guys later i said we would come to talking a little bit about how you you build trust in teams and businesses and the benefits of having that high trust in those teams i think it’d be great to explore that with with our audience today why why does trust matter in a business context you talk about three kinds of trust in your book and if you want to define those for for us and help us understand what each of them is good and maybe not so good for well let me just first say why trust is so important a little bit about trust generally it allows us to get things done much more quickly than if we have these really thick contracts and people are mistrustful and their remedies and people feel litigious you know it takes forever to sort out disagreements whereas if we trust people to be fair honest fully disclosed we can move more quickly we find that we can make dis we can make agreements that are more flexible so we agree on something and then circumstances change and we come back together and because we trust each other we work out a new agreement we don’t get

hung up on the old agreement plus it’s more fun to deal with so it’s faster more flexible and it’s more fun to live in a high trust environment so i’ve tried to define these three kinds of trust the first kind is representative trust which is the most common kind you have a representative trust with your lawyer or with your doctor or your dentist they don’t have to trust you except to give them good information but you have to trust them to exercise professional expertise that you’re fully reliant on them there’s not much you can do to check whether or not your surgeon is well trained uh etc so we we that’s representative trust there’s this thing called reciprocal trust which you find in high functioning families high functioning partnerships where you are each reliant upon the other it’s think of yourselves as runners in a relay race where each of you has to run your own leg if you do that if you pass the baton smoothly and run your leg you’ll be able to run faster than world-class uh sprinters by having this kind of reciprocal thrust and again it’s it’s really the summit it’s the best kind of trust to have but it doesn’t always exist then there’s this thing called pseudo trust which we kind of think allows us to assume that somebody else is doing what we think they’re doing but only because they’re acting in their self-interests and our self-interests are coincident in other words we have the same self-interest so as long as they want to do what is in their interest and is also in ours then we trust them to to uh achieve our ends the minute we diverge they’ll do what’s they’ll continue to do what’s in their interest and we shouldn’t trust them anymore so those are the three kinds of ways that trust shows up in the world and my my recommendation is for people to really work hard on building reciprocal trust because it really makes life more fun faster more flexible more innovative lots of good things happen once again an excellent interview and once again focusing on important words that were brought up and i i think what was very crucial to this conversation is this concept of trust i mean both for the constitution itself to function but also for society this this idea of trust is essential so so what do you think what do we mean by trust yeah i think it’s interesting so going back we were talking about the preamble a little bit earlier in ratification so when that ratification process was happening um that was an action where the people of the states had faith that what they were voting for as the constitution would be put into law and even beyond that several states um were frustrated by different elements of the constitution so called for um amendments to be placed on to the constitution immediately after it was

ratified right so there’s an action where they’re saying we approve of this but we want you to change it and they trust that that would happen so what does trust mean in my mind that it’s really about faith in others and belief in their um i think humanity and that they are going to act on your behalf which i think is what joel peterson was kind of getting at with his three different definitions for trust um that idea that you are placing your faith and your interest in another person and and believing that they will act um as they say they’re going to right yeah i mean contracts and and agreements particularly when they’re written down require certain you know belief and trust in each other and and like you said a faith that is going to be fulfilled right so the constitution itself is a document but the power of it is that not only do we trust as it was written and ratified but also that it’s going to last through time no matter who you are in society right it’s something you can go to and identify and i think um beyond that what’s interesting is that uh so there’s the trust that the constitution is what it is and is what it says but there’s also trust that we place in our representatives that we elect right so um because we are not able to uh have an opinion or make a decision about everything we elect others to act on our behalf um within the government those are our representatives who will talk to one of those representatives who is in congress now later but that trust i think is is another way that we’re sharing in this process we rely on one another and so i think trust is fundamental uh to the way that the constitution itself operates yeah and i think that’s a really great point right because we don’t often have day-to-day conversations with our representatives but we are citizens in society and interacting with each other in our community and in the bill of rights institute one of the the great things is throughout the year we are having conversations with lots of people and we wish we could have conversations throughout the entire day with lots and lots of people but in the interest of time you know we’re going to talk to a couple of different people um about a bunch of different things and one coming up is evelyn marquez that’s right evelyn marquez who is an entrepreneur uh in commerce city colorado um sat down and talked with uh stan swim so let’s take a look at you’ve probably noticed you’ve been here long enough to see that we americans argue a lot with each other and often we don’t seem very united right you’re working toward being a u.s citizen uh i don’t know if you want to share where you are in that process but why do you want to be a u.s citizen and what has that citizenship journey been like for you so yes a lot of americans do argue and i understand we’re not all perfect we just need to learn how to accept other people’s opinions and just take it you know um i know we don’t all do that but but it’s okay i am working towards becoming a u.s citizen because even though i wasn’t born in this country and even though i am not a u.s citizen yet i do consider this my country i take big pride on that because

i’ve been living here so long and this is all i know um this is this country has given so much to me that i am honored to hopefully by the beginning of next year call myself an american as well um and i want to become an american because that will not only protect me from deportation you know um in the future but it will give me the opportunity to be able to obtain better jobs a government jobs that i don’t qualify for right now i i will be able to vote and attend to jury duty um and i just feel that it would be an honor to finally make it official and call myself an american even though in my heart i’m an american what what do you think uh we americans take for granted about our country you’ve had different experience than so many of us what do we take for granted you know and i think i’ve done it too before um when we do take for granted everything that this country has to offer we take for granted all the opportunities that we have we have the opportunity to start a business if you have anything in your mind and you want to pursue that you can make it happen because we have endless opportunities here you can go out there and start your own business you can go out there and pursue higher education you can go to college i mean it’s not free but we all have to work towards what we want and america can offer that to us america does offer that to us it gives us the opportunity to start any business that that we’re passionate about and i think that we all at some point we take it for granted because we don’t see that other countries are struggling other countries you don’t have the same opportunities that you have here to make money the way that we make here um let’s say you have a job and even our jobs we take for granted sometimes we have jobs um that other people in other countries wish they had in order to provide for their families in order to start a business in order to to do anything in life um and we have that here so evelyn’s story is a really powerful one and i think again it reflects the conversations that we have throughout the the year with lots of different people around the country and it takes me back to this idea that we started with which is that you know even as we’re coming together we’re uniting united we stand uh but we are all individuals in that and our perspectives are different our ideas are different our backgrounds are different uh and yet we come together in a political community uh to live our lives to take action looking for stability and security but there’s always that at the end of the declaration independence that pursuit of

happiness right that that desire to live our lives and i think that’s fundamental also to understanding the constitution in passing the constitution it wasn’t this idea that there would be one law that would be it but within that law there is uh this sense that things are separated there’s separation of powers obviously with the different branches but even within those branches different elements and that all takes conversation and dialogue yeah and i think that’s sort of the beauty of the construction of the constitution because as you’re saying it’s not a it’s not a list of policies right necessarily it’s it’s constructed in such a way that i always find really interesting in that you can read it and see and focus on the idea of reading it as an individual and what does this mean as an individual for the lots of different perspectives that we have as a human being making choices having one’s own drive and you can look at in terms of everyone right and that it’s constructed in such a way to say you know what is listed in there not only speak to the individual and as you’re saying the the pursuits that they have but also how do we construct systems to enable that to happen to enable that to be protected and i think a lot of that comes from realizing that as individuals we’re human beings making decisions with drives going towards something surrounded by lots of other people who have their own drives and are going towards something and so there are times it works great and there are times that it requires compromise that’s right i mean even the constitutional convention there’s that uh famous uh speech at the end of the convention by benjamin franklin captured in madison’s notes where he he basically calls the convention to say look we’re close to doing something great here and he court says his favorite statement at the end of it where he says you know i’ve been looking at the chair at the front of the room and i’ve been trying to decide whether it’s a rising sun or a setting one and i now believe that it is a rising sun that there’s hopefulness in it but that doesn’t mean that it’s calm and smooth instead it means that there’s rich dialogue there’s rich conversation there’s debate there are people who are passionate about many different things and having an environment where all those voices are heard and allowed to uh meet with one another in a way that is then able to be reflected in the laws that we pass i think is really at the heart again of what our constitutional system is designed to capture um and then within that there is the different sort of functional things that happen um that allow for it to operate uh in a stable and smooth way so stable and smooth i think i think that’s important because that the causes of of lack of smoothness of of roughness might come from this idea that um things may not go the way that you want to right i mean you have this drive toward toward the ways you want doing things but there is an instability that happens maybe from other people maybe from circumstances maybe from context uh where it’s not going to go the way that you want but does that necessarily mean you’re losing something i i think that’s important as we talk about compromise do you understand what we mean does it necessarily mean you’re giving up something i think that word sometimes

means that but i don’t think in the context of the constitution and this conversation it’s necessarily just that yeah it’s a really complicated thing i think we’re going to talk about the nature of compromise throughout the day today but i think fundamentally it comes back to another constitutional principle we talk about a lot here at the bill of rights institute which is this majority rule but minority rights okay and and then we’re talking about minorities in a minority view but that majorities in democracies do rule they win out but that winning doesn’t mean it’s at the expense of someone else it’s within that framework and i know daniel allen is going to talk about this um in a in a later session but but it’s this idea that we are in it together we are choosing to work together towards ends but that compromise has to happen we’re not going to get our way all of the time because we’re recognizing that there is a larger thing that we’re working towards and fundamentally what that means is that we all individually have value right that we are all equal in terms of the people that we are we have equal dignity um there’s another way of thinking about that and i think that gets at the heart of the declaration of independence which though this is constitution day the declaration of independence plays a large part in thinking about those fundamental principles that we’re preserving and of course the the famous line of you know we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that universal declaration i think sits at the heart of what it means to compromise because even though we’re all created equal that doesn’t mean we’re all going to agree right exactly not only not only agree but also that it’s something continuously worked on right and that there may be uh blockages or or obstacles to overcome but but as you were saying before it’s not like it’s not like a score’s being kept right of teams where whoever has more points and things like this but rather how do you come together to to accomplish something to to go even further and so i think there’s good and bad compromise yeah that’s right and that’s actually one of the things that uh mike lee in a conversation with um our colleague stan um talked about and what it means to compromise particularly for a u.s senator to compromise so let’s take a look at what mike had to say about that you’ve described the making of the constitution as being very hard hard because delegates had to and again your words embrace ideological compromises and submit their states to economic sacrifices close quote what makes a good compromise and what makes a bad compromise that’s a good question first of all you you have to accept the premise that there is a distinction between a good compromise and a bad one sometimes people make the mistake of assuming either that all compromises are good or all compromises are bad which misses the point this comes up sometimes when controversial legislation is being discussed in congress my office will sometimes in those moments receive two waves of incoming phone calls and emails one of which will say uh don’t compromise never compromise

compromises of the devil it’s bad uh the other wave will say compromise anywhere everywhere in a box with a fox in the rain on a train anywhere and everywhere just compromise they both miss the point which is that compromise isn’t a substantive outcome it’s an inevitability in any decision-making process that involves more than one person so if you’re in cuba uh it’s a very simple equation it’s all about castro if uh if you’re in north korea it’s all about what kim jong-un thinks but if you’re in almost any other law-making body in the world that involves more than one person you’re going to have to compromise somewhere so the question isn’t whether to compromise it’s where to compromise and where not to compromise in order for it to be a good compromise you yourself as a lawmaker as a policymaker have to be willing to walk away from it if it gets bad it’s not always easy to get other people to agree on where it’s bad reminds me of a conversation i once had with one of my favorite law professors a guy named fred gettings i used to ask him how where do you draw the line in the law this arose originally in the context of talking about what was known as the reasonable person standard for purposes of determining uh and negligence in negligence based tort suits and he said yeah that’s easy when the law requires line drawing you draw the line at seven and i said well where’s seven and he said that’s that’s the trick you have to figure out where seven is the founding fathers uh well not in agreement at almost any moment during the constitutional convention all had certain principles that they held dear and they fought for them and they projected them and several of those emerged as themes within the constitution one of them was that the founders overwhelmingly believed that well we needed a national government we also needed to limit that government so that it wouldn’t swallow up the states and localities and thereby render local self-government irrelevant or a thing of the past because it had worked well during pre-revolution colonial america in any event um at the end of the day they yeah they compromised but they didn’t compromise excessively and most importantly they they hadn’t decided in advance yes i’m going to agree doing it that way is like walking into a car dealership and saying i’m going to buy this car i don’t care what you charge me i’m going to buy this car you can’t do that and they didn’t do that we should all be grateful that they did can you give an example of a time where you had to struggle with a difficult compromise as a legislator and how did you work through that yeah um so uh

it happens constantly i’m trying to think of what the best example might be let’s take one example a few years ago we i was the author and lead sponsor of a bill called the usa freedom act that basically eliminated what was known as the bulk telephone metadata collection program there was a time a few years ago when um the federal government was collecting information on everyone’s cell phone in america if you had a phone number they had access to that number they had access to information regarding who you called who called you when you talked how long you taught from that a reasonably enterprising computer engineer could discern all sorts of things about in fact a group of graduate researchers at stanford university concluded that just based on that data not the content of your telephone communications which the government was collecting but just the metadata who called you who you called when you talked and how long you talked if they had the ability to assemble data like that for a year or more at a time and then run it through a big database there were algorithms by which they could determine your age your sex your marital status your political affiliation your religious affiliation conditions associated with your health marital status uh whether or not you have children all kinds of things that are none of the government’s darn business they were collecting all this without a warrant anyway uh i worked on that with my colleague senator pat leahy who’s a liberal democrat from vermont and he and i disagreed on lots and lots of things but he and i agreed on this issue of needing to protect the constitutional rights of the american people to be free from warrantless and unreasonable searches so we had to figure out what aspects of the program uh we had to destroy and which aspects of the program we could allow to remain in effect this took years and years of work and labor and it required us to not gain access to everything we wanted but at the end of the day we eliminated the core of the program which was the this bulk telephone metadata program and uh yeah it involved a lot of compromises compromises such that we didn’t even get everyone in the senate to vote for it who believed that we needed reform or who didn’t like the use of the patriot act in this fashion but we got enough to get it passed and to get assigned into law uh countries better off as a result you know speaking of dialogue how fortunate it is that we can speak with uh senator lee about these and these ideas and the idea of good compromise

and bad compromise getting to that but also we could speak to other staff members that’s right and we are fortunate to be joined by tony williams one of our colleagues here at the bill of rights institute happy constitution day gentlemen happy constitution day time uh in the constitution is something that you’ve thought a lot about throughout your career both as an educator and an author uh and working here at the bill of rights institute uh and so we’re excited to pick your brain a little bit because mike lee was talking about this idea of compromise um and that it was built in sort of the beginning in the fabric of of the constitution itself um and you know you’re an expert on many topics but one of which is uh george washington his thought but also just what he was thinking when it came to the constitution and so washington uh was the president or oversaw the constitutional convention and so i think helped facilitate that compromise is that right yeah i know i think so uh his mere presence at the convention really legitimacy to the entire affair and people understood that it would be a just uh and and you know principled constitution one that enforced uh enhanced the rule of law in this country uh because washington’s name was affixed to it yeah and so that the law is interesting because he there was pressures at the time the constitution’s being passed about um domestic rebellion right there had been um frustrations both with states not wanting to work with one another but also with people within those states not recognizing the authority of the central government right so you wanted to really strengthen the national government but also make it a vehicle to promote the principles of the country justice uh equality liberty for all allowing people individuals to pursue their own happiness now this this concept of of government and people i i think a common word if i may that we associate that was the idea of union um and what i’m wondering what that actually means to be united in this context yeah no i think that’s a great question because i think washington understood it didn’t just mean a national union or a nationhood it implied certain things about the new nation okay uh things like you know it was a principled union he’s really talking about free government when he talks about union he’s about free government itself republicanism uh equality all those all those principles from the from the declaration of independence are informing this new government um and so you know he’s he advises his fellow americans have a cordial and a movable attachment to it right to have a sacred tie to the union why it’s not just the the government at large or or the country but it’s that unity those sacred ties as americans together united in the spirit of a common purpose working together towards some larger goal and and that wasn’t inevitable either i think it’s important when we put on our hat and we’re thinking like historians

that the idea that a the constitution would be that a new constitution would be written after the arnold’s confederation uh and that that new constitution would be ratified was very much up in the air and for washington who had already served the nation for a long time during the american revolution i think sometimes i i know at least i do i forget how long the american revolution went on um years and years over 10 years is that right or not years eight years eight years um and but the idea of him doing service for that long but then coming back out of retirement um and being a part of um this this conversation this dialogue that was by no means uh a tranquil conversation was was really something well and he was a unifier and so and he understood that the nation needed him he wanted to say mount vernon uh he wanted to retire uh to to his you know to to you know more peaceful uh existence but you know his country called and and like that great roman statesmen uh uh like the the republican statesman that he was you know he he put his own interests aside and and served the country because he knew the country needed him there was nothing inevitable about the constitution being ratified but there was nothing inevitable about the country enduring and surviving it would take work and not only of the politicians but of the people themselves and and washington was a real unifier you know one little uh story he went around the country several times right he visited uh different parts of the country north and south you went on these processions if you will to see his fellow citizens and to unite the different sections of the country because he knew we were a very diverse country early on not only different sections of the country and their different characters but you know different social classes there were many different religions spread throughout the country uh you know there were different races and ethnicities you know there were there were a lot of differences among americans uh and so he wanted to you know be that unifying president and to unify not only just around as we said the union but what that union signified in terms of its principles and civic virtues i think i think that brings up a really interesting new level that we have not discussed yet i think we started off talking about individuals and we also talked about everyone together and now you’re bringing in this really interesting middle area of when people sort of associate together and find that they may have something in common with some but not everyone um almost i don’t know the word factions or groups or anything like that i think is really significant yeah and i think that idea of factions was very present in the minds of the founders i know that madison wrote about it in the federalist papers um and uh even actually in talking about preservation of the union um in federalist nine i think alexander hamilton wrote about the idea of um the the enlargement of the orbit of interests right and that that

enlargement would allow for these different factions and interests which are inevitable to be in dialogue with one another so that there wasn’t one that dominated everyone but they would be forced to come to some kind of an agreement if they wanted to do anything right and yes different groups uh different interests different factions if you will and yet united around an idea right and that’s what unifies us as americans and has unified us for well over 200 years is the idea of free government is the idea of liberty is the idea of equality for all uh and and justice for all and so these principles i think uh and this idea of america embodied in that apple of gold what lincoln called the apple of gold the declaration i think should still unify us as americans even even as we have partisan differences and and other kinds of differences and that’s no less true in 2020 but it can unite us as americans yeah and i think we’re going to have to have you on a little bit later tony to talk about lincoln specifically because for lincoln the union was significant um maybe the most significant thing that he was concerned about particularly in the lead-up to the civil war and so we’ll want to explore that a little bit but i think in the meantime we’re about to hear from dr daniel allen who is of harvard university and she talks about george washington’s farewell address but also about this idea of factionalism which i think will be really interesting to get into yeah absolutely i think it’s significant thinking about um thinking about different groups and finding common ground right i think that’s a key part of this because factionalism you know the word faction again we’re focused very much on words today but sometimes has sort of a tone of like a purposeful you know adversarial approach but there’s also a way of looking at it in terms of ways that people are have commonality among themselves for what they think is is a proper way to go um but also then as you were saying tony ways to connect with other groups who may think slightly differently and the need to find common ground there yeah that’s right um and i think that that’s certainly something that that washington was mindful of when he was doing those processions and also somebody else that we’ll we’ll probably touch on a little bit later on but alexis de tocqueville noticed that in looking at what he called civil associations in society the way that we as individuals find one another in order to find that common ground to advance a cause that we’re passionate in and and it sounds like that drive is is not something put upon you right it’s not a forced sort of uh you know having to think the same way but rather choosing and finding there may be others who who you’re you’re choosing to come together for so i think it’s worth seeing a conversation about that all right let’s check it out one of the things that the importance of organization would uh imply is is um the the means by which we can organize ourselves what do we learn from uh from from president washington’s uh address about the idea of organization and and maybe it’s counterpart

disorganization well so this is where the concepts of organization and unity really come together so let’s just go back to the issue of factionalism for a moment in a democracy the purpose is we’re trying to make collective decisions with institutions that are of the people by the people for the people the people has a concept of wholeness in it we’re trying to stay together as a society now the problem with a democracy of course is that most decisions or many decisions are made on the basis of a majority vote majority rule is a key piece of this which means somebody’s always losing okay so we forget to think about that part of democracy and at the end of the day if people are always losing and there’s never any hope of winning um they’re not going to want to stay in the game they’re not going to want to keep playing so the challenge with democracy is that in order for it to survive over time in order for people to survive over time they have to want to stay together as a people all right and that really means you can’t have a situation that’s a sort of winner take all situation where there’s nothing sort of left for the losers in a particular decision and so that’s really what it means to focus on unity is that at the end of the day you need to make sure that what you’re delivering is really good for everybody in a meaningful sense that gives people a motivation for staying in the game and continuing to want to be part of a whole people and so that’s where organizing and unity come together as we organize our political efforts as we organize our institutions in our society we have to be oriented towards that picture of the good for everybody otherwise we’ll drive ourselves into fragmentation and breakup it’s just the necessary dynamics so you know organizing towards unity has to be at the center of democratic purposes and practices very hard thing to do that because it’s abstract as i’m articulating it here so we have to somehow connect our hearts to that concept of unity um to address the the challenge of having an abstract goal that’s such an important point i think because really and i know your dedication to this not only study but the application of these abstract principles is is strong when we think of uh advice that we might offer today thoughts that we can exchange as part of this constitution day live programming take that abstraction and bring it to a level where we’re saying to high school students choose unity that’s your admonition in this piece of the atlantic would you have any advice as to how in the everyday lived experience of high school students who are listening now they can choose unity that’s a great question and um i do i have a couple of exercises i like to give people who’s a part of the product of choosing unity so one of them is about the concept of love of country um we all love our country i mean it’s really an amazing thing i was lucky to be part of a commission that worked for several years trying to understand

americans current thinking about democracy and expectations for the future and there’s a whole lot of alienation and disaffection but at the same time there is that in a sense of people not sharing things with each other across the board all different kinds of contexts different walks of life people express love of country so one of the exercises i have for people is at the moment when you’re in a fight you’re fighting over a policy question you’re fighting over a definition of justice just stop and say i’m doing this because i love my country here’s why i love my country here’s what i love about my country here’s what i wish was different about my country and the action of doing that of just shifting one’s emotional orientation from fighting to loving is actually quite powerful and i think if you if you just do that stop proposing i love my country that’s right i do why what do i love about it say that out loud invite the others to say that out loud around you and then go back to what you were arguing about i think that is actually a way to start getting the gears in motion the habits of mind that are about choosing unity that’s a beautiful exercise you know uh the moral psychologist uh jonathan height has noted that studies reveal that when you do that interpersonally and you say to the person uh your interlocutor maybe you’re in a kind of heated debate that’s a point that i hadn’t thought of before thank you for raising that immediately the kind of uh dander i don’t know how they exactly measure this but they did goes down and and people are saying to each other okay i’m more willing to be able to listen and hear and it sounds like that’s kind of the pathway that we have to open up in a way in this national conversation that we’re having absolutely i mean to put it very simply i’m saying bring acts of love into contexts of conflict um we just need to do that we need to do that over and over and over again and people often think well that doesn’t sound like politics like acts of love you know what are you talking about but at the end of the day politics is about can we build a healthy society where people thrive where people have safety and happiness you have safety and happiness in an environment of love it’s very basic and so in that regard we have to bring acts of love into this world of division and disunity so much going on in that conversation i’m glad that we have time today to to unpack and to talk about all these things um but i can’t believe we’re wrapping up almost our first hour of conversation uh about united we stand our theme for constitution day uh i wrote down and had some some interesting ideas one of one of the pieces i thought was really interesting is something mentioned about

um shifting orientation right that there’s going to be disagreements but there’s a commonality thing and the word that was thrown there was love i thought that was significant yeah that’s right and it’s it’s a it’s a different type it’s a civic love right and i think this is something we’ll come back to sort of this um it’s a thoughtfulness it’s a caring um and fundamentally i think it’s that recognition of the inherent quality and dignity of another person right that you recognize in them that they are equally human to you and that you want to listen and hear them and be in dialogue with them in order to absolutely and there’s an immediacy to it uh there’s a you know we are living together this is not theoretical um in our conversation about the constitution itself i think it can be very easy to say like how do you write down these huge concepts that are going to affect lots of people but you know that conversation and ours today about the constitution is about it is a lived experience day after day of interacting with others and i think that was really significant this idea of saying there is at least a commonality not only that we are in in the same place and having these conversations but that there is a love of what you said a civic love of country that’s right and i think what that love does i thought it was really powerful that dr allen talks about it in terms of a choice right you have to choose and when we think about love love is the thing that allows us um or i think sometimes we think about that sentiment as being something that um has us put aside our own um self-interests in certain cases so that we can work towards that idea of compromise which is something we talked about this hour that idea of what it really takes to come together to form that togetherness i think sits at the heart of what she was talking about um when it comes to love and and the exercise that i thought she ran through which i thought was really really great yeah and it’s great i think it speaks to uh you know sort of not wrapping up and starting to checking in on the conversations we’ve been having together this interesting idea of individuality and and difference for lack of a better word you know we are different people and everyone here but also that coming together in in not in the face of that but in in this idea of thinking both in terms of us and oneself at the same time and seeing how do you communicate how do you build things how do you choose right that the human being because i think that was an excellent point you were making if i may say this idea that you know i recognize my own humanity and my own choices but i also must recognize others as human as equal as also making choices that’s right and i think that’s where it gets into the idea of trust that we talked about with joel peterson um and that we recognize that we don’t shed our individual identities when we enter into the social contract which for us is the constitution right that is a a contract that we hold with the government and with each other in that we recognize the inherent value that we all have um and that we want to work towards that more perfect union working towards that common good to secure the blessings of liberty uh to all people within the nation yeah and what greater illustration i mean it is an election year it’s 2020 right

this is coming up pretty soon and what better illustration is happens in terms of one’s individual voice and how how that voice can be heard and may seem by sheer numbers that with all of these people’s voices you know you may feel drowned out but it’s actually really important and i think a key part of that is the idea of voting that’s right voting in a strange quirk of our constitution is i shouldn’t call it strange but the electoral college um and so we have a video that we’ve put together that looks at the electoral college and how that tried to balance interests across the country every four years on the night of the presidential election much attention is paid to what’s called the electoral college and with good reason as it’s a crucial part of selecting our nation’s president so what exactly is this electoral college what is its function how did it come to be and what role does it play in our constitutional system that’s what we discussed today this is the electoral college [Music] in order to understand the electoral college we must first go back all the way to the american revolution living under what they considered to be the tyrannical reign of george iii american colonists feared the spread of a strong centralized executive power so after america declared its independence the powers of state governors were weak and the articles of confederation did not create an independent executive branch in the national government however some americans thought the executive should be strengthened as an independent branch so in 1787 the constitutional convention was held in an effort to balance powers between the branches of government the challenges that resulted from having a weak executive under the articles guided the framers thinking though they were at the same time concerned about creating an overly powerful executive many influential debates took place at this convention these included whether america would have a single or plural president how long they would hold office whether they’d be eligible for re-election and how the election would be decided would the people vote would the legislative branch vote or something entirely different this was major as our young country was deciding how it would choose its executive the convention ultimately decided that a single president would serve a four-year term and be eligible for re-election there would not be a direct election however instead there be a college of electors selected by a popular vote within states the electors voted for two individuals not a party ticket of a president and vice president as a rule the electors could only give one of their votes to a person in their state keep in mind that there were no political parties and that the framers wanted nationally recognized candidates the 12th amendment was soon ratified and provided the procedure for party ticket voting it was also decided that the

number of electors in each state would equal their number of senators and representatives and would be decided through elections so why did the framers want an electoral college there were in fact a number of reasons an electoral vote was chosen over a popular one first the framers sought to bring reason to the intense passions of the people or what alexander hamilton called tumult and disorder in federalist 68. the idea was that the electoral college would be a deliberative body that could more calmly assess the candidates the framers also fear that a demagogue could potentially manipulate large numbers of people with emotional or corrupt appeals and federalist 68 hamilton also called for an obstacle against cabal intrigue and corruption as well as little arts of popularity the electoral college would limit this danger by placing a check between these appeals and the people the third and most important reason was the principle of federalism james madison wrote in federalist 39 the immediate election of the president is to be made by the states in their political characters by saying this madison meant that the interests of states and their inhabitants would be represented by having their voice determine who became president now typically the electors follow the popular vote of the people of the entire state some states have passed laws to compel electors to follow the popular vote of citizens within their state however these laws have been subject to recent lawsuits and their constitutionality is still under dispute even then electors almost always follow popular will if a candidate does not win a majority of the electoral college the constitution stipulates that the election goes to the house of representatives where each state not including the district of columbia gets one vote with the majority as the victor this is what happened when thomas jefferson was elected in 1800 and also when john quincy adams won the presidency in 1824 overall there have been five elections when the president won the electoral college but lost the popular vote currently there are 535 state electoral votes plus three for washington dc for a total of 538. 48 states and the district of columbia have a winner-take-all system meaning that the winner of the state’s popular vote gets all of the electoral votes however states can instead choose to have a system of proportional votes only made in nebraska currently have this system debates on the necessity and usefulness of the college continue to this day supporters claim it reflects the constitutional principles our nation was founded on they also argue that it guarantees voters have a say across all geographical areas of the country rather than just a few large cities detractors argue that the college is outdated and that too much weight is given to smaller

states they maintain that president should be elected by a simple majority of the popular vote the states can make significant changes to the electoral college such as how electors are chosen or whether a state wants to be winner-take-all or proportional on the other hand abolishing the electoral college could only be done through constitutional amendment when assessing the electoral college it’s important to keep in mind thomas jefferson’s thoughts in his first inaugural address when he stated the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail but that will to be rightful must be reasonable majority rule is an essential constitutional principle of republican government but it must be just reasonable and protective of minority rights the electoral college was an attempt by the founders to reach a balance in this naturally occurring tension how successful do you think that they were thanks so much for joining us guys this was the story of the electoral college please like share subscribe and comment down hello and welcome back uh we’re starting our second hour of celebration uh for happy constitution day live 2020. um kirk and i have been uh talking a bit and and having some dialogues and i really wanted to focus on unpacking that really excellent video we just saw on the electoral college um for those joining us we are celebrating throughout the day um some live streaming interviews about constitution day and taking a look at some really big thoughts that have happened and at the top of this hour um one of the big ideas that i think came out of there and that we’re talking about through the day is individual voices individual choices and coming together and i think the electoral college is a really important part of that um because tying into what we’ve talked about before you have one’s individual voice and there’s a trust in electors in those representing those in our states and those across our country to have a pretty seamless way of having elections but you know it’s not always seamless and there are a lot of questions about that but that’s good right that’s part of what the constitution about is about is having these questions that’s right our theme for the day is united we stand question mark and i think it’s important on constitutional day uh to celebrate not only the document but to celebrate the spirit of it which invites inquiry in questions and so going into the video i called the electoral college strange which you know i only mean by that that it’s strange that it’s not the way that you might think that we’re electing a president it’s not a popular election but the reasons the founders put that in place were very deliberate um we saw a quote from alexander hamilton talking about um trying to find that reason from passion right so this idea that we’re we’re filtering opinion to try to get to a place where it’s we’re calm and we’re steady that was the idea um and you saw that it’s also this idea of federalism right this idea that uh we’re we’re trying to capture the different interests of a diverse nation diverse

places across the country um and that can be a challenge and the electoral college is one way of trying to solve um what the framers saw is that that challenge yeah yeah federalism i think is a an important concept to to tie into what we’re talking about and of course by federalism we’re talking about that balance of that attempted balance of individuals and states and and a nation and for federal government but i don’t think that i don’t know that quirk or strange is so weird because it implies seeking to maybe not solve forever and ever a problem but at least to address the concerns that people have right yeah federalism being that division of powers but within that within our communities there’s a division of interests and ideas um earlier referred to those as factions um and i think that that that factionalism is something that just exists with amongst us because of our different backgrounds or different interests or different passions um and that’s something that dr daniel allen who’s a professor i’m at harvard university and a political theorist is going to talk talk a little bit about with our president dr david bob so let’s take a look at this clip dr alan we today are taking up a theme united we stand question one of the threads that runs through your work which is voluminous and has covered everything from socrates to the declaration of independence to things that are happening today and we’ll cover some of that in our in our conversation is the question of unity its importance its vitality i would like to ask you based on a piece that you wrote what now seems like an eonago but in december of 2019 for the atlantic in it you wrote this quote the republic seems to be unraveling a culture of anxiety and depression has spread far and wide as people face health crises without access to affordable care end quote you go on to note the problem of the opioid epidemic mass shootings prisons are full here again let me quote from your piece the gulf between needs and capacities is glaring in this piece you note that the root of our problem is factionalism i wonder if you could please explain why that is and and why factionalism is is really so problematic thanks david it’s a great question and a hard one because at the end of the day our instincts aren’t yet really honed in on just how factionalism is harming us the thing to focus on is what factionalism is fundamentally about it is at the end of the day about my sides winning my sides beating the other side it makes that the overarching goal if however our overarching goal is the safety and happiness of the people

that’s the vocabulary of the declaration of independence then that’s a different goal by definition and if you’re pursuing a victory for my side you will miss shoot misdirect in various ways from that overarching goal of safety and happiness for the whole people so that’s really the challenge and at the end of the day to deliver well-being for everybody requires effective governance effective governance is what gets sort of mucked up paralyzed stymied when what you really have is just two sides fighting for victory over one another one of the things that you associate with effective governance in that piece and again one of the threads that runs throughout your your work is the word organizing could you tell us a little bit about why organizing is such an important idea i’m very happy to talk about organizing let me start by putting two different senses of the word on the table there’s a word that we’re familiar with ever since barack obama ran for president we talked about community organizers people who work hard to inspire the disempowered to organize for power to help make decisions in their own communities that’s one definition of organizing there’s another which is very prosaic which is what you do when you organize your house you organize you put things in the right places you get things tidy and in order it’s also what we do at work all the time every workplace is a structure for organizing human activity for building up coordination and cooperation towards shared ends although those two meanings seem quite different they’re actually at their core the same they’re both about how people collaborate cooperate and coordinate around a common purpose in order to deliver some kind of shared good or benefit now that concept is exactly also what our political institutions do for us the reason we have political institutions is to organize ourselves as a society again using the declaration of independence in this language it talks about the need to organize the powers of government and that’s what that sense of organizing means in the declaration that we want to set up institutions distribute powers activate office holders connect office holders to the public in ways that permit discovering our shared problems exploring possible solutions debating objectives overarching purposes settling on a common purpose and then executing on that that process is what organizing it means fundamentally it’s what we need to be good at to have a healthy democratic society so on this constitution day dialogues like this uh bring up a lot of a lot of really core important ideas and among them is is the way just things are and the word factionalism comes up right and and we’ve talked about in our dialogues today that the idea that there are

commonalities among groups of people uh and prior to that we looked at the electoral college and in an election year it’s easy to take a look at you know some of the some of the repercussions of having these kind of different groups together and and so forth but there’s something that that really struck me in the conversation that they were just having which which is about organizing right is about there’s a thoughtfulness that comes to addressing these things um that i think is really really important and i think talking about organizing and that thoughtfulness is really key to this yeah and i think at the heart of that again is what dr alan talked about in a previous segment about that civic love so it’s that that willingness and desire to be committed to the recognition of the value in other people but a part of that is in we noted this uh but today is constitution day so september 17 1787 was a monday if you’re interested uh and it was the day that the uh the constitutional convention uh sent out its final draft of the constitution for ratification amongst the states right so ratification was the process by which uh the constitution was approved and made the supreme law of the land over all of the states nine of the 13 states had to ratify the constitution for it to come into effect replacing the articles of confederation um and during that sort of the ratification debates there were that raged across the country uh there were uh two primary groups that were having discussions the federalists called themselves federalists uh in a nice political maneuver to make them sound like they’re the ones that were promoting a federal government on the other side were groups of individuals who were opposed to the constitution who were often called anti-federalists um but i bring that up because there’s one uh i think federalist essay that that always stands out for me uh and i think is very apropos to what we’re talking about today on constitution day and that’s the very first federalist paper uh written by alexander hamilton and it says in part you are called upon to deliberate on a new constitution for the united states of america the subject speaks of its own importance comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the exercise of the union in the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed so it’s this powerful statement that um over the net over the course of 85 more essays that were all published this was in a newspaper in new york they weren’t the only essays that were written in favor of the constitution but they’re the most famous they were calling us to deliberate and think about the constitution in the ramifications of its design and what it would mean for us within civil society and i think that’s what we’re doing now is participating in that thoughtful action and continuing the legacy of what alexander hamilton called us to do in that very first federalist paper i think that is so significant that that you talk about this idea of a law of the land not just coming down but that approval is being sought and that hamilton and those writing for and even against are having this very public dialogue saying we need for lack of a better term buy-in from you right there’s this

there’s this need to choose to unite that we are asking for we are laying out reasons why you should do this and asking for your choice to do so in return i think that’s significant i mean very easily could have been well this is the way it is but it was not that at all it’s it’s asking people to embrace their choice in doing so yeah it’s also significant that not only is that a thoughtful process that we’re choosing uh that we’re we’re soliciting not even saying that the people of the nation were the ones that were going to decide on this question of the constitution but there’s also in that there’s there is a sense that if you were opposed to the constitution it would still be ruling over you but you would still be a part of that it wasn’t if you opposed it there wasn’t going to be some kind of negative action taken upon you it wasn’t as though you were being exiled from society in fact many of those who opposed the constitution uh then became elected officials within that constitutional government um you know and that that alone i think is an extraordinarily powerful thing because it says even if you were to uh be on the the wrong side of the debate insofar as who quote unquote won and lost right the constitution was ratified um you were still a part of that nation and the recognition of your value within that nation wasn’t changed even though you you know weren’t a part necessarily of that that or wanting that that to happen yeah absolutely that your voice is is contributing to a system that can be continually revisited um i think that’s i think that’s really crucial and and speaking of visiting systems uh that we’ve sort of established and this idea of these dialogues i think it’s time to check in with uh our other staff members from bri chris and his team that’s right chris uh and several members of the bri staff are touring around washington dc checking out different uh locations and places uh particularly gathering places right um and chris it looks like you all have moved from the supreme court uh and you are now standing in front of the capitol building is that right yes we are kirk and i’m glad to have kathleen is also joining us natalie on is manning the camera woman in the camera and we are indeed in front of the united states capital um for those of you who’ve never been to dc it’s a very short walk they’re literally right across the street from each other and um on the opposite side we’re looking down the mall we can see the the washington monument and the lincoln memorial it really is a beautiful city i’m originally from kentucky i’ve lived here for uh for over 30 years and i still it still uh moves me when i come to some of these spaces so we’re in another public gathering place right obviously the second branch the us congress works in the building behind us here um kathleen would you like to introduce yourself and share your reflections on absolutely i’m actually from the washington dc area and this area for me it’s a lot like homes because my grandfather and my

great-grandmother they grew up just a few blocks away um in shops alley which was smallest [Music] in like the 50s or 60s um to build a house office building or actually incentive office building so for me this area is cold yeah we’re having a little trouble hearing kathleen but but you are a dc native you’re from the dc area um and so this is very much your front yard which i think is is really powerful right um and not only that but i want to note too that you’re standing on the west side of the the capitol going so if i put on my historian head just for a quick second the east front used to be where they do inaugurations um up until i think the presidency of ronald reagan they’ve now moved into the west side and you guys are standing right where the inauguration would be taking place is that right chris that is absolutely right behind behind us is where the uh the president takes the oath of office which is in the us constitution and uh when we uh when we think about that moment it’s another another reason why we gather in this space right is to uh ceremonial reasons those uh those moments when uh both parties and all three branches of government are represented in this space along with citizens across the mall to witness that you know i was thinking about um what you were saying earlier gary about uh trust and when we think about what goes on in this building and uh the the need for trust among lawmakers from both parties in order to get things done to move things forward and the need for them to trust in the system of government that we have that we celebrate today and you know we’re at a very difficult crossroads with a lot of challenges and i just wonder for those of us watching if you think that it’s possible for us to move past the moment of deadlock uh that we’re kind of in right now um and go back to that that sense of trust both in the system and in one another um so just a thought for you to discuss yeah yeah no absolutely i think that’s really powerful you know on a number of levels because i think that trust fundamentally is an act of optimism right it’s an act of us being hopeful um and what is a symbol of that is that we take a public oath the reason that the inauguration happens is because the president stands before the entire nation in public not behind closed doors it makes an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the united states to defend that thing i i think is truly a sign of optimism and hopefulness that we can get through this deadlock so long as we continue to have faith and believe um in one another and have that civic love for one another yeah absolutely and i think that civic love is is not entirely theoretical but a

lived experience i mean it’s great that that you’re there i think the mall for so many people is a lived experience uh and so i i think it’s time i wanted to thank you for that uh and time to take a look at another important person who who can talk about lived experience uh which is uh evelyn marquez who’s an entrepreneur and an activist and she’s going to be speaking with uh stanstrom sure could you start by just describing your experience growing up before you and your family came to the us where did you get your start and uh eventually what made your parents want to come here okay yeah i was born in mexico to be exact as chihuahua mexico i um i lived there until i was eight or seven years old i don’t remember a lot i do have some memories um i remember we we lived in a very small house i remember my parents struggling a lot growing up it was only my brother and i um back then it was in the 90s uh that i remember my dad being absent a lot uh he would try to look for other other opportunities somewhere else um to find jobs uh so he can provide for that family where we lived uh there wasn’t a lot of opportunity there wasn’t a lot of jobs there wasn’t a lot for us there isn’t a lot that there is to offer for people uh so my dad he did everything he could to make sure that he could provide for his family i do remember a few instances where my parents um were having a meal with with us and there was times that they would give their plates to us because there wasn’t enough for for all of us to eat um and you know we had a cow and that’s how we would get our milk and we were just very very humble very poor um and my dad seen that there was opportunity in the united states he would travel to the united states and work to provide for his family and he would go back to to mexico um and then one day he just decided that we all needed to be together and that there was a lot that he a lot more that he could offer to us living in the united states so we came to the united states my dad had a stable job um we came with a dream i remember being so excited because i was finally going to i mean they would talk about opportunity that i was seven years old and i could understand that i’d be able to go to a better school i would have a better house i would have food for my for my entire family um and my dad had stable job he was able to provide that for us and um i remember going to a new school i didn’t speak english so

it was a little tough for me to adapt you know make new friends but i learned it in less than a year i was speaking english and i just felt so great because i could finally say i had education i could go to school and nothing could stop me even though i was so young i was able to understand that what what kinds of opportunities then have you uh taken advantage of as you’ve gotten older you uh how are you and your family taking care of things today okay so i graduated high school unfortunately i did not finish college but i’ve been able to open up a business with my husband um we currently have a small business and we’re able to provide jobs opportunities for other people as well and that is something that america was able to offer to us i’ve been able to have a job and even though my education wasn’t long enough i was still able to obtain good job opportunities um by or based on my experience so i’ve been able to i’ve had the honor to work with homeless veterans with kids with developmental disabilities and it’s just been amazing to have the opportunity to work with with other people and help other people you know hearing evelyn’s story reminds me of uh again of sort of the individuality that we all have right we all have individuality as far as our backgrounds but also in our experiences and that is i think inherently the challenge in working together coming together in society is that we are all different we all have different perspectives we have different backgrounds our lives unfold differently and yet our our objective as a political body is to come together and to do good for all and that can be a real challenge it can and that concept of society itself i think is worth pausing and thinking about right if we’re talking about society as everyone here as a constitution day i think again one of the beauties of taking a look at the constitution is that you can look at it in different ways and the different aspects of society and there’s lots of different aspects of society right not only as an individual but you’re part of associations you’re part of different groups um what i taught in the classroom we shorthand for taking a look at all these different aspects we refer to as esp right there’s the economic the social and the political and and they all overlap it’s not like they’re all completely separated from each other um they’re all connected to each other but it’s different lenses different ways of looking at how we tie into these different things right i as an individual have different uh aspects of my own life i i i work somewhere i have a family somewhere i you know i have interests and friends in some way and so speaking of that conversation and and

the constitution itself uh within that it it’s not going to lay out all different aspects but it does lay out the branches of government right at least that even within the political realm there are different divisions in the constitution yeah i think it’s useful to think about the constitution in our lives in those ways because it gives different lenses into um how the government’s operating but also how we are operating within society and shows us that you know society isn’t just limited to government action we we most of our lives are lived not taking government action unless maybe you’re a government servant or or employee of some kind but a lot of us go about our daily lives having jobs and doing things we’re still affecting society we’re still affecting other people but it’s not necessarily our political cells that are doing that and you know thinking about looking at the constitution we’ve thought about looking at the constitution as an individual looking at the constitution as a group but also looking at the constitution through these different lenses i think is really interesting so thinking about it from an economic perspective what is it what does it mean to look at the constitution from an economic perspective what does it mean to look at the constitution from sort of a societal sort of charitable perspective what does it then mean to look at it from just a governing perspective how is it that laws are being made chris was talking about those different branches of government of course in the constitution we have three primary articles the first being discussing the legislature and the powers of our bicameral meaning two housed legislature with the house of representatives in the senate both having different functions our second branch being the executive branch a single executive that we talked about elected through the electoral college process they execute the laws and then finally judiciary the judicial branch looking at ruling over the law interpreting the law helping us understand what it means and i think um that’s really powerful and so to start out looking at those different levels i think it’s worth us pausing thinking more deeply about that government branch itself so our political selves earlier i had mentioned the mayflower compact which called for the the puritans who came over to form a body politic right and the government is that for us and the constitution divines what that political body looks like at the national level no absolutely that that design is key because it is tough to balance these these differences of that are on purpose right this this idea that that there is division on purpose and that word division i guess always has a sort of a negative tone but has a sort of something that needs to be overcome but but in the case of the constitution this division this separation of powers this design as you’re describing it is is what’s leading to success i know that sounds strange if you’ll bear with me uh we’ve talked about an analogy of say music or poetry we’re having a structure right where there is division where this this is a noise and this is a a quiet moment clearly i don’t play music by the way but there is there are notes and there are silences and and that division is what makes the melody and allows for the creativity and i think that’s the case in the constitution when it comes to

purposeful separation of powers yeah it’s that idea that separation of powers i think is really key because it’s we’re searching for unity through disunity right so that’s sort of odd right so we divide up powers both amongst the different branches but we divide up powers even within those branches in different ways and they all work to check and balance each other the baron de montesquieu who is a founder or as a philosopher that the founders thought about a lot and he thought about what it meant for these different powers to balance one another within government in order to create both stability but also to create an area to create the ability for no one uh view to be dominant and dominate over everything right because that’s that’s the concern is that consolidation of power and that’s the word that the um the the the authors of the constitution thought a lot about the federalists use that word a lot consolidation of the anti-federalists did too um but it to avoid that consolidation they built into the constitution different mechanisms for balancing that out i mean one of the most famous summing up of these mechanisms is found in federalist 51 which is the 51st essay of that collection that was published in new york and you know it says that ambition must be made to counteract ambition which is interesting because ambition means that there’s some sort of reason that i am wanting to pursue an end right i have ambition to do something right but so do others in allowing for those ambitions not to be tempered or put away or hidden or somehow suffocated but instead to allow them to move forward but to somehow balance each other out i think is at the heart of that unity through disunity absolutely i think it’s it’s it’s in the vein of this discussion of the constitution that when these drives which seem somewhat natural to happen uh occur that the the way to address them is to invite to dialogue right to invite other drives and as you said ambitions right to set up systems where that is possible um and we we do do that i think throughout the day we’re going to take a look more deeply into many of the different aspects of the of the constitution and and of civil society uh i i think we’ll talk about economic perspective the social perspective but i think it’s also significant maybe to start right now that that we’re we’ll talk about sort of the that political perspective right that inviting the dialogue that happens uh and i think we have coming up a conversation about that yeah and we’re fortunate to be joined by uh united states senator mike lee from utah um and i think his perspective is particularly interesting because he this is his day-to-day job right senator lee is a sitting u.s senator and this is something that he thinks about a lot because he is one view of a hundred senators right and so how is it that you maneuver and what does it mean to find compromise in that um that that setting what does it mean to actually work to legislate what is the role of the legislature uh i think all of those are really interesting things to ask particularly someone who is performing those duties now yeah exactly that’s that’s the lived experience that we were talking about earlier right that you

know these aspects all interact but for someone like senator lee it is a daily experience and so i think it’s time to what do you say we take a look at that conversation let’s have a listen we’re especially pleased because today is a constitution day and it’s a day to reflect on a document that i know means a great deal to you personally you’ve you’ve spent so much of your life talking about it thinking about it and we chose as a theme for our broadcast today united we stand with a question mark at the end when i read the constitution one of the very first things i see isn’t unity actually it’s division division of power division again of power and subdivision of power how does a document that’s all about division help unify a people well in a lot of ways it’s right there in the declaration of independence i’ve often said that if the constitution is the framework um the frame around the picture the declaration is the picture itself the fact that in the declaration of independence we acknowledge that all men are created equal and that we’re all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights life liberty and the pursuit of happiness uh chief among them and and to secure these rights we need a government of limited power that is accountable to the people at routine intervals so it’s these ideas the idea of having equal rights before a just impartial accountable system of laws and the rejection of the idea of tyrannical government uh understanding that any limitless unaccountable government is itself by definition inevitably tyrannical these are ideas that have united our country for going on 250 years and they can unite us for another 250 if we’ll just follow these principles in your recent book you uh you claimed that the framers put the legislature at the heart those are your words at the heart of the design of the constitution what do you mean by that and why did the framers do it well the most dangerous branch within the federal government was always going to be the legislative branch they did it that way quite deliberately because the legislative branch decides what should be under the law what’s going to be it lays down prescriptive and prospect proscriptive rules um the executive branch just gets to execute and enforce those laws and the judicial branch just gets to determine them so as between the three

the branches are not equal they’re co-equal in that they’re coordinate branches that doesn’t mean that they’re all equally dangerous the most dangerous branch always was going to be the legislative branch and that’s why they put the legislative power only in this branch that would be most accountable as between the three at the most regular intervals you say it’s a dangerous branch dangerous to what liberty every time government acts it does so at the expense of individual liberty government can’t act without eroding individual liberty that’s not to say that government action is always bad or that we would prefer a system of anarchy in which there are no laws that’s not true either it’s just that we have to carefully balance uh what belongs to the people versus what belongs to the government when government expands it does so at the expense of liberty but that’s why it’s dangerous it’s always dangerous because government is nothing more and nothing less than the official uh collective use of coercive force we can dress it up all day long if we want to we can wrap it in a flag and we can pretend that government has only our best interests at heart but ultimately it is the use of force that that that really defines what government is and so just like fire or oxygen or water or any of a number of other things that are necessary in order to support and sustain life those same things if left uncontrolled can also be destructive and dangerous there’s definitely a lot to unpack there uh and we were talking about the the lived experience of of the legislative body and the legislative process and i think that’s that’s a really important thing we want to focus on and we’re fortunate to have a guest to talk about this that’s right yeah we are joined by mary patterson hello mary hi thanks so much for having me guys you might know mary as as the voice of vri from our podcast and webinar series and we’re happy to have her today yes i’m happy to be here happy constitution day everybody that’s right it is constitution day and so mike lee was talking about one aspect of the constitution which is the legislative branch um and i think that thinking about the legislative branch is really powerful because it’s where a lot of this uh united we stand uh elements the unification actually happens right it’s in that sort of the hurley burley of uh the political discourse and everything else that happens in the legislature that actually produces the laws that we have absolutely and it’s really a branch that’s close to the people right if we’re talking about large groups of people who are coming together for for a drive that they want to go to it’s it’s often their representatives that are in their districts and are representing them directly and i think that’s a really important part of this yeah absolutely and you know representation i think takes on a more significant uh tone this year as we think about it

being the 100th anniversary of the pe the ratification of the 19th amendment and i’m just going to read it because it’s a very short piece of legislation but i’m going to read it really quickly and it says the right of the citizens of the united states to vote shall not be denied or bridged by the united states or by any state on account of sex congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation and so by that uh women had the right to vote and that was a significant moment in 1920 happened 100 years ago today i think that the shortness of the amendment sort of belies how much work it took to get it passed and you talk about unity and disunity and movement splitting and coming together again and that is the story of the 19th amendment i mean it’s really um if you think about a group project which we are all very familiar with it’s almost like our government in getting this particular amendment passed was a group project it was messy and you had you know competing personalities and competing tactics but in the end it worked out and it took a long time this was the passage of this amendment in 1920 is the culmination of years of you know very determined work so we think about you know this amendment passed and it’s it’s definitely a celebration but ladies we stand on the shoulders of these these giants that you know worked so hard for many years to to get that written into the constitution yeah i think that’s important to note that it is a process and and the way that we talk about it here at bri is that it is it is a very lengthy not only in time but it it takes a lot there’s like a pathway right that goes that that involves many people right and and lots of different people you mentioned standing on shoulders i think that i think that’s incredible because it’s right it’s we try to understand through narratives of individuals but it was a collection of lots of people who who were contributing their voices their actions to this very lengthy process and i think sometimes that was surprising who was involved and who wasn’t right and i think this pathway for change is something you can see in our votes for women curriculum we should definitely check it out but it is it’s lots of voices coming together to for this end goal of having a vote having a voice and and we the people and that that vote is really powerful and and was the drive of that movement um and within that you see this this choice to continue to work towards that unifying action right that it’s it’s disparate people from lots of different backgrounds america mentioned different tactics that had taken place you know but but it’s all these individuals working towards this common goal and i think it’s when when americans unify in that way you see something really spectacular happen in the nation yeah it’s really exciting i think we’ll see in our homework help video the different approaches and how different leaders had different ideas on how best to achieve getting women the right to vote but um right like again back to that group project you have different ideas you

have different styles but the ideal the goal is the same we want to be a part of this this union this consent of the govern it includes women we are half the population i think we’re more than half the population technically so we you know we need to vote we need a voice and they they get there but it takes it takes a lot of hard work yeah and you i mean you refer to it in the in the curriculum as as a story right and i think that’s i don’t think that’s insignificant that it’s a story because i think that it’s not exactly like there’s one particular end moment right it’s a very long process there are kind of rises and falls and and really amazing just tales of the way things go uh over the course of this and um it’s not linear is it no definitely not so i think we want when we think of liberty and equality we want immediate action and we want it to go very linearly but that’s that’s not the story i think that’s not a lot of stories in u.s history um there’s lots of sort of side branches and different figures involved so there’s this sense of unity towards the goal but there’s also disunity along the way of how best to reach that goal and i think that’s one of the great um things that the the women’s suffrage movement illustrates just um to look at it back in the past and how it informs how we we work for you know reforms and changes today yeah and that the accomplishment of it wasn’t inevitable either for the women who were in men who were a part of that movement there was never a moment where they knew how it was going to end but they wanted to commit to that struggle in order to more fully recognize that fundamental equality that we talked about that recognition of the the fundamental dignity of every human being and a part of that being that ability to have a vote have a voice in our government and to be able to work towards that end yeah i think it’s significant to say is 1920 an end to the story in any way i know i would say no but um it’s still worth it it was a momentous achievement so it’s worth celebrating especially on constitution day to think about all the work that went into getting this this legislation this part this amendment passed and um but also looking to the future and thinking about you know what’s next how do we continue this work i think the amendment process is interesting particularly because we were just talking about the legislature and the fact that the legislature issued out to the states the amendment that every state then considered and passed for that ratification of the amendment to occur but just the idea that we can amend the constitution i think is interesting yeah absolutely yeah there’s like a deliberation that happens i mean that process i think is worth kind of looking into yeah yeah i mean it’s it’s a living document in a way and the amendment process falls so much to the legislative branch so it’s you know it’s congress has to propose it and the state legislatures have to ratify it so it’s you know it’s definitely um it’s part of that that conversation in that process so it takes time but time can be a good thing yeah and i think there’s different ways even within that to accomplish those ends so you had mentioned there was

different tactics that were taking place i think um two of the tactics one was pushing for that national federal amendment the other was working at the state level to try to get state legislatures uh to also pass laws that would allow for voting um and i know wyoming i believe is one of the first states um in utah a lot of western states for really interesting reasons actually you should look into the history if you’re interested in why it was that the federal that the western states were giving women the right to vote it’s really really interesting story um but it’s that idea that that again that federalism that that idea that we’re all even through that disunity we’re working towards that end but doing it in in different ways that are allowing for um the advancement of these ideas uh to take place and to take shape and it fosters that dialogue in that debate which comes naturally just from our own innate differences but then culminates in the passage of these um these transformational laws yeah no absolutely i mean i’m staggered because of of the size of it and i think and it ties in i think amazingly well to our theme of the day because in addition to this legislative process this particular lens we’re talking about right now um is is the requirement of the coming together right of of it being a movement um and i think i think what’s important particularly again in the curriculum that we deal with here in votes for women is that connection of how a movement becomes an amendment right how how many different people and over centuries really uh are are coming together into into that sort of end point and so you could point to a day and celebrate that day uh and i think that process is important i’m wondering about the the elements along the way of how that happened how it transitioned from people coming together to something written down in such a elegant way well i think that’s i mean that’s part of the fun of looking into movements like this is that you have people sort of unifying in a cause but it’s going to take time and that’s that deliberation piece of our our government so we want again we think especially now we want change to happen immediately but taking the time to gather like-minded people to talk with others convince others convince your legislators that this is what needs to happen it takes a lot of time it takes a lot of approaches it takes a lot of voices it takes in the in the case of women’s suffrage it takes generations so a lot of the suffragettes knew they were working towards something that they wouldn’t see right so if we’re talking about the beginnings of this movement in the 19th century and it takes to 1920 they’re not around to see it but the cause is bigger so the goal the goal is there that they’re working towards that’s right and we have a video that we can check out that dives a little bit more into that history that mary’s talking about so let’s check it out welcome back when we last left off in part one the women’s suffrage movement was split over whether to support the 15th amendment which gave african-american men the right to vote and while this progress was celebrated by many women within the suffrage movement others felt slighted

because of their lack of inclusion a rift in ideologies arose and the suffrage movement experienced major setbacks how would women overcome this and finally achieve their goal of the right to vote this is part two of the women’s suffrage movement [Music] in 1869 lucy stone and henry blackwell formed the american woman suffrage association focusing on his strategy of winning women’s suffrage on a stage by state basis elizabeth katie stanton and susan b anthony on the other hand formed a group of their own called the national women’s suffrage association focusing on a strategy of winning a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage as these groups were forming women continued to take on more expanded roles in society in the latter half of the 19th century some were able to take advantage of increasing educational opportunities at colleges such as vassar and wellesley others worked outside the home as clerks and secretaries and offices as well as in department stores and even factories women also continued to develop social reform movements the women’s christian temperance union sought to ban alcohol to protect families from domestic abuse or lost wages florence kelly fought for the protection of worker and consumer rights and jane adams along with others created whole house to relieve the suffering of poor immigrants in crowded cities more settlement houses would follow meanwhile the divide in the movement frustrated the goals american women had come so far to achieve however a breakthrough was made in 1890 when the nwsa and the awsa merged to form the national american woman suffrage association for nawsa the organization lobbied both state and national governments to grant women’s suffrage they’d achieve early success particularly in the west where women won suffrage in the late 19th century the movement continued to gain momentum into the early 20th century by 1900 3 million american women were working outside the home and gaining an independent voice thousands joined labor unions primarily the international ladies garment workers union a new catalyst for the movement emerged when tragedy struck in 1911 the triangle shirtwaist factory fire killed 146 people and convinced many that women needed a larger voice in politics and reform and their voices indeed continue to grow louder as more impressive strides were made by 1915 the women’s christian temperance union won prohibition in 38 states and francis perkins worked extensively for the protection of workers rights later even becoming the first female cabinet member however many male politicians were

unconvinced that women should attain suffrage senator j b sanford expressed a common view of many in congress that quote the mothers of this country can shape the destinies of the nation by keeping their place in the home in 1911 a national association opposed to women’s suffrage was started to stop a constitutional amendment that would give women the right to vote despite this nawsa won the support of theodore roosevelt’s progressive or bulmur’s party in the 1912 presidential election unfortunately for them he would lose to woodrow wilson but while wilson opposed women’s suffrage he could only provide the important moral persuasion of the office as he had no official role as president in constitutional amendments it was during this time that a new leader in the movement came to prominence alice paul a university of penn educated woman from new jersey would emerge as a leader within nawsa and turn up the pressure on the wilson administration inspired by the confrontational tactics she learned from british suffragists while studying in england paul pushed hard for suffrage by what were considered radical means paul persuaded nawsa to let her organize a pro-suffrage parade held the day before wilson’s presidential inauguration on march 3rd 1913 8 thousand marchers holding signs for women’s suffrage paraded on foot floats and even horses hostile crowds taunted and assaulted the marchers and injured more than one hundred paul and nawsa developed disagreements over tactics paul also believes that suffragists should hold all democrats responsible for failing to pass a woman’s suffrage amendment as they were the party in power however nawsa supported any politician who favored women’s suffrage regardless of their party paul then split with nawsa and formed the national women’s party her harsh criticisms of world war one and the group’s intense protests in front of the white house led to the arrest of paul and her companions after being sentenced to prison paul and many of her allies went on hunger strikes when prison officials horrifically force-fed them public sympathy for the women increased maintaining her sense of pride paul would declare that there will never be a new world order until women are part of it meanwhile carrie chapman cat leader of nawsa continued its state and national strategies when world war one began cat urged members to contribute by working on the home front and proving their patriotism these efforts finally bore fruit when both houses of congress passed a women’s suffrage amendment in june 1919. the 19th amendment was ratified on august 18th 1920 the united states constitution finally gave american women the right to vote let it be noted however that not all american women would enjoy this right black women were still unable to vote in many southern states until the voting rights act of 1965. one of the most persevering struggles in

american history the women’s suffrage movement lasted 70 years across local state and national levels and even though the movement would split over the best way to achieve full civic economic and social equality for women the 19th amendment meant that women had the right to vote and give their voice to a popular government based upon the consent of the governed inspired by these accomplishments we can all do our part to advance greater civic equality thanks for joining us this was the story of the women’s suffrage movement if you welcome back that’s an extremely helpful homework help video uh and happy constitution day everyone uh we’re coming up on our third hour uh just ending our second hour of programming and again we’re celebrating the constitution on constitution day and part of that is our live stream having many discussions and dialogues big ideas that have been floating around just to recap i think it’s it’s a good time for that our theme is united we stand question mark and throughout the first couple of hours we’ve we’ve drilled down in some interesting and important parts of it which is when we say united we stand and we the people and taking a look at the structure of the constitution itself we run into different ways of looking at the constitution from the individual and its effect on individuals and how individuals have effects on each other and associate with each other as well as larger groups those with which you you share something in common if it’s a common drive you’re trying to get to to somewhere together uh but then there’s the the wholeness aspect right there’s the the everyone that the constitution does apply to across the country right to everyone and so these big ideas are are guiding a lot of the ways we’re taking a look at the constitution itself that’s right and that wholeness isn’t oneness dr alan uh who a professor at harvard university we spoke with um defines those things differently that it’s not uniformity but it is us coming together collectively um we talked about you know sort of good compromises and bad compromises what that looks like when when we’re working towards being um inclusive and thinking about all of those things are being affected and when you’re making compromises that that are are more challenging maybe not going in the right direction so that it’s not that compromise is is innately good but it is something that you want to work towards in thinking about others um and we’ve talked about you know what what it is that’s driving all that which is that our love the civic love civic friendship um and thinking about how we value other people that we want others uh to to continue to be a part of that conversation to to be a part of this society and that we want to recognize their ability to share their ideas while we’re sharing our own ideas absolutely and i mean this sounds very complex that’s a lot to cover that we’re talking about but it’s all rooted in the constitution itself and and the idea that the design of the constitution is meant to address these issues which were at the time right this is these are issues in 1787 and they are issues today

the the core idea of how do individuals come together and how how we respect each other’s equality uh how we understand our own choices and how we’re choosing to buy into this nation that we’re talking about which is has foundational parts within the constitution itself and i think that’s really key that’s right going back to the preamble we mentioned uh we the people of the united states in order to form a more perfect union this idea of we the people being individual sovereign people coming together around a common purpose which is the forming of that union but more so forming of a union in order to secure the blessings of liberty right securing the ability for us to live our lives and we talked about what that means at different levels so we talked about what it means uh when we are operating as political individuals we’ll talk a little bit later about our civil institutions ways that we organize around different interests that we have outside of the government whether it be for inconsequential or very consequential things and also how we operate as economic beings what it is when we’re we’re trading and working um and buying and selling goods going about our just everyday lives yeah that lived experience i think that’s key i think it’s very easy to look at the constitution as being only focused on the government and while yes obviously that’s very important it’s done so in a way i would argue and we could probably talk about it that there are limits and and and freedoms that that are there in the document itself right that again it’s not a list of of policies necessarily but uh but structures by which individuals and groups can kind of come together government’s part of it but by by no means it isn’t the only part of what’s in there yeah that’s right it oversees different elements so of course article one section eight we’re just talking about the legislature in article 1 section 8 there are clauses that outline what those different powers of congress are what are the distinct things over which congress is responsible for and of course one of those is the commerce clause commerce being regulated between states um is certainly within the purview of congress and that means we should probably talk a little bit about what commerce is so what what is that what does it mean for us to be sort of in an economic relationship with one another yeah that’s a fancy word comment commerce i often think of it when i’m on a website that’s dot com and there’s because of commerce it’s often buying and selling and trading and it’s part of this big idea of the economy which can be a lot to wrap your head around right the the economy and what that means and i may know in my day-to-day lived experience much like the many people who are having discussions over the course of this uh live stream have their own lived experience um but that’s only a small part of it right i mean this year i was particularly noting you know how do i get food how do i have things that i’m going to be living off of and so i think it’s important to question like what exactly is the economy yeah no absolutely and you know i’m no economist but i do know that i need things and stuff from time

to time things and stuff are great especially living in the complex world in which we do in 2020 um you know there we many of us do not have farm all of our own food many of us don’t have uh the skill required to create wi-fi or to build a cell phone or many of these things that we use all of those are supplied by individuals who are thinking and acting and trying to solve problems within society and for that work there is a benefit they we call that profit right they there’s an incentive uh for them to take that action um but that relationship i think is an interesting one because it goes back again to that same thing we talked about earlier which is trust we trust the things we’re buying are what they say that they are we trust uh that what we’re going to receive is a quality product and we have the ability to sort of monitor and regulate that trust a little bit as well absolutely and so part of that is is focusing on how organization and by that business is part of that um and so there’s a conversation coming up with jill peterson who’s a chairman at jetblue airways also a professor he’s at stanford who has a great conversation that dives into this uh with our very own stan swim let’s take a look at that at bri we like to focus on three general sectors in our society government business and charitable you’re most experienced in the business area how does business make its best contribution in that mixture well i think that if we keep in mind the purpose of business is to provide products and services at attractive prices and values to customers consumers and i think to the extent that businesses are efficient at that they really are doing their jobs you spend a lot of your time teaching writing and investing in business settings but you’re also involved with stanford university’s hoover institution what connects your regular work with hoover’s work in history government and the american system well i think business really depends on having a stable government a stable set of guard rails laws principles regulations all those things matter a lot and there are many different philosophies about what government should do what is the role of government and so to me it’s vital that we get that right and the american constitution has proven to be a miraculous document i mean it’s lasted for a long time it’s been remarkably helpful at building this greatest economy in the history of the world granting freedom private property rights the rule of law free speech all these things that have made america such a remarkable place for millen for hundreds of years at least so to me it’s it’s a vital uh concern let’s let’s dig a little bit deeper on that one how would you you mentioned a couple of ways that the

constitution affects business in america you think and work a lot with startups how do you how do you specifically see that playing out with these new companies as they’re getting started what kinds of of environment what kind of an environment what sorts of protections do they need to get off the ground and then build value for investors and and satisfy consumers well i think one of the things is they there’s kind of a this notion of anti-trust whereas if you have these big established players they can crush new players so you can have new ideas come out and if uh if there’s not a free market that allows the best idea to win uh we’ll just maintain a bunch of existing businesses that uh will be able to kill any new entrant so i think it’s important that the markets stay open free uh and i think our whole freedom depends on it so to me it’s it’s at least one area that the government matters a lot one of one of the issues that you’ve written specifically about is the is the issue of trust how it relates to business and we’ll get to that in just a minute but i’d like to reflect for just a moment if you could on how law can foster a climate of trust well law provides us with something that we can rely on you know trust is developed basically when people deliver on promises they say they’ll do something and then they do it and that’s what the law is there to enforce so somebody has a complaint there’s a predicted remedy and we can we can understand what the guard rails are we can understand how to get disputes resolved and understanding the rules actually allows us to build trust so is there is there a point at which law begins to displace trust like crowd trust out and if so what what does that look like could you give me an example well i think if you if the law is abused and and we see the law abuse just because there’s a law doesn’t mean it’s going to be observed or managed perfectly so i think lawyers in many cases have become very clever they figured out ways around the law ways to manipulate the court system uh and so we get injustices the law can be used as a cudgel it can be used to beat people up and uh so i think the law in theory provides for greatly enhanced trust it is actually you know this notion of the rule of law not the rule of humans is a is a way to actually build trust but if you get people who’ve learned to manipulate the law and use it as a weapon weaponizing the law then i think it can destroy trust and people can get frustrated with

it and seek ways to defeat the rule of law so joe peterson touched on something i think that is at the heart of constitution day which is what the constitution fundamentally is at the end of the day and that is a law the constitution is a law uh it is a written constitution which means um not only that it’s physically written down but it’s something we can go to and read and look at uh and that’s significant because it helps form i think what joe peterson was talking about as well which is this this idea of stability um if it’s going to change it has to be actually written in and changed um and that i think helps to again create this society in which things are stable uh in which we can live uh in a predictable way which then allows us to take actions that if we were concerned about stuff all the time we might not be able to take right absolutely it’s it’s it requires a certain amount of trust which i think is interesting um you know having something written down it’s how do you take an idea and have it be something that you can point to and you know i mean if we’re talking about economics you know i i’m not an economist either but speaking in the classroom i’d often show say a piece of currency a dollar and be like we we trust what this means we agree you know like time we often say you know it’s something that we we agree on as being true and so that trust in the classroom i think is is really important the trust in the constitution is really important not just general idea of trust um i think is key uh and luckily we actually had the opportunity to sit down with a number of teachers uh and speak with them which was really excellent um you’ll see me there but really a lot of the conversation uh was with bri’s own liz evans uh who spoke sat down with a number of teachers and talked about this idea of trust well great well i’m excited to see what they had to say so the theme of this year’s constitution day live uh is about united we stand question mark and so within that is this idea of of coming together an idea of being united of unity for lack of a better word some say unity requires trust what are ways that trust is built even among those who do not see things the same way and so i’ll start with laura if i can you know whether or not it’s in the in the classroom in the community the state the nation um let me ask you that question what ways do you see trust being built well again i think that that you know a lot of people don’t think that that’s something that can be taught but i would beg to to disagree and i’m going to go back to those essential debate skills because a debater is required to debate both sides of an issue and that forces each individual to

look at an issue from all sides and perhaps to um that and that may change their mind on which side they actually you know stand with or or it might mitigate how strongly they feel about one side or the other but they are at least looking at things from a different perspective and it forces that because they have to debate both sides in a debate tournament and i think that those skills are really important because they’re learning to pay close attention to those details from from each side and debate used to be such a common part of our republic and it you know it’s faded so much and and i i hate to see that because so much of our founding fathers lives were centered on these debates that occurred when we study the constitution the constitutional convention um think about the that would listen to you know how hot it was and how miserable they were but they didn’t stop arguing they didn’t say well let’s just you know flip a coin because it’s too hot in here and we’re wearing wool and this is miserable um they kept arguing they kept debating and i think that’s such a critical aspect of the constitution to consider is that it took a lot of argument it took a lot of debate but they recognized that compromise was going to have to occur in order to achieve union and i just think that teaching kids these skills can help to teach them trust to teach them that they can argue with someone and then shake hands at the end and still go have lunch together in the cafeteria or still be friends and classmates and i think just building that up as a society we have to re-teach our nation how to engage in civil discourse again and um i think that in that way trust can be built i also think that we can focus on things that do unite us my students today focused on patriot day and one of the things that the 911 museum and memorial foundation does is to focus on this concept of serving in memory of those we lost and so uh it’s a day of a national day of service of volunteerism uh you know no greater love has any man than to lay down a life for somebody else and people were willing to lay down their lives for documents like the declaration and then that led to the constitution so what can we do to um to honor that um is to look for commonalities and i talked oh and the reason i’m i’m kind of and i know this is sounding very disjointed i think it’s coming across in my head very awkwardly but one of the things we talked about in my class today was how beautiful the 12th of september was 2001 that we had never been since world war ii more united as a group because we we faced something together and i think that um that that’s something that we can focus on in our

classrooms yeah that is that is really powerful and and and being able to balance in one’s head the the that term argument’s an interesting one right because i think often it has a has a has a meaning that that seems like there’s a stop to something but that’s that’s not that’s what we mean yeah exactly there’s more of your presenting thoughts and premises and understanding it um but also the powerful point that you make about those commonalities sir it is you don’t sometimes when it is revealed in such a way it is it is incredibly powerful um molly if i can i can ask you uh ways that you’ve seen trust lead to unity um so i i can’t help but think of how we are in school this year we are in person and i mean our administration right from the beginning said we are in this together to try to go to school and have it as a normal experience as possible in the midst of a pandemic we are literally trusting each other to do the right thing to all be kind of leaders in this in this school environment so that we can do what we all want and be in the building and um collectively have that experience that is so so meaningful um so so they really are kind of putting trust in each other that they’re looking out for each other and doing the right thing collectively as a school community and and and hopefully that we see that happening across the country as well that we are in a collective moment where if if americans come together and and trust that we can look out for each other then um then we can get through these these times like living through a pandemic um when i also think of trust i think of and compromise and all that i think that to get the students to realize that they have more in common than what divides them and trying to do exercises one of the first few days of school this year i just had them have a conversation with another student that they don’t necessarily know that well and try to just kind of come up with everything that they have in common and just realizing that there’s probably more that unites us than divides us and starting there and if you can kind of see more of the human the human face and the person that you are having that disagreement with you’re more cordial you’re more um hopefully trusting that there is positive intent in what they’re they’re saying and it doesn’t always have to be us versus them but instead this is what i am saying and i do this exercise with my students all the time where you say this your partner is saying this but what do you say together and and and how can you kind of reconcile those ideas that you think maybe um at appearance are completely separate they might be um there’s some commonality there and i think that’s where they can

start um i think both what laura and molly has said really resonates um i think at the most fundamental level like we as teachers in our classroom whether we’re doing this virtually or whether we’re like getting to be inside that actual classroom um first and foremost is we’re developing that trust with our students and laura i loved what you said about like people talk about trust not being able to be taught and i think you’re right like i don’t think it’s something you probably can read and learn but i think it’s something to be emulated right and so us in our classroom i mean i’m so so much of a believer in trust is developed by like humanity right being honest being forthright like if i don’t know something i’m not gonna lie to my students and tell them i know what i’m talking about right like i’m gonna say that’s a great question i’m gonna look that up for you or someone else can look that up um and just kind of showing that like i as a human have my faults but but we are as molly was saying we’re in this together and building that relationship within the classroom where you can start having those debates and they can start feeling comfortable and then telling them and talking about how how does this look outside right like what would you want your leaders to be saying right now what does that sound like what can you forgive of someone even you know if you don’t agree with them but maybe empathize with or understand um and so for me i feel like this idea of union it comes from developing trust at the most fundamental levels and i know that in this country that is so incredibly vast that that could seem so difficult but it’s like that grassroot movement that we start right like we’re starting it in our classroom and building this broader community of people who can listen to each other who can empathize who understand that um compromise doesn’t always make everybody happy but that you do go along with at times to be able to work through in a different way and to have those debates because like even my students like one of my um questions that i i always ask them i’m like true or false we all have to agree and some of them are like yeah we have to agree and i’m like no that’s false like we’re never all gonna agree that would be so boring but we’re going to listen to each other and we’re going to use that scholarly dialogue to be able to have those discussions and in the end we may never agree but we’re going to see that we all kind of have the same ideas and the same aims that we all want to have safety and we all want to be cared for and then we all want to see a society in which people are able to be successful and grow and so um anyways and the long-winded like it starts really small like i emulate what i believe will elicit trust and my you know my students in turn will do the same for me how fortunate we were to have this conversation about trust in the lived

experience in the classroom uh and and really getting to these big ideas but what it really means like in the day-to-day i think it’s time to check in with our other staff and see what they’re looking for right now that’s right chris and some members of our bri staff natalie and kathleen have been touring around dc going to different gathering places uh and you’ve been to the supreme court you’ve been to the capitol building and i think you’ve arrived at another gathering place we have indeed so can you tell us where you tell sorry yeah having a little trouble hearing unfortunately yeah so we’re facing we’re actually facing can you guys hear me yep so we’re we’re facing the black lives matter mural which uh the mayor of washington commissioned and about a football field from from that is the is a fence and behind this fence you can’t see it but it’s the white house uh and the reason you can’t see it is because the fence is covered with people uh the posted signs with messages black lives matter uh if you aren’t anti-racist you are complicit i don’t know if you can read some of the messages but here’s the first amendment really in practice it’s it’s really quite powerful i think very much this is actually my first slide down here it’s really nice i i kind of regret not coming here for sure but it’s really interesting absolutely so this is uh this is obviously the physical seat of the first branch of government the the executive branch um the building behind us is where the president works and lives uh lives with his family and works and uh you know this has been a gathering place for a lot of protests and celebration both in the present time and and throughout our history uh the church st john’s episcopal church which i’m sure many of you saw in the news the president standing in front of is actually right here as well so um so being in this physical space is very powerful and very moving and you know it reminds me of both the the the potential for unity that we have the potential we have for coming together and also the divisions that we still have um over ideas over uh you know how to how to achieve true racial justice um we’ve physically seen those play out right in this in this space over the last few months yeah i think i think that’s really powerful and it’s really powerful to see those symbols and like you mentioned um you know the white house has been the scene of protest earlier we were talking to mary about the 19th amendment and famously um there were

women who were part of the women’s suffrage movement who went and petitioned uh woodrow wilson to get that amendment passed to get you know women’s suffrage achieved um and it’s amazing now to see this dialogue take place it’s really a public uh showing of those different views and those different interests in that that conversation that we’ve been talking about all day today yeah absolutely and and i’m sorry natalie i’ve been here having trouble hearing you but i think you said like this has been uh it’s relatively new like physically being there almost has a bit of a difference right than just reading about this or or seeing this in the news and i i feel like that’s actually a very significant point uh about that that experience of of literal voices being heard in occasions like this but it’s different when you’re here [Music] yeah and i think you know being able to go physically to those locations and again we’re very fortunate to live just adjacent to washington dc but but there’s something about being there and i think there’s something about physically gathering together and maybe it’s something i’m just reflecting on more because it is 2020 and we have had a pandemic that’s kept us apart but the opportunity to assemble you know that right of assembly that right of of of hearing your voice and of seeing the physical nature of people uniting together for a common purpose is really powerful and i think it’s great that you all are able to go down and see that um even though you know there may not be thousands of individuals gathered there now that there have been and that they’ve left sort of their messages for what it was they were gathering for i think is really powerful yeah absolutely there definitely is a significance to the individual voice um and luckily throughout the day today we’ve uh personally i do want to thank you for for taking that that trip there and giving us this amazing tour over the course of the day really uh live um but there’s also uh i think it’s important to think about to pull back a moment and think about the individual and the individual voice and how that’s heard in our society yeah that’s right and chris you read a couple of those signs i mean those are put up i think it’s important to say by individuals but the signs also reflect a movement right so it’s someone made it but someone made it and they’re a part of that larger hole which i think is is really powerful and that it’s that coming together that’s driving toward toward a goal toward a common purpose yeah as someone who’s lived here for a while and been to this space many times i used to go running down here it’s it’s really incredible to see how the space is transformed by this historic moment that we’re in now and it will be interesting to see going forward whoever the next occupant of this building is uh after note after november third or after january 20th how it will continue to express and kind of reflect that moment right beyond the this uh the pandemic and beyond the division current

divisions that we’re having like what’s going to be the next um iteration of this of this space it’s absolutely that communication it’s funny you’re mentioning that chris because you know the pandemic i think the fact that we are talking to the two of you lives um this way is something that but even a few months ago i personally did not have as much experience with and i think you know when there are obstacles it’s significant mentioning um that we find ways to to go toward the things that we want or that we feel others need yeah that’s right and that coming together is really a hopeful sort of an optimistic thing because it’s a it’s an optimism that we can achieve what we’re putting our minds to it’s hopeful and it’s going back to that idea of trust that that there will be a system that is recognizing sort of what we’re driving towards um and there’s also an opportunity the opportunity that we have uh to really to have ourselves be heard but also the opportunity to participate in society in a number of different ways right and a great conversation about such things uh happened with evelyn marcus and so what do you say we take a look at that let’s check it out we uh this being constitution day one part of the constitution that kind of sets it all up is the preamble to the constitution and one of the phrases in there that stands out to me when i i hear your story is the phrase secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity what does that phrase mean to you it means that i have rights that protect me that protect my business that protect my family um other countries if you start a business um and i’m speaking in regards to business because i’m a business owner um if you start a business and the government is not okay with it they can literally go and make you stop doing that where i’m where i used to live where i come from in chihuahua um the people don’t have rights i mean the higher i mean there is a lot of um they call them sicarios so they’re basically drug dealers you know the drug hotel and things like that they have more power than the people um so if they don’t like that you have a business they can go and like bring it down if they want to they can go and burn down a house and no one is gonna do anything about it um yeah you can go to the police station but they’re not the same rights that we have here there is no rights that protect you like the rights that we have in the united states that will protect us um so i feel confident that my business will be protected and that there is people um that will defend my rights so i think you know it’s really powerful to circle back and think about you know

what evelyn was talking about that we have rights that are being protected um and getting also to this idea of wholeness and oneness that dr daniel allen talked about earlier that that were coming together but it’s not a uniformity um but it is a coming together and joining together um to work on behalf of others really to defend others rights um and help us think this once again is our colleague tony williams welcome back tony thank you thanks for joining us yeah no it’s great to be here again and so thinking about sort of that idea um you know coming back to this idea of united we stand right so that’s that’s the question of the day and again we talked about when we first had tony on thinking about things being united um and connecting that the idea of union and of course one thing that we think about often when we think of union is the civil war uh and a significant part of the civil war was abraham lincoln and even before that there’s the election of 1860 but even before the election of 1860 we have a lot of sectionalism and division so we’ve been talking about division today we’ve been talking about different interests being represented um in fact earlier we had a a question from someone on youtube and we encourage you to reach out to us if you have questions that you’d like to us to discuss we’ll try to get to as many as we can but uh they were asking about sort of third parties right and i think it’s interesting in this context because before the civil war um you have different parties you have different elements that are uh that are arguing and debating and vying particularly over the issue of slavery um and you have democrats and you had whigs and then the whigs went away and you had republicans but even with that you had different segmented parties and so it was a little crazy and chaotic but the constitution was there where there were individuals who were trying to continue to keep the country together and unified in a way but this election that came down in 1860 was one that was that was momentous and significant but even before that the debate leading up to it particularly around the kansas nebraska act you had this really powerful speech that abraham lincoln gave that’s often referred to as the house divided speech right right and you know in the speech lincoln talks about how the government cannot endure forever half slave half free now i had endured up to that time essentially half slave half free but he understood that as the abolitionists were were pushing very strongly for its abolition uh and you know the pro-slavery advocates were were pushing for the expansion of slavery into the western territories that that lincoln saw the contention over this history he saw the division and he said you know i cannot endure forever have saved have free because you know on one side you had republicanism you had uh equality and and liberty uh you had the republican principle being upheld and and on the other hand uh you had the the tyrannical principle right of injustice of the denial of of of natural rights

and so while lincoln understood that it could endure for some time it couldn’t endure forever uh half slave half free you know you had to make a decision uh that that eventually the country would have to either follow and reconcile itself with its founding principles or would have to just get rid of them yeah and so part of that you know was a a part of something we we don’t have time to go into but is uh you know changing views around the idea of slavery and the enslavement of individuals and that there were there were people particularly in the south that were advocating for it um as being good and consistent with constitutional principles which of course it isn’t like you you pointed that out i’ve been talking about the denial of natural rights i mean fundamentally it gets to this idea that it’s it is wholly completely inconsistent and morally objectionable and in a horrific institution and lincoln saw that and yet worked within the constitutional system to try to bring about the ending of it and i think that’s the the momentous thing about the election of 1860 which is important to reflect on is we’re in an election year what contentious elections can really look like 1860 is one of the most contentious elections and and lincoln gets into office and immediately is assailed with states who are who are claiming that they’re going to leave the union so as to not be a part of what they believe is going to be a drive for abolition that abraham lincoln is going to push forward right so he’s being assailed by by the ab by the secessionists as you say and he needs to solve that that problem but he also needs to balance that with the contending abolitionists who are just demanding the immediate end of slavery and so lincoln is trying to thread that politically between the different groups but he’s also trying to achieve the principle of natural rights for african americans and yet do so in a constitutional way right because he knew he had no power over slavery where it existed already but congress did have power over slavery in the territories uh at least he thought so not not the supreme court uh in dred scott and so you know he has to navigate all this and and it’s not easy uh and you know i think his his approach is prudential it’s restraint it’s constitutional and and he alludes to that you know very much so in his first inaugural address but he also appeals to the national union right he appeals to our common uh you know the common idea of america uh so uh he closes very beautifully and if you’ll indulge me please i i want to read it because i think it has so much resonance in in 2020 i am loathed to clues we are not enemies but friends we must not be enemies though passion may have strained it must not break the bonds of affection the mystic cords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the course of the union when again touched

as surely they will be by the better angels of our nature right it’s really beautiful right to think about as americans we can have differences we can disagree but we’re still friends right we’re still americans and i’d like to think that in 2020 we can we can recapture the better angels of our natures uh and and discuss and deliberate again and and and maybe even argue productively over that cup of coffee or that proverbial beer yeah i think that’s significant uh just to there’s so much to unpack in that and i think it’s significant drilling back or at least returning back to that concept of preserving a union um and maybe what lincoln’s perspective of what that meant right what the union meant in this particular case of what you just read right i think he means those brotherly bonds of affection among all americans that whatever our differences and and there are many right uh they were back in 1860 for sure um but you know it it’s it’s a common affection to citizens right that we have a common purpose uh but also as i said earlier going back to washington you know the national union for lincoln represents something much greater than just nationhood or just a national union which he was desperately trying to preserve i mean that was very important but it goes deeper right to that republican principle to free government and free institutions and a free society and a healthy civil society where we have some idea that we’re in it together yeah it’s that that fundamental recognition that we all have value it’s that idea that we are unified around a republican ideal that is inherent within that which we’ve talked about today quite a bit is in order for you to unify to become that wholeness that whole thing you have to recognize that there are different parts right that means that you have to recognize that every individual who’s caught up in that is a part of that thing and that you recognize in them the individual rights that they have and that they are equal to you before the law and i think that’s a lot of what lincoln was thinking about was motivating that speech and also his desire to preserve the union which was a desire to preserve that hope that we can continue to work towards a more fuller realization of that promissory note in the declaration of independence that all men are created equal right that’s the goal and and you know he understood over tariff policy over the expansion of slavery in the western territories over numerous issues in the 1850s the fugitives of slave act there were a number of disagreements over policy over politics over foreign policy uh but that was okay it’s one thing to debate politics it’s one thing to have differences over policy we’re going that’s a part of human nature we’re going to have them in a republic right we don’t all have the same opinion but that doesn’t mean that we can’t agree on the fundamental

common ideas of being americans right and those fundamental principles and then we can disagree over the politics and policy and it’s going to be messy right democratic politics usually is but that’s okay that’s okay i think that messiness is not unimportant to stop and focus on because there you mentioned there is work right and that work can be messy and that work but it sounds worthwhile and i think we’ve been talking earlier part of that work is compromise but not in a win-loss way but but rather how do you work even though it’s messy in these really complicated ways and i think one of the things that we experience is people do live this every day uh and luckily we’ve had the chance to be able to talk to some of these people that’s right we were fortunate again to talk with senator mike lee from utah who is a united states senator uh and uh he spoke with stan swim about this idea about that messiness but also that it’s not it’s not a a win-lose you know all all stakes are on the table every time that there’s a decision it’s it’s this deliberative conversation that happens that we’re all a part of and that we have a drive to continue to want to be a part of it and that’s fundamentally what we what we’re doing when we’re united so let’s take a look at what senator lee had to say on constitution day in a year of protest pandemic and political upheaval what would you want young people to focus on when they think about the constitution focus first and foremost on the fact that the constitution is there as a structure around the declaration of independence the declaration of independence recognizes the inherent dignity and significance of the immortal human soul the constitution builds a framework around that to protect those things and that ultimately this is about uh protecting the human condition it’s about the same things that abraham lincoln described him as 1861 address to congress when he said the purpose of government is to lift artificial weights from all shoulders to afford all a fair start and a fair chance in the race of life and to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all that’s what government is there for we recognize our fellow beings as individual souls with infinite worth and eternal potential will be far more likely to treat them with dignity and respect and far less inclined to excessively centralize and abuse the coercive force of government uh and to allow that ever to accumulate in the hands of the few um those are big words intended to communicate a very simple concept which is that government is just the official cohort

use of coercive force it’s nothing fancier than that we can lower the emotional temperature in the room if we remember that government is there to protect life liberty and property it’s not there to make everything fair in life it’s not there to be our our favorite aunt or our rich uncle it’s not there to make all of us equal in terms of our athletic ability uh the extent to which we were endowed with a lot of brains or a lot of uh intellectual capacity musical performance ability uh or otherwise government is there to make sure that we don’t hurt each other and take each other’s things it’s there to protect us from those who outside of our land would harm us it’s not good for much else and it’s not even good for those things if we don’t relegate its use to those fields where we can most benefit from it a lot of what we’re talking about today on this constitution day uh is about individuals uh and i think it’s significant focusing on on the phrase um infinite worth that individuals have this worth i think that’s that’s not something to be taken lightly no and it is something you know today is constitution day so we’re thinking about the constitution but there is this powerful imagery of the constitution as lincoln referred to it as the apple of gold within a frame of silver and i think um senator lee refers to the declaration of independence is the picture around which the frame is the constitution um and i think that’s something that’s really powerful and i know has been central um to a lot of the work that dr daniel allen has done too this is something she thinks a lot about um and she had the opportunity um or our president david bob had the opportunity to sit down with her uh and talk to her about those questions particularly in the light of everything that’s been going on in the nation um today so let’s have a listen sometimes we fight with people that we love most and that hurts uh the uh national basketball association coach doc rivers had a poignant statement in the wake of the shooting of james blake and what uh coach rivers said is speaking on behalf of african americans we have loved so much and why does this country that we love seem to return that love with hate would you uh care to speak to to that as we move perhaps to a conversation about the declaration of independence and what that means for our national identity that promissory note that sometimes seems to um well the promises is not always uh kept in the way that we would like so this is a super super hard question and you can see different strains of thought i mean so if you look at the long history of african-american political thought specifically you can really see it separate into a strand

known as afro-pessimism which is a certain resignation to the impossibility of overcoming centuries of um hate and racial domination and things like that and then there’s another strand of thought that really um i think that currently the political theorist melvin rogers is writing about this and he describes it as a sort of radical hope concept or a commitment in a kind of radical way to faith in democracy and sort of democratic faith and for rogers when he’s describing this the view is really that um you have to you need realism you need clear eyes about structures of inequality um what the country’s history is but it’s the the faith is fueled by a recognition that it’s a far better path for all human beings for us to break through that fight that we’ve been stuck in for a very long time and it’s so much better for all human beings that one needs to devote was energies to achieving that and it’s sort of by pouring one’s energies in to that process of transformation one opens up the possibilities of its arrival so the paradox is that transformation looks out of reach there’s a lot of reason to think that it’s out of reach and as long as it feels out of reach it will be out of reach that’s the hardest part i think about the need of for example in an african-american community for commitment to ongoing faith and hope the faith and hope are part of what makes transformation possible so but that also does require a change of hearts and minds on the part of white americans hope has to be met with hope faith met with faith in order for us to break through collectively and so again yes we’re in another moment where the country needs a meeting of minds around a project of faith and commitment faith hope and love you’ve spoken of three very powerful things in your book on the declaration of independence which is a beautiful reflection a close reading it’s called our declaration i wonder if you could speak a little bit to the importance of why as you urge in this book that all americans should take the time to read the declaration of independence well it’s the shortest pithiest statement i know of the value for human beings in freedom and equality so it’s a quick education in the relationship between politics and human flourishing that’s why i recommend it it was written for the whole world it was written to make the case for why people should be able to govern themselves and what it means for people to govern themselves namely that they make judgments about whether their institutions are securing rights and where their governments are failing in that they take it on themselves to lay out a new plan for how to organize the powers of government and lay its foundation on principle it’s the declaration is a teaching text

and its value as i said is in this pithy articulation of the path to human happiness through self-government it’s important though too that we understand the depth of the history of the text it does not belong simply to thomas jefferson we often just link the declaration of jefferson together as if they were somehow born in this world together and that’s very far from the truth jefferson gets credit for the declaration because on his tombstone he put the phrase author declaration of independence it’s a very good lesson on how to get credit for something if you want it he was one of many people who worked on the declaration he was the lead draftsman he was charged with writing a text however the arguments in the declaration came just as much for people like john adams benjamin franklin adams and franklin were both people who were against slavery adams never owned slaves he was always against enslavement franklin had previously owned an enslaved person but by this point in time he was against enslavement and he became an abolitionist somebody worked actively for abolitionists in pennsylvania and the words of the declaration were taken up immediately by abolitionists prince hall of free african american boston massachusetts used its vocabulary in january 1777 to submit a petition to the massachusetts assembly for the end of enslavement in massachusetts so the declaration of independence belongs as much to a tradition of abolition in this country as it does to thomas jefferson all right and people need to understand the richness of the text in this regard it’s articulation of a commitment to human equality had universal meaning not for everybody who read and used the text but for those many who did read and use the text it’s prospect it’s promise of a greater reaching out and building out of human connection and human bonds of solidarity was lodged in the heart of the text and again abolitionists used to text immediately in that regard so i do regret the way in which we move too quickly at this point in time to connect attacks like the declaration of independence specifically to thomas jefferson plantation owner enslaver etc that’s such an important point and and really the recovery project that i take to be at the heart of your work on the declaration is one in which every american needs to own it for themselves it’s something that when i was um reflecting recently on the speech that the late uh congressman statesman john lewis who in that remarkable speech he gave as a young man said in the march on washington we need to complete the revolution of 1776. i don’t want to put words in your mouth dr alan about what your argument is but i wonder if you could comment on that idea of completing the revolution in light of the argument that you make for the relationship between equality

in the declaration and freedom the second sentence of the declaration is the sentence about self-evidence truths and that includes the fact that human beings are created equal that we have certain inalienable rights the final clause in that list of self-evident truths is the one asserting that it’s the right of the people to make a judgment about whether their government is securing their rights and then to alter it or to abolish it as necessary and to institute new government laying the foundationalists principles and organizing the power in such form as to them or to us in other words shall seem most likely to affect our safety and happiness that is the second sentence of declaration already assigns to the future the job of making continuous judgments about whether or not our political institutions are securing rights for all and then altering in order to achieve that so when i think about congressman lewis’s words about completing the revolution i hear that passage in the declaration the passage that joins to every generation to consider whether its institutions are delivering safety and happiness and to make good on that promise of democracy to deliver that so yes i’m sorry i’ve given you a long-winded answer um but in brief we are still learning as a society how to deliver freedom and equality for all justice and equality for all liberty and justice for all the emphasis is on for all that’s the part that we’re still learning and yes we have completion a job ahead of us to realize the ideals that were articulated in the declaration that job that responsibly was put on us from the beginning as that text enjoins from one generation to the next the reconsideration of how our institutions are doing well i’m so lucky to be able to have these conversations on constitution day and and tackle these big ideas balanced with you know what it’s like to just live in a in a society and and to think about the constitution and the declaration uh in this conversation and i think you know earlier in our broadcast we were talking about trust a lot but hope i think is a really important thing that they talked about uh and really how much how hard the work is yeah i think it’s a we continue to participate in self-government because it’s a hopeful action i mean america is often referred to as an experiment in self-government and in lincoln’s gettysburg address he says that the country was founded on the proposition that all men are created equal and it’s i think it’s the hope that that is true that we continue to work towards we are all equal but it’s hard work committing to working with one another to continue to achieve common ends and to make that progress and i think what was reflected both in senator lee’s comments and in dr allen’s comments is it’s it’s hard work it’s difficult you know the constitution outlines the means by which our national government operates and within that again you see the three branches their

different responsibilities are outlined in articles one two and three uh but but they don’t say even in that just how difficult it is how difficult that process of coming to agreement is but we hope that it’s worth it in the long run yeah absolutely i mean i’m thinking of two things that have come up so far in the in the live stream today one being this the anniversary of the 19th amendment and and having mary talk about that that process you know that did require hope that that the work being done is is is going to be worked on by future generations but but that’s okay that’s that’s part of it is that you’re doing things for future generations i think i think that’s what the constitution is all about i it always amazes me to think about how do you create a system for people long not born yet in future generations um but also a quote that i think stuck out from from earlier was john lewis and needing to complete the revolution of 1776 right it’s still it’s strangely hopeful it’s importantly hopeful i say strangely in terms of 1776 was quite a while ago right and you know why not tomorrow but but tomorrow is part of of this this ongoing process that you have to keep working on it doesn’t just happen yeah it’s interesting you know even thinking about the history of the constitution itself you know we we had the article articles of confederation which was passed by the continental congress as the first governing document of the united states during the revolution and it got us through the revolutionary war that was the document that the states existed under while that war was proceeding afterwards it continued to be the governing document but there came a moment um when certain members in the united states individuals like james madison and george washington we talked about earlier saw that there were there were problems in holding together that union and they wanted to create a system of government that would adhere more faithfully to those principles that the revolution was fought for and so then that was why they went to philadelphia and drafted this new constitution was as as a goal of trying to again complete that revolution of 1776 to work towards a more full appreciation of those principles yeah i think that’s not insignificant on constitution day when focusing on the constitution invariably the articles of confederation are part of that discussion and i think putting those two different words together is interesting the difference between a confederation and a union um there’s similarities but there’s differences and i think that’s what it’s all about and i think i think a big part of that is how we even in our system today think about how our individual voices are heard but also on behalf of our state for representatives i mean it’s it’s no accident that in this election year we’re thinking right now about how do our voices translate into representation that’s right and we talked about federalism a little bit earlier but it’s the idea of this this divided power but this divided but overlapping power um and so there are national governments there are state governments there are local governments there are municipalities within that and but what’s important on all of those

is this idea of voting and so in another one of the videos we’ve created we look at this idea of one person one vote so let’s take a look at the video the first half of the 20th century saw the rise of urban america as millions immigrated from other countries and millions more migrated from rural areas to cities as a result a relatively quiet political struggle ensued between rural and urban populations in state legislatures and congressional districts across the country residents of urban areas fought to gain greater representation and equal consent in making laws to challenge the disproportionate political power of their rural counterparts one supreme court case in tennessee exemplified this rift and raised some important principles how did the court support the constitutional principle of rule of law with one person one vote this is the case of baker versus carr [Music] you know those census surveys that make their rounds every 10 years in order to count the number of americans those are instrumental as they redraw lines for political districts to ensure that areas are adequately represented in government this is known as redistricting the tennessee state constitution required that legislative districts for the tennessee state assembly be redrawn following the federal census administered every 10 years based upon population change the problem was that it was 1959 and tennessee had not redistricted since 1901 at the time of the case charles baker was the republican mayor of the urban district of millington tennessee which had approximately 10 times as many residents as some of the state’s rural districts so even though the population of his county far outweighed the surrounding areas the votes from those rural counties were overrepresented due to the lack of redistricting on behalf of himself and other residents of his legislative district baker filed a lawsuit with the federal district court against the defendant tennessee secretary of state joe carr the lawsuit stated that bakers county did not receive the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th amendment by virtue of the debasement or diluting of their votes baker lost in the lower courts which relied on the supreme court’s 1946 colgar versus green decision which held that questions of congressional district apportionment were political questions that could not be decided by courts baker then appealed to the united states supreme court which agreed to hear the case the case would prove to be highly contentious as the court remained deadlocked and didn’t hand down any of its decisions for nearly one year following argument after a nerve-wracking case what would the court’s decision be did the supreme court have jurisdiction over questions of legislative redistricting well on march 26 1962 by a vote of 62 the court decided in favor of baker writing for the majority justice william

brennan concluded that judicial courts could address the political question and sent the case back to a lower court to determine whether or not tennessee’s system violated the 14th amendment noting that the court carefully took up this question because it normally deferred to the other branches of government and had to establish jurisdiction in this specific case justices felix frankfurter and john marshall harlan dissented frankfurter argued that the court’s decision violated the separation of powers between legislatures and courts and that the court was asserting destructively novel judicial power justice harlan argued that there was no federal constitutional requirement that the vote of every voter achieved a perfect equality further stating a mathematical equality among voters was simply impossible to achieve baker versus carr paved the way for 1964’s reynolds versus sims in which the supreme court ruled that state legislative districts must be drawn in a manner such that each person’s vote counts equally after he retired from the court chief justice earl warren called baker versus carr the most vital decision during his time as a justice because it helped establish the principle of one person one vote and restored democratic and equal representation throughout state legislatures issues raised by baker versus carr remain relevant as courts and legislatures debate issues of controversial apportionment and gerrymandering will redistricting be the subject of another major supreme court case and if so how high will the stakes be this was the case of baker versus carr thank you guys so much for watching please like share subscribe so i think that video is interesting for a couple reasons one thinking about the different roles that the different branches of government play so early on chris was at the supreme court building we get to see that in the background and um that we just saw a supreme court case baker v carr reinforcing this idea of one person one vote which i think again is really significant when it comes to our voice within the union absolutely yeah and it’s significant’s a great word because i mean it is 2020 it is an election year it’s coming up very very soon and and i think that speaks to the the bigger conversation we’re having today on constitution day about the the systems that are in place to for individuals and for groups and for associations in our society so uh welcome back by the way to constitution day uh we’re starting off our fourth hour of our live stream and so uh for those just joining us uh we’ve been taking a look at the constitution from a couple of different lenses um from the idea of individuals and as we said having their voices being heard and the systems that we have uh to uh just society large in general um but very importantly through associations and so through the day we’ve been having uh seeing dialogues having dialogues uh but i’d like to kind of take a look at at that big question of of this idea of society and like what

that means like what is civil society association it’s so much to wrap your head around that’s right and we talked about there being different sort of levels that we all participate in so there’s the government right so that’s what we were talking about just with baker b carr and this idea of one person one vote we vote in society for political action um then there was that we talked about our economic sort of lives that we live where we’re buying and selling and getting of goods but there’s also a way in which we organize ourselves more informally civil associations i think is the way that we think about it and it’s interesting you know earlier i had mentioned alexis de tocqueville was someone who came to the united states she actually came here looking at prisons trying to write about prison reform and which is which is interesting in and of itself but while he was here he reflected on what it meant to be in a democratic society and this was in 1830s alexis de tocqueville was from france so this was after the french revolution um but before um a lot of reforms in france uh and he had a lot to say and a lot to think about uh when it came to american society and democratic society but particularly he focused in on these associations because he saw it as a way that americans would come together around whatever interested them so whether it be for a religious purpose or whether it be for a philanthropic purpose or whether it be for a political purpose even outside of politics he saw individual americans coming together and associating in order to work towards uh what they saw as a good end i think that is important to note how he went about this right he’s observing what is the case right he’s observing these lived experiences in the society that is going on by the 1830s the united states around for a while at this point i mean not super old but as countries go but you know it’s enough that that the american society is observable and i think highlighting the fact that seeing associations stands out enough to write about to analyze i think is significant because i think that is um there’s something about the voluntariness of it right there’s something about that these associations happen because of finding common ground and a kind of common drive uh to to achieve uh for themselves for the groups for the betterment of others and and it kind of just happens it’s strangely organic and yet essential to society that’s right and you may be asking yourself what does this have to do with the constitution right but i think that the idea is that even the constitution itself again we’re thinking about the preamble we the people of the united states in order to form a more perfect union there’s a there’s a space in which we the people are sovereign and we are coming together and so that activity that’s happening in private society one instance of that is the social contract that is the constitution right it is that it is an example in which we are dedicating ourselves to a common purpose of that of finding liberty and securing the blessings of liberty of finding safety security and stability um that is uh stable as joel peterson talked about earlier that stability being important for business and for interests uh and and so you know when we’re thinking about this in the constitution we’re really thinking about um sort of the

unwritten constitution this idea that the constitution you know isn’t it’s just a document right in the federalist papers it’s referred to as parchment barriers what it takes is us having faith in it trusting in it but also having faith in trusting in each other um that we are all going to work and value one another um and respect each other in those conversations that we have in society as we work to come to agreement we work to be united absolutely and and i mean they’re unwritten but then there is the written document and i think we’re fortunate enough to uh have an interview uh with uh senator mike lee of utah who’s a senator right now and he’s gonna kind of talk about the constitution itself as the document right let’s take a look constitution was written over two centuries ago and it doesn’t read the way we speak today sometimes that makes it challenging for a new reader to understand if you could identify one or two of the best places to start understanding the constitution again for for a person just coming to it where would you start you start at the beginning why would you choose the ones you choose yeah i i would i would start at the beginning if you’re if you’re leery about reading the whole thing um start by reading article 1 section 8. article 1 section 8 is the part of the constitution that outlines the power of congress and article 1 section 8 coupled with the 10th amendment made clear that powers not given to congress most of which are identified in article 1 section 8 and not prohibited to the states are reserved to the states and so if you understand what’s in article 1 section 8 keeping in mind there are a few other powers of congress but the overwhelming majority of them and uh nearly all of them that that come up on a very regular basis as topics of conversation can be found in article one section eight so if it’s not in there the chances are pretty good that it’s a state power we’ve lost sight of what is and properly should be a state power and so uh anyway that’s where i would start i would start by reading article one section eight uh i i would then maybe move on to the bill of rights the first ten amendments and then take it from there in time you can see that there is a an um an elegant simplicity in the constitution the whole thing is only a few pages long it’s not hard to read most of it is in language that while maybe not part of the ordinary usage of the american people on a constant basis is far easier to understand i think than most writings of its era and and most of it’s still pretty current

there are abundant resources to allow people to understand them the meaning and so far it’s as it’s not clear on its face today but most of the text of the constitution is still pretty easy to understand today i think what is very striking is that the constitution and here we are celebrating constitution day uh is is designed such an interesting way to read it in different ways right that it it that i think is a testament to the way it is designed um and the idea that it anticipates what society is like uh specifically that there are going to be different groups i mean from the very beginning we talked about that even groups saying we should have this constitution or we don’t like this constitution or we should change this constitution are immediately groups that are in there and i think that asks the big question you know how does community play into the way that the constitution is designed um for those who have not seen before mary patterson is joining us here from uh our staff here at bi and we’d love to have this conversation with you uh and we’re gonna dive into some other more specific details in just a bit that’s right and you know i think that that idea of of federalism that that senator lee was pointing out is really interesting um from the standpoint because we’re talking about those varied interests but we’re also talking about civil society right in civil associations um and i think it’s important to reflect on those again this year because it is the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment which was uh providing suffrage to women and i think that reflecting on that this year i think has a particular meaning because you know mary when you were on before you had mentioned how long the suffrage movement was um and that it it throughout that history took place in a myriad of different ways it wasn’t always just in court battles or whatever else but there were lots of civil associations that um that particularly women were involved in in the lead up to the fight for suffrage absolutely i think that you could say the women the the movement for women to get the right to vote was almost was born out of their association with the anti-slavery movement so before we mentioned like as kirk said that this movement to get the right to vote took a long time so when the amendment the 19 months ratified in 1920 it it had come on the back of all of this work and all of you know this heartache but it almost it started with individuals coming together for a like cause and specifically to abolish slavery and um i think that’s really i this is such a great story i have to tell you this story so in well let me back up in our votes for women curriculum we have something called the pathway for change which really talks about how these movements are they’re slow and they’re deliberative and that doesn’t mean that they’re bad or it doesn’t mean that they’re not working it’s just that making big changes in a constitutional system takes time it’s deliberative and a big part of that pathway for change this framework for thinking about working towards these big changes like

getting women the right to vote is that you have to join with like-minded people you have to have these civil associations and in 1840 there were two american women that were attending an anti-slavery convention in london so they were just you know with men as well they traveled to london they have a common cause they’re voluntarily together to you know protest the slavery and these two women elizabeth katie stan and lucretia mott were not actually allowed into the meeting in 1840 they’re stopped at the door they won’t let them in because they’re women and i just think it’s again it would be considered improper to have a mixed audience in 1840 so um they can’t even get in eventually they’re allowed to sit in a separate gallery but they can’t speak they can’t do anything other than observe so this i think justifiably leaves a huge mark in their minds and that very night elizabeth katie stanton and lucretia mott say we are going to have a women’s convention in the united states so it was almost this and they do that’s 1848 we have the seneca falls convention which many people consider to be the real birth of the women’s suffrage movement but again it’s coming out of this just joining together to fix something at the level of society’s level like the local level it’s not you know knocking on the president’s door or anything like that it’s just coming together with like-minded people yeah i think that’s really important that that these experiences are living outside of the halls of you know for lack of a better term like formal groupings right at first i mean you mentioned the the amendment itself if we’re talking about the constitution it doesn’t it’s not born entirely just in the halls of congress or anything like that right it is born in other places and in people saying we have to have this conversation let’s let’s grab some time together and say we have this we’re drawn together for this common purpose and i think i think that’s so significant because even when we think about associations there’s a certain formality to it that i think that seems to happen but but the women’s movement is over the course of this time made up of so many just organic interactions that happen yeah it’s definitely organic and you have again you to make a change like to make a big change you have to have allies you have to have public support you have to learn from other people so i think these two women at an eating for another cause realize you know we have this other cause in common and they don’t it’s not like they you know stop being part of the abolitionist movement they’re just now part of the women’s movement as well and i think that that’s that’s really powerful and just the idea that you can learn from other people um you have to you have to work with others sorry introverts to get these things done yeah yeah and i think that’s powerful too because it it says something about our constitution and one thing when we reflect back on our experience um during the american revolution and before the american revolution has colonies there’s this there’s this sense of self-government that grew up right that that the colonies there’s this word solitary neglect that gets passed around right but through that process there’s experience in what it means to govern

and you know you see the same kind of thing in the women’s suffrage movement right there’s this experience that occurs in these civil associations of fighting for something that then bears fruit when they become a part of another organization fighting for change in a different capacity which i think is really significant it’s that sort of that practical nature of what it means to unite and to work together to compromise that has to happen because it’s not easy to do right and i think i should say i shouldn’t paint the picture that you know now we have a women’s movement and it’s smooth sailing from 1848 on that’s absolutely not the case there are splits in the movement over whether to go by a state by state approach on getting the vote or over a national amendment there’s a split over supporting the 15th amendment which gave african-american men the right to vote before it gave the right to women to vote so there are lots of there’s lots of infighting and there’s a lot of messiness along the way but um but again it’s this compromising and sometimes taking a step back taking two steps forward unity and disunity at the same time yeah that’s interesting that to bring in the idea of compromise because it’s not just compromise between a unified group against or with or working with some external group but even internally that this compromise has to happen absolutely i mean if you think of any group like women are not a monolith men are not a monolith there’s lots of styles there’s lots of tactics there’s lots of approaches and that a movement to be successful has to draw on all of that and make amends with with all of that to be successful and that’s not easily done i mentioned before the group project analogy which i love i mean life is a group project our country is a group project it can be messy but um but when it works out it’s it’s so much better than anything anyone any one person could do yeah i think you know you talked about it taking a long time and i think that’s one of the challenges that results from living in a democratic country as we do is that that convincing is tough right and that’s essentially what we’re talking about if we’re recognizing in each other this value what’s inherent within that is the idea that we have to do the hard work of convincing our fellow citizens that there is a right thing towards which we’re working and that sometimes can can be frustrating can be hard but fundamentally what it means is that we are still valuing each other which i think is at the core of what we’ve been talking about today right absolutely and that idea of convincing pops up in the 1848 convention at seneca falls that out of that meeting of men and women comes a document called the declaration of sentiments and resolutions and the very last resolution was the most controversial and that was for women to have the right to vote it just squeaked by even at that time in 1848 considering to ask for the right to vote was almost considered a step too far but elizabeth katie stanton speaks in favor of it frederick douglass was in this attendance he speaks in favor of it so it is adopted but again even within that audience of like-minded people at this women’s convention um they still had to convince each other that you know we deserve the right to vote women should have this right to vote i think that’s so significant again on constitution day and again in an

election year we we often think of of living this daily life in a constitutional society and we often think about voting right as being a very clear demonstration and it’s super important there’s a lot of other days right that days that we’re not on that day voting that we it’s not like we’re not still part of this association we’re not still part of living these these experiences and having to come together and get that again voting is extremely important but what about all the other days right i mean i think that that’s something that um the women’s movement generally had to come to terms with like there were certain goals were more important to other women just not like i said before no one was a monolith so there was this conversation back and forth and what do we put our weight behind what are we fighting for first and foremost yeah i think that idea you know earlier when uh chris was at the capitol building and then again when he was at the white house and in black lives matter plaza they were talking about that there was these public signs right and we talked about at the capitol there’s this public oath of office right and the declaration of sentiments is powerful to be in that same vein because it’s a public declaration of what women wanted to achieve right it was them coming out and making a statement um and that’s it’s it’s powerful and it’s difficult getting everyone to agree on a statement itself is really challenging dr daniel allen talked about that too with when we’re thinking about the declaration that it was representative of more than just thomas jefferson right it’s it’s really representative of the congress that passed that declaration much like you know the declaration of sentiments was a representation of you know what those women were working and fighting to to achieve at that moment i think a lot of times when we think about these documents we’re talking about founding documents the declaration the constitution we think of them as you know there’s this document it’s in stone it’s this massive thing but there was so much fighting and detail that went into it and there’s this wonderful graphic with the from the quill project that shows how all of the work at the constitutional convention so much of it was done in the committee of detail which is a detail-oriented person i appreciated so we think about like the founders sitting there and they just like made this magic document which of course we know isn’t true but there’s all this fighting over crossing the t’s and dotting the eyes not actually doing that but on that idea that um we forget about the fighting and the convincing and the deliberation that’s constantly going on right like george washington and john adams aren’t like holding hands and singing i mean everybody’s just they’re kind of fighting it out they’re duking it out these are big questions and they require deliberation yeah we definitely encourage people to check out the quill project by the way because that is a fascinating thing um and earlier you were talking about the the legislative party but i want to go back to this idea if we can if i could put you on the spot um talking about the fighting and things and even the method of conveying these outside of voting because you mentioned chris and and you were talking about the different ways that people were fighting for it and i

don’t think it’s in significant to think about later years fast forwarding a bit too to how alice paul and others were getting messages out or were bringing attention to what they were doing and utilizing gathering spaces and utilizing like methods um i think were also very significant yes so alice paul shout out to my girl alice paul if you’re not familiar with alice ball you definitely need to read up on her so the women’s suffrage movement always said it’s a long movement there’s there’s splits and they come back together alice paul comes on the scene in the in the early 20th century and her tactics were considered a little bit more controversial and radical at the time so she believed in picketing she believed in staging parades so maybe by 2020 standards we wouldn’t think of these as so radical but for the time it was definitely considered much more in your face than the tactics of carrie chapman cat who was her contemporary sort of leader in the women’s suffrage movement and alice paul actually gets so frustrated with the slowness of the movement that she forms her own national women’s party and the national women’s party is out there in front of the white house with signs in the middle of world war one calling president woodrow wilson the kaiser because if we’re fighting for democracy abroad we can’t say we have a democracy at home if women can’t vote so it was just this very controversial style versus carrie chapman cat who greatly respected and worked with wilson and there was sort of this split there but again their their goal was the same and they had different tactics and different approaches and ultimately it is passed carrie chapman cat and alice paul are there to see it so i think it takes a little bit of of everything it’s not just one thing that kind of sticks yeah i think that’s really powerful in mentioning world war one gives us a sense for how long that movement was going on i mean imagine 1848 world war one you know was 1914 to 1918 so it was probably 1916 1917 when when she was that’s that’s a long time and that’s a lot of work and a lot of a lot of individuals coming together to continue to fight for and advocate uh within that movement no absolutely i think these conversations are ongoing uh and uh it’s great that we’re able to have that i think that’s significant uh and speaking of which uh luckily we have the opportunity to see another conversation with uh joel peterson uh a professor and and chairman of uh jetblue airways so what do you say we take a look at that what lessons from your work apply to how we associate and organize to address community needs now not not necessarily business ones but community needs problems that arise can you can you give us a sense for how you think about that yeah well we all have uh it’s a coincident interest with our communities we live in the community we’re dependent on uh the police on schools on fire etc and there are needs that arise i i think a lot about the issue of schools and i think one of the the things that concerns me are

these inner city schools where people don’t have choice and really the interest in everybody is to trust that schools will prepare will be preparing the next generation uh for successful lives and i think we’re failing in that so i’ve seen a number of people come together to create charter schools in fact my wife works on a charter school i know speaker paul ryan has worked with charles woodson to develop develop these uh zones uh that are inner city zones where people say our interests are coins our long-term interests are coincident and so people will give money time energy for something that doesn’t directly immediately benefit them but in the long run because of this community coincident interest they pour energy into it so you’re you’re talking about that in terms of interest alignment but is that really pseudo trust or is it some other kind well i i think uh i think you’d have to say it’s pseudo it’s the best kind of pseudo trust because it is coincident interest but i think it goes beyond that in that people really learn to trust each other in reciprocal ways in representative ways you know if you want to help somebody build a building for a school you know you’re going to need expertise to do that so you’re going to that will be representative trust you’ll be reliant on people who have contracting experience to do something you couldn’t do for yourself so to me all of these can kind of come together uh in the example you give well one can even sort of morph into the the next so for example if a community can only start with some pseudo trust but even even just take those first halting steps and begin to work together with the idea that our goal is to get to more trust more authentic and genuine trust they can’t build up from there that’s a great point and i think that’s a great way that’s it’s often the way that reciprocal trust builds you don’t start out with reciprocal thrust i always say that when i’m working with a young person i give them a little bit of trust and if they deliver on the promise then i accord them more trust in a new assignment and the more they deliver on promises the more i trust them until finally uh the trust can develop into this reciprocal kind of trust um what what character traits you actually stepped toward this just a minute ago but what character traits do you look for as you try to find and develop leaders well i think the ones that i just mentioned are certainly at the top of the list but i also look for things like humility you know it’s funny people think humble people are often reticent shy they hold back they self-disparage self-deprecate that’s not how i look at humility to me humility is the ability to assess reality to apologize to reverse course to say i’m sorry i

made a mistake we need to do the following so humility is really important another one for me is uh people who are optimistic you know who tend to be happy who tend to see the the glasses half full not half empty all the time optimistic people tend to to have more grit but they tend to be more fun to be around so i look for humility and and humor and happiness and optimism as as traits so you know throughout the day we’ve been looking at our our public selves in different ways right looking into different levels of society i think what joel peterson’s comments they’re talking about are that sense of trust that continues to inhabit society but it’s also that we we really lean on each other we need on each other we need to become united in order to stand almost innocent yeah that’s good that’s good yeah now yeah that community need that that we are all part of something uh is it’s always on your mind but sometimes it’s easy to forget and on constitution day when you look at the constitution i think sometimes maybe i’m wrong but sometimes it feels a little outside of you right it feels like this parchment this document from a while ago but it it doesn’t just speak about the government it speaks about all different parts of society uh and i think that’s really important i mean we’re jotting down some some notes here about like what’s needed for that there’s there’s there’s need there’s a need for for optimism there’s a need for that that personal interests goes beyond just me and i say that because i’m thinking earlier we were talking about uh the baker v car and one person one vote right and then we were talking about the 19th amendment and it’s the value of an individual voice is obviously extremely important voices together well that’s quite something yeah no i think that’s definitely the case and you know i had mentioned alexis stokeville earlier and he has a really powerful quote that if you’ll indulge me sure i’ll i’ll read from because i think it really gets at what he observed when he was in the united states in the 1830s about democratic life and he says as soon as some inhabitants of the united states have conceived of a sentiment or an idea that they want to bring about in the world they seek each other out and when they have found each other they unite from that moment they are no longer isolated men but a power that is seen from afar and whose actions serve as an example a power that speaks into which you listen and what really strikes me about that quote isn’t this just this idea that we’re coming together as a group in some sort of association right and you know the constitution pulls together certain associations they pull together the house of representatives in the senate for example they’re just the groups of people but more than that they their actions then speak for what it is that they’re wanting to achieve and that to me is really powerful and that we’re not just isolated individuals at that moment but we have we have set aside some of our own self-interest in order to achieve something um in common which i think is

is truly powerful absolutely yeah that that in common part i think is really interesting because it’s it’s it’s a certain amount of thinking of others but but and we talked about this earlier i and i keep coming back to it and forgive me for this but on constitution day thinking of the constitution thinking of 1787 the idea that that common good is not just who’s currently alive but who is going to be in the future and and thinking outside of oneself in those terms of how do you allow for them to deal with what is to come there’s so much that’s not in the constitution but the fact that it is designed in a way to deal with future issues is significant to bring up by constitution debt yeah no absolutely and you know the other thing that joel peterson mentioned that last clip which is something we haven’t touched on really explicitly but but is this idea of leadership right so we we’ve been talking about coming together as a group in a community and coming to a decision plurally meaning all of us agreeing together but within these movements within these these groups and in david dr david bob our president mentioned a really powerful leader of the civil rights movement and john lewis earlier today these leaders have a responsibility to to have a humility to have optimism within that group but they’re the ones that really can help drive forward and what’s really awesome about our constitutional system is that all of us all of you watching today have the opportunity to be leaders within your own communities within your own um groups that you’re associated with and the different things that you’re working towards you can be a leader and it’s important within that context to continue to recognize even in leading you’re leading co-equals you are you are leading others who are like you and in that pursuit trying to be inclusive trying to drive towards achieving something that’s powerfully done but is consistent within our constitutional framework i think is is both an opportunity a responsibility but also something really exciting that that we all have the chance to be that you know for ourselves within our communities actually and you don’t have to wait to do it you don’t have to do it someday you can do it today i mean if i can if i can give a small plug to something that we’re working on in in our programs team is uh the called a my impact challenge if i could talk about that it’s a curriculum that encourages that that encourages association um for for students young people even if you’re not in an age to vote yet right you’re still able to have the agency to do this and that’s a big part of it um real briefly about that it’s taking a look at issues in community uh and saying how do you bring together these different aspects that we talked about today in constitutional society the the political the social the the economic uh to bring people together and to lead to this common good to help others and to to solve issues of today that’s right and you know classrooms across the country are a really powerful way that that that is a community of itself and it’s a powerful way where those kinds of actions can be demonstrated and talked about and gary i know you had a chance to sit down with some of the educators that we work with across the country uh to talk about exactly that i did we’re

fortunate enough to uh to sit down with uh with our uh regional programs manager liz evans uh who was part of that conversation and we we talked to a couple of teachers and yeah we acknowledged that idea of a classroom being a microcosm a small version of society where these changes and these issues come together so i think we have a chance to watch liz and the teachers uh talk about this all right let’s have a listen so upholding the constitution um in itself takes a lot takes coming together communicating um civil discourse obviously the document itself has had to evolve to fulfill some of those promises that have been made and it’s had the kind of change so since schools are kind of that microcosm of a community how do you model civil discourse in a world where students may not see it all the time and molly i’m gonna ask you first if that’s okay um i just just i think teaching the basics because we i tell them that the debates we’re gonna have in here are not the debates we’re having on twitter okay you cannot bring your social media self into the classroom because that’s just shouting at each other so it’s not only teaching them to discuss but to listen and i think what helps is even before they’re allowed to speak they have to repeat back what that other person said so that they can make sure that they heard them correctly and that that intent of what that person said is clear um i like to try to get everybody to speak before using the whole supreme court rule where everyone speaks first before the second person can um or the the person can speak the second time um i think is really helpful but just just modeling that as much as possible not assuming that they know how to do it because in their normal life they might the students may not just be used to that and so um just making that there i think establishing kind of like the class rules kind of emulating almost like a self-government in a way that you are part of this you are kind of giving your um your responsibility your your opinion here so that we are establishing what we are doing in this classroom and really just kind of building that political knowledge we’ve been back to school for two weeks and they keep asking are we going to debate are we going to debate and i’m like yes absolutely but let’s let’s learn a few things first so that we have that foundation so that we are having a good debate so that what we are doing here is what i want you to be able to go forth and emulate elsewhere outside of the classroom so i always tell them that social studies especially the government class is the most important class that they’re ever going to take i may be a little biased but i tell them no matter what they probably have plans after high

school that they’re going to be in a society so let’s let’s make sure that we know how to um be a good member of that society a good citizen and um let’s let’s learn those skills and that knowledge here in this class and creating that safe environment to do so great what about you shannon um i think this is one of those things where um so many things were going through my head when you were you’re talking molly um one like you were bringing in social media uh and it’s really interesting because sometimes when we’re talking about the ratification debates we’re talking in particular about the anti-federalist papers how they’re all written under pseudonyms right and the students are like what like what’s with this weird name why are they using these names and i’m like okay well why would someone like want to write under a name that isn’t theirs and and then they start to like think about well you know that’s kind of weak like if they have these opinions why don’t they want the world to know them um and then i tie it to social media and how so very frequently on social media people are so much more emboldened to say things that they maybe wouldn’t necessarily say to someone’s face and how that that can kind of serve as their pseudonym right um and i think it’s a it’s a really hard thing for us as teachers to help them like take what we’re teaching them in that classroom and turn that out into the world when they see so much more like poor discourse in the world right especially like when they’re talking about their like their leaders right um and how poorly we as a country have been having this discourse um i guess what like at the fundamental level what i like most hope and believe is that what we’re teaching them here in these classrooms like that’s going to eventually come out right and that those in 15 years our students are going to be the ones who are the leaders and they’re gonna know and understand how to do this um and it really ties back to laura when you were originally talking about the the importance of debate but also it’s that importance of that civic knowledge right and that understanding um and i know that like me 20 years ago like it was so unimportant and even when i started teaching i mean it was like uh you know history we’re work or subject but you know who really pays attention to history it’s like math and reading and i think sometimes we see the ramifications of that and that us not really focusing on understanding the importance and so yes molly i too think it’s the most important class that they’re gonna take and and when they ask like why do we need to know this and it’s like well because you’re gonna go into the world and you need to make this world a better place here’s how you’re gonna do it i’m gonna give you those tools um and so uh in terms of having that discourse like we’ve said it’s just this microcosm of where we’re going to show and teach them and hopefully they will eventually

take it out into the world to make that a better place well this is so great that you bring up social media because i think on social media it’s all about what you think and not why you thinking it really sounds like in your classrooms you’re really inviting them to explore more of the why and more of the counter and i think that that’s incredible um laura what about you uh two things the first is we’ve talked a lot about modeling it ourselves um i tell my students from the beginning of the semester that our classroom is a safe place to discuss things uh particularly in world history we’re learning about cultures and religions and beliefs that that they won’t agree with and that’s okay uh but we’re going to learn about them we’re going to discuss them and we’re going to see how those those beliefs impact actions and that’s no different from the way the beliefs of our founding fathers and the influences upon them impacted their decision-making and their writings and so on and so i model that by making it clear that there’s no question they can’t ask that i will always try to answer that in as scholarly and as um warm and friendly a way as possible um that it’s safe to ask questions um because i think sometimes there’s always that fear of asking or appearing ignorant because the the social media response is to slam and to call names and to to belittle and i think it’s important to have dialogue which requires back and forth the second thing is as a group so in addition to me modeling just yes let’s have that that conversation and then saying that was a great question and several other people usually nod their heads like they were having that same question too they just didn’t want to ask um and over time they start to feel safer asking questions um or you know mrs l did you hear see the headlines about such and such and what do you think and and a lot of times i’ll say well what do you think what do you think about it and i think teaching them that they have valuable opinions and that they can form those opinions based on knowledge that they’re gaining um so i’m always encouraging them to look at the source and i think that in any constitutional discussion you know look at the source what does it say um but the second thing is i’ve really started learning over the past few years how to conduct harkness discussions in my class and i think that that has been such a valuable tool and most of my kids love them because there’s no winning or losing um they’re earning a grade together and i think as a younger teacher um and as a younger person i i love believe me i love good competition i’m all about you know some competition and some trophies and some women but i think that in our day and time it’s such a fantastic way for students to learn to discuss together and to value each other’s input because they have to draw each other in it’s a group effort and they have to

bring in ideas and and build off of it’s it’s not an issue of well i’m going to get an a if i make sure i talk six times and so they’re they’re checking off they can’t wait to raise their hand to say something but they have to listen because what they say has to build on what has just been said and i think that’s crucial and um i have been getting better at my ability to work those into the classroom and i’m still still working on that it’s still a work in progress so i you know learning is definitely a lifelong journey and but i’m learning from my students how valuable they are and how much they appreciate that effort and i’m learning sometimes how to group them in such a way that students who have fantastic ideas but are often not heard are learning to stand up and speak those ideas it really was so nice to be able to uh have a conversation with with some teachers from across the country and and as you can see that’s very few representing many many teachers out there which is really a big part of what we’re talking about on this constitution day this theme of united we stand in all the different experiences that we had and have and i mean i really wish we could have spent time speaking of many many more teachers but but luckily there are opportunities for that because throughout the year we do encourage uh communication with us and working with us in lots of different ways speaking of we did get a question about my shirt uh this is a a a bill of rights institute shirt uh it features abigail adams and it’s the kind of thing that teachers often have an opportunity to to get themselves or to be part of in our programs and contests that happen not speaking of contests wouldn’t be a constitution day without mentioning a contest coming up so we do want to keep the conversation going right the dialogue that we’re having about this doesn’t end on constitution day as we said it’s year-round um so after today we we want to hear from you we want to hear uh what you think united we stand means to you and so we’re inviting you to partake in a contest that we’re holding uh on that very idea that question united we stand what does that mean to you and so we’re asking if you could produce a video of three minutes or less and just tag us in it a public video using the hashtag united we stand contest you can share lessons you can share activities you can share projects whatever it is your students are working on what you’re working on showing how you’re building community and creating a positive classroom culture during this time so the deadline is uh 12 o’clock on monday the 30th of november so a bit of time uh and we’ll talk about that at upcoming uh bill of rights day uh but there are prizes a first place prize is a 250 gift card and a brick a bill of rights institute curriculum kit where you might get some items for your classroom uh particularly curriculum and and other really fun little treats for you and your students

uh and then there are four runner-up prizes as well so so once again tagging us uh in a public video using united we stand contest and and by public i mean you know we are you can have us on twitter or on instagram at br institute will rise institute at br institute uh on youtube where you’re here right now uh that slash bill of rights inst we didn’t put institute on there uh or just go to facebook uh or bill of rights the bill of rights institute and we’re on there so we invite you to dialogue that’s right we want it to be a true conversation uh and so today gary and i have been reflecting on what this means to be you know united we stand what does that mean what does it mean for us to come together um particularly on constitution day reflecting on this day that the constitution was sent out for ratification but it is a conversation that happens throughout the country and i feel very privileged to be able to talk to you about this today and it’s a part of what we do here at the bill of rights institute which is supporting educators and also continuing this conversation around the constitution the constitutional principles what our civic lives really exist as and how we can think about that and engage continue to engage in thoughtful dialogue and in working to ensure that on that promissory note of the declaration of independence that we’re continuing to work towards that objective and one of the ways that we’ve done that in the past year is release a new online resource called life liberty and pursuit of happiness which is a um a u.s history textbook that covers all of us history from the colonial period up through the present day it’s all digital it’s all online it’s all free um and open to access wow um and through our partner openstax at rice university um it has uh the ability for you to customize your classroom in whatever way you want and we really emphasize a lot of the things that we’ve talked about today which is um that you have the power to shape the conversation you are the ones that are um investigating um and thinking about these different things and so we’ve tried to facilitate their conversation so that when you dig into that u.s history you’re not just being presented with the answer the one narrative that the omnipotent all-knowing narrator has given to you uh but instead that you see different scholars from across the country writing and having a dialogue with one another we actually worked with over 90 different scholars from across the country to get this resource created and and i think the result is something that’s really powerful really exciting i mean one that you know as a student we hope that you’re excited to dive into because it allows you to explore the rich narrative history of the united states in whatever way is is most powerful and compelling to you so we have a short clip that tells a little bit more about life lived in pursuit of happiness and so let’s check it out [Applause] [Music] so [Music]

[Music] [Applause] [Music] well welcome back uh we can’t believe we’re coming to the end of our endish of our four hour live stream celebrating constitution day uh a lot of big things went around in our conversations but all around the idea of united we stand and how the constitution is part of that we’ve been fortunate enough to have some staff members who have been that have been thinking on their feet as it were uh by exploring washington dc uh which were we’re very close near it and connecting these themes to this lived experience so i i see here we have uh chris and natalie chris and natalie can you tell us uh coming in live uh can you tell us where you are right now we are at the lincoln memorial as you can see right behind us could you play that’s great and so you’ve been going around and checking out different gathering places throughout the day um and you decided to end your journey today at the lincoln memorial what what brought you guys to the lincoln memorial specifically um we we thought so we’re sort of working backwards i was thinking about this earlier uh we started with the third branch we went to the uh supreme court then to the second branch the capital and the first branch was our last visit at the executive mansion the white house and sort of tying it all together is this this area where civil society kind of brings all of us to again to both protest celebrate demand change practice our first amendment rights um you know we’re just steps from where dr king stood and gave that that historic speech i have a dream speech decades before that marion anderson performed on easter sunday on this on these same steps 1939 so you know in lincoln’s shadow we remember a time when the nation was at at its most divided right and all of these great leaders have chosen and all these the citizens today and throughout history have chosen this as a place to come together around that dividing point in our history right and i think that’s uh that that speaks to the character of of our of our country yeah that’s great and and there’s something so uh there’s something so nice that you are there live right now and uh a little bit

earlier you’re talking about you know the experience of being there uh natalie i was wondering if i could ask you you know you’re there we’re not we’re sort of watching this um what about the physical place you are now not only the physical location but the building itself what do you think that says about um why people are gathering there what the meaning of it is what do you see around you what’s happening i’m really interested in the experience of that space even happening now it’s history it’s basically history in motion it’s basically history right in front of us so it’s basically people are just here to experience be a part of history and be able to experience history live in emotion so of course it’s always a different experience when you actually can physically see it for yourself and it’s not only about reading about it in high school it’s actually being here is the difference yeah i think that’s really yeah i think that’s really powerful and there’s something again we mentioned this before but like the physicality of being around people and being in a location and like you said natalie like seeing that history is just is so powerful and significant and these symbols i think sort of showed that for us and sort of retain that memory for us that have a place for us to continue to go back to and to revisit uh and i think it’s just it’s sort of the vestiges of where we have united um that that continues to have power that tocqueville quote i said earlier that when we come together we are an example and that example is absolutely power i think is really tremendous i love that quote and i think you know one of the things that that’s driven home to me today in sort of taking this mini journey around the city is the people that designed the city uh lon banneker when they laid it out you know they they clearly wanted us to they wanted a certain emotion a certain feeling a certain um feeling of unity to to come across in the in the way that they designed and laid the city out um but i think you know i think even beyond that um do you have anything to add natalie um no you basically got everything that i wanted to say but it’s just so much it’s so easier just to walk from one history landmark to another it’s so much easier um just being in dc is one of the best things i’ve ever done moving down here just because history is right in front of you of course so i think i think the the quote that i was looking for i can’t remember who said it is that we shape our buildings in architecture and in design but thereafter they shape us and these spaces have in some sense shaped us as much as we’ve shaped them over the course of of the events that have taken place here well we couldn’t thank you enough for spending a few hours traveling today though that was a lot for you to do uh for on behalf of plenty it’s on behalf of teachers and students uh and history enthusiasts across the country um do you have anything uh ideas that you want to convey to to

those watching right now about constitution day and your experience today sure uh i i was thinking about uh 233 years you know that’s that’s how long it’s been since the constitution was adopted and it’s really in the in the full uh course of human history a very small blip of time right and the the civilization that’s been built around this the system of government is so fragile uh you know the the paper isn’t isn’t the reality of it it’s it’s what we do with it it’s what we create around that it’s the way we use it as a tool to serve one another to protect one another and it is truly it sounds cheesy but it is truly about we the people and each generation including our own gets to own that and make it our own so we really get to decide you know whether this great american experiment is going to continue or whether you know it’s going to to divide and fall well thank you both so much thanks natalie no i said he took the words out of my mouth so yeah ditto ditto well thank you guys so much really appreciate it and uh safe journeys uh back here to the office that’s right thanks for taking the time to do that and celebrating constitution day with us thanks you know we really couldn’t have done today without lots of people uh chris and natalie and kathleen involved i mean talk about united we stand this really was a lot of people who who made today happen that’s right it was a total group effort from stan and david who conducted our interviews to haley who’s making sure that we’ve stayed on screen for all four hours and aaron who has uh made sure that we’ve stayed on time that’s right uh mary and and tony are our guests here uh our our other guests that were spoken to uh senator lee and joel peterson and evelyn marquez and dr danielle allen everybody came together to make this work and i think that is sort of as we come to our closing moments here the thing that i’m reflecting on is whatever you do in life you know has this element of united we stand to it and so thinking about it within the context of the constitution the constitution is is a part of our lives as as americans as we live out our lives on september 17th we take a moment to reflect on it but i think in reflecting on it we start to see just how powerful of a document really is and how optimistic of a document it really is as we talked about with dr alan and others throughout the day today that the idea that us having faith in one another is at the heart of self-government and that that idea means that whenever we’re participating in self-government and we’re whether we’re voting or we’re out petitioning or protesting or even going out and gathering a group of people around a common interest we’re seeing in each other that equality and that value that equal dignity that’s at the heart of the declaration of independence and that to me is is something that’s really hopeful and really optimistic uh and contains a

lot of power and potential to for where we may go in the future yeah i mean and we have to be sort of realistic as you’re talking about that i i think and that is every day that’s not something distant when when you said the phrase go out and get together we’ve learned this year i mean we’re going to get serious for a moment we’ve learned this year that there were obstacles to us getting together in certain ways and what happened people found ways right uh liz and the teachers and in their classrooms and the students even if you’re not voting even if you’re not physically going out and doing something every day people found ways in 2020 to get together to connect to have this hope to have this trust in each other to have this faith that their that what they needed um can be achieved if they work together i mean really i i wasn’t quite certain how we were going to wrap up this exploration of united we stand right we shouldn’t have we wanted to be a conversation throughout the day and yet there’s something there’s something so powerful about the realization that at the end of the day i think one of the things we came together is that it does happen that that we had back and forth conversations and and that we were able to really organically find that people do find ways to come together yeah and that that dialogue continues and that desire for change i think is rooted in that desire for us to want the best for all people and again in that recognition of that fundamental equality that sits at the heart of the declaration of independence um and yeah i mean i think about especially over this past year thinking about the ways that we’ve come together from you know the ways that we’ve honored first responders to the ways that we’ve we’ve sought out um to to hear differences to have those differences of opinion voiced in in powerful ways and through powerful imagery and that the nation has come together and coalesced around around these ideas in a way even as we’ve been more apart than most of us have ever been i think you know from just forced isolation because of the pandemic you know has caused us to i think think about what it means to be united uh in very unique and different ways this year no absolutely because there’s the there’s when you say you know differences and obstacles and and separation is interesting because there is the physical separation uh and and that’s true trying to organize something that’s the system we were talking about with the constitution how do you how do you design ways to be able to actually get people together but then there’s the the the difference of opinion different different approaches and different ways to do it i mean uh you know in addition to the the pandemic there i mean there really are movements about civil rights happening in lots of different ways um you know important ways of of protest and having voice and and and getting together and so many interesting fascinating ways that that it is because it’s in a constitutional setting right it’s in a constitutional society that we could do that we understand that that awareness and appreciation of the equal humanity of other people and when something gets in the way of that which it happens

that we can work together to try to overcome it that’s right and in a year that is an election year in that cadence that rhythm of our lives every four years as a presidential election is dictated by the constitution it is because of the constitution that we are having an election this year and that we trust that an election is going to happen this year and and that we we are going to engage in thoughtful dialogue about what that’s going to mean about what direction the country’s going to take but all of that again is rooted in that hopefulness that we have that we can come together that we can in fact be united and that united we stand absolutely and i have a hope that you will all stay in touch with us in the various ways because studying the constitution on constitution day is key and at the bill of rights institute we do it all year round and so you can always reach out to us that’s right and we have a number of different webinar series going all the time we have different programs and things going on across the country um and so we hope you’ll check out our our website you can find out details about all of that um and we’ll look forward to talking to you again on next constitution that’s right happy constitution day happy constitution day good job