Faction, Difference, & What Makes America | Dr. David Bobb | BRI’s Constitutional Conversations

0:00 I think that very often today where we’re sort of lulled into the belief that America is a melting pot that all of the individuality czar supposed to disappear and not be not be seen that we’re supposed to all you know come together and forget about our our own national identities ethnic origins that

0:20 sort of thing and that’s really not what what the founders had in mind well at least when it comes to your different views on a whole range of issues right the the national government in the United States was not to be an arbiter for example of religion let’s take that just and drill down for a second on that

0:40 example cuz I think it’s in in in that area that perhaps the is most emblematic of what it means to have out of many one the United States of America was founded on the idea not that we should seek to do away with disagreement but that we should manage disagreement you know

1:01 think of even the way the Constitutional Convention itself was structured long hot months four of them from May till September you have a bunch of folks that are drawn from a variety of different interests a variety of different occupations variety of different backgrounds each individual coming into that debate representing a state now the

1:23 debate that ensued was tumultuous it looked like it various points in that long hot summer in Philadelphia in 1787 that everything was going to collapse that there was going to be no agreement and that there would be no way forward just like it happened in Annapolis the whole approach of that meeting of that

1:46 convention was how do we manage this debate how do we manage these plural perspectives not that we come to an agreement that would erase the identity of each state that would say we’re all going to come into one super state and that would dissolve the differences but rather it was it was an idea that we have to figure out how we’re gonna come

2:06 together without shedding who we are as individual human beings and then also how the states can retain their respective identities and and in different ways of life the founders were acutely aware of the problem but also the possibility of pluralism they reveled in that idea and what they didn’t want to do was extinguish what

2:28 Madison called faction rather you multiply factions right you say that if there’s so many different competing interests ambition will be set against ambition and it will be very difficult for any one of those factions which are defined as acting in in a way that’s inimical to the common good any one of those factions is not going to be able to gain power over the state apparatus

2:50 and again think of what they’re they’re reacting against the whole of human history had mainly been about one faction whether it was one person a small group of people or a larger group exercising absolute control over others that kind of tyranny is what you want to avoid what you want to get to his liberty and so when it came to religion

3:12 the founders knew that there were a ton of different religious faiths they were also cognizant of the fact that some people at the time of the American Founding were what today we would call nods they did not profess a religious faith they were free thinkers right agnostics and atheists they knew that every type of religious perspective should be protected under

3:34 the United States Constitution and that’s why in the written text of that document there can be no public there can be no religious test for any federal office holder now did that mean that they wanted to extinguish the idea of religious faith on the contrary they wanted faith to flourish where it was conducive and conduced

3:55 to the common good but they didn’t want to stamp out those differences but they knew that by not erecting one National Church that there was going to be a better potential for all of the different churches all of the different denominations all of the different faiths to flourish also carving out room for those who wish to join none of them

4:15 and what I think is really remarkable about this is that it worked right the the men and women of the American Founding were practical individuals for the most part there were some that were really oriented towards theory like James Madison and he he really went to his John Locke Thomas Jefferson did too we can even see their notes right but they were all of them

4:38 practical politicians trying to figure out how to forge a compromise in which human flourishing was the main end and what’s remarkable I think is is that they set up a system not knowing exactly how this experiment was going to work but resolved in their mind that it’s really important that we not try to

5:00 extinguish human difference that we let it flourish but that we also find those areas of commonality on which we really do need to agree that’s a tricky balance that’s what every people throughout human history has tried to navigate those very difficult waters and I think the the the the remarkable thing Madison called it a miracle use that term in a

5:21 non-religious sense but he said it was really a miracle what happened at the Constitutional Convention to come to that means by which disagreements could be worked out