Madison & the Essential American Virtues | Dr. David Bobb | BRI’s Constitutional Conversations

0:00 they had no idea in the end really whether it was going to work they were taking a risk or they believed they believed in the principles and and I guess we could say the virtues behind those principles which is perhaps a good segue what what would you say you know we talk a lot about the the sort of virtuous the civil society that’s

0:22 necessary for this great American experiment to succeed what are some of the virtues that are that you think are essential toward the pluribus unum behind the concept the whole concept of e pluribus unum I’m making making it real American government and in American

0:44 society well I think of two in particular one is prudence and another is courage let’s keep talking about this idea of religious liberty because I can I think we see in the example of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both of these virtues at work so the Bill of Rights Institute is an organization devoted to helping young people we do so

1:06 by supporting teachers across the country when James Madison was in college he was really sharp and he got through Princeton what is now Princeton University and about half the time that it took most students at that point in his life he was called back to the family plantation where he was to serve as the tutor for his about dozen younger

1:28 brothers and sisters that was not a job he wanted to do he was not excited about that prospect and he wrote his friends you know who were off doing fabulous things after they had graduated from the same College and he said I really don’t know what my life is going to become I’m I’m without really a guiding purpose and what’s

1:50 interesting is Madison living in Orange County Virginia what now is the Charlottesville Virginia area look to the neighboring county and he saw something happening that really caught his attention he saw that Baptists we’re being persecuted for just the fact

2:13 that they were Baptists and wanted to practice their Christian faith in that particular way the reigning power at the time in the Commonwealth of Virginia religious wise were the Anglicans Madison’s family happened to be part of that majority and they would be able to the Anglicans get taxpayer funds that supported that religious practice and

2:34 that religious system as the official religion of the Commonwealth of Virginia now young Madison having read a lot and searched deeply into history about what does Liberty mean what does it mean to be equal under the law saw that system saw what was happening to those people and I think what happened in his heart

2:55 was something that stirred and moved him mightily and he said that is in that is an injustice that is a gross injustice that those people merely by practicing their faith in a way that was not deleterious to the common good that they would be fined and in some cases even thrown in prison and what he said is I’m

3:17 gonna stand up for people like that I’m gonna make sure that majority tyranny does not run roughshod over the rights of minorities and what that said Amon was a course of 40 years of hard work both in his studies and in his action in which he stood in the gap for people and

3:40 fundamentally orchestrated an American order in which people like those would not have to worry about their life liberty property or the pursuit of happiness to use the Declaration of Independence as language