Polarization, Persuasion & American Progress | Dr. David Bobb | BRI’s Constitutional Conversations

0:00 so I’m interested in this whole idea of persuasion being inherent in the process can you talk a little bit about the lesson that we can take from that today and in our own sort of politically divided divided current society around how persuasion is an important part of that process America today certainly is

0:21 polarized we’ve been more polarized in our past and I think one of the misconceptions about the American Founding is that there was unanimity the historian David McCullough likes to say you know it’s like the founding fathers got to sit around and say isn’t it great being the founding fathers right they didn’t know if their experiment was going to work or not today we wonder if

0:42 it is going to continue because we are so polarized it can feel like we’re flying off in 325 million different directions that is a disconcerting feeling we see that in the lives of young people at the Bill of Rights Institute where they wonder for example if I have a friend we’ll be able to will I be able to maintain that friendship if

1:04 we disagree about things the lesson I think we can take away from Madison and Jefferson is that if you want to succeed at coming to an enema don’t use the power of the state to enforce that and don’t be majoritarian about it either because let’s say you can cobble together a coalition of 50

1:26 percent plus one and rammed through something that is inimical to the common good that’s still a faction that was Madison central insight that you can have a majority that is still a faction that is which is acting in contrary to the good of the whole contrary to civil society’s well-being and what they did

1:49 in this long hard-fought battle for religious freedom in Virginia which by the way led to the establishment of religious freedom in the nation as a whole they worked very hard to cobble together a coalition of disparate interests I’d say the main thing that we can learn from their example is keep

2:10 your eye on the North Star cobble together the coalition where you all are looking up to those same ideas that are found in that in that idea of the Declaration of Independence this promise of freedom and equality for all by focusing on the big picture it allows people to set aside those differences

2:31 that really don’t have to be at the heart of a thing their peripheral and I think the question it faces the United States of America today is can we regain a sense of what that North Star means for our lives today not in an abstract way but in a real concrete way in which we can say on these things we agree on

2:53 these many other things there is going to be rampant disagreement and that’s okay but these are the things that can hold us together that really will be the core of the Moon