What is Self-Governance and Why is it Important? | Dr. David Bobb | Constitutional Conversations

0:00 Uh, so one of the things that we talk a lot about here at the Bill of Rights Institute and that we value is self-governance and I thought it might be a good point to sort of take a moment to define what that means, what self-governance means, what it means vis-a-vis the Constitution and not only us as individuals but the

0:20 society as a whole. Self-governance I think is a really important idea. You know, we’ve been talking about the American founding and E pluribus unum. There’s the idea that the the states wanted to continue to be self-governing entities. Federalism allowed for that possibility. But more importantly, and I think this is really where

0:40 we at the Bill of Rights Institute reflect on the importance of self-governance at the individual level. You know, from the perspective of ancient political thinkers and I think the founders joined them in this, there was a challenge for young people and for people of any age and that is how do you live according to the dictates of reason? That doesn’t mean that you don’t ever

1:02 have passion. But what it does mean is that you have to channel those passions, right? That young people come to so naturally into the the the right order and the right kind of ends. Uh, justice is the end of government, Madison said. And what’s great about young people is that they

1:25 have this sense that today there are many ways in which we are depriving too many of our fellow citizens. And for that matter, too many people around the globe of justice. That’s a wonderful impulse. The question then is how do we get to the place where

1:46 each person can govern themselves in a way that conduces to the good of the whole. That puts yourself in the position where you can help secure justice for others. Because first what you have to do is have a self-governed soul. And that’s a really hard thing to do. Yes. It’s a really hard thing to let that moral and civic virtue come to the fore

2:08 in your own life in such a way that you can build for the common good. Cuz I think this is one insight that the founders had that really has has struck me over the years. That human beings left to their own devices are largely self-regarding. But that’s not it, right? They didn’t leave it at that. It wasn’t just a dark dystopian view that that every person

2:28 left to their own devices is going to spin out of control and society will be anarchy. Because there’s enough in each human being that justifies esteem and confidence. Justice courage prudence responsibility. Those things that that that that make us self-governing human beings. That we can construct a form of

2:50 government, a regime around those things and build on those virtues. Education is about the cultivation of those habits. It’s really hard to get to those things. It takes a long time. And I think the difficult thing is that we are naturally impatient as well.

3:12 And so here I think of somebody like Frederick Douglass as a guide who had to go through in his own life and if you have a chance to read his autobiography around this Constitution Day, I think it’s one of the best guides to how to become a self-governing individual. And he relates those struggles inside of when he was completely out of whack and

3:34 when he was completely out of balance. And what brought him back into balance and brought him back into a place where he could be effective for other individuals was an effort to chasten those passions, those desires for example that that would say to him as a former slave, I want to exact revenge upon those who did injustice to me. Right.

3:56 Do you know that he was able to write the two main individuals who held him in captivity and forgive them? He wrote them and said, I hate slavery. But I love you. Wow. To do that was an exercise in self-governance and it was an example to his fellow human beings

4:18 both then and now that we too can come to that place. Whatever is hard in your life, work to master it. And each one of us has things that are hard. Rarely are they as hard as what Frederick Douglass went through. But there are things that we have to tackle every day where we can say if we’re truly interested in building other

4:38 people up, we’re going to have to work on ourselves and become self-governing so that we can get to that place where we can also have a self-governing society and state.