learn about flagstaff and other stops on our tour at c-span.org/citytour. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. next, jeffrey rosen talks about james madison and democratic ideals. he's president and ceo of the national constitution center in philadelphia. he argues in part that social media plan forms work against the father's values and intended cooling positions on popular opinion. the national constitution center co hoefrted this event. it's 1:45. >> the fwoun dags of the

american constitution al wisdom. they're all teachers of american history, government or civics. we have several of our alums that need to be said. i'd now like to introduce our guest speaker. our guest speaker today is jeffrey rosen. >> professor rosen is a graduate of harvard college. the yale law school. his book. his books include the supreme court. the personalities and rivalries

that define america. the best selling companion book to the award winning pbs series. the naked crowd, freedom and security in the anxious age, and the unwanted gaze, the destruction of privacy in america, which the new york times called the definitive text on the privacy perils in the digital age. professor rosen is also co-editor with benjamin whisk. his essays and commentaries have appeared in the atlantic, new york times magazine. on national public radio. the chicago tribune has named

him one of the ten best magazines in america. and the los angeles times has called him the nation's most widely read and influential legal commentator. >> thank you so much. ladies and gentlemen, fellow teachers, it is such an honor to address you today. james madison said a popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it. is a prelude to tragedy or farce. and your efforts to educate young americans about the essence of american government and its fundamental principles

will determine the future of the republic. polls show that young people are more likely to support authoritarian alternatives are more likely to support institutions like an independent judiciary to resist overturning judicial decisions by popular votes and support the essence of constitutionalism. and that is why your task is so urgently important and i am grateful for it, and honor you nor it. my task today is also important, you have asked me to address a fundamental question, what would james mad southern think of american dem kralscy today. and how can we resurrect mad sewnian principles of reason rather than passionate a time when they seem under siege.

i want to begin with a quotation from federalist 55, which sums up the essence of our common task this morning. madison said, in all large assemblies, of any number composed. passion never fails to rest the spektr from reason. even if every atheenian has been socrates, athens would still have been a problem. i see some heads nodding appreciatively. that is because you know well how centrally the founders were concerned about the dangers of mobs animated by passion rather than reason. they had in mind the cautionary tale of shea's rebellion, and the debtors who rose up and demanded paper money because they refused to pay their

creditors. and this fear that mobs misled by silver tongued demagogues could end up threatening fundamental principles of property and liberty was a central concern of the constitution makers, and, therefore, they established the entire system to ensure the triumph of slow reason over time. i have been so influntsed by gregory weiner's wonderful book, madison's metronome. he shows in this book, the founders first of all, resisted direct democracy in favor of a representative republican. they feared that the direct expression of popular wills could lead to demagogues and mobs. the 18th century equivalent of today's twitter polls and breakfast votes. and, therefore, they wanted thoughtful representatives of

the people to channel and filter popular passions so that reason could prevail. second, they were keen on the benefits of an extended republican. we know from classical theorys that the classical sources believed democracy was impossible in large republicans, because face to face deliberation, would create assemblies that were too large and would degenerate into chaos. but the framers first of all, by devising the representative system believe they made it possible for larger territories to rule themselves, and second, and most importantly, madison believed the large size of the american public pleasant that factions couldn't easily organize. remember the definition of faction and federalist tent.

any group whether a majority or minority, animated by passion rather than reason, and by self-interest rather than the public good. the ideal was that in a really large republic it would be hard for these sex interested groups to organize, to achieve their nefarious common purposes. by the time they found each other, then passion would dissipate. throughout the federalist papers we see this as hasty and imhe tuous passion that over time can cool. and the large size of the republic was supposed to guarantee the cool reason rather than hot passion could prevail. it's centrally important that the framers were not aristocratic, they were not in favor of oligarchs. they accepted, especially john adams did, the classic trail oblg. there were three forms of a

republic. they believe in imagine out rule, they want majorities to rule slowly overtime. when we step back as we must do this morning, and reflect on modern america we see how many of the cooling mechanisms had been put in place. i want to review with you those changes and then think about ways we might resurrect kuehling mechanisms in the very kind of

hasty and imhe tuous thinking. let's think about the cooling measures themselves. because this mike is going in and out, i'm going to stand here for a bit. >> what is the cooling mechanisms. they're centrally designed to create an imhe tuous vortex. they believe that legislative tiereny is the same tyranny. we have to teach all americans this.

separation of powers and checks and balances. it's crucially important that no one branch gets to speak for we the people. >> here, let's channel james wilson, underappreciated genius from pennsylvania who wrote the first draft of the constitution, and the first wilson draft is at the national constitution center in philadelphia. it's so exciting to see the first words wilson put on paper in july 1787, resolve, that the government of the united states shall consist of a legislative branch. no we the people, it was a separation of power. no one branch can speak for we the power. our power has to be dissipated among them to prevent tyranny, and slow down deliberations. that's the central idea we have

to type our students. the second draft which was produced later in july, contains the words we the people of the states of new hampshire, rhode island. it was wilson who came up with the idea that we the people are sovereign, not the king and parliament as in britain, or not the king himself, and not be individual states. that central notion of sovereignty was wilson's unique contribution. the next draft of the preamble says we the people of the united states why was the change made? some say it was a committee of style trying to ensure the fact that since they didn't know who would ratify the final draft would avoid that question.

other others insist the choice was deliberate. and we were meant to dissolve the sovereignty of we the people as a whole. we the people govern and by considered thoughtful dlib rans, we can rule. our representatives are not allowed to speak in our name. no one executive order issued by the president can be confused with the will of we the people. that will is embodied in the constitution itself. that's why judicial review was encapsulated. the will of the people and the will of our representatives embodied in ordinary laws.

the master to the service, the principal to the agent. that's the rebuke that there's a counter majority in the law. it's the constitution, not the three bodies that embody we the people. we dig into each of the branches and see how carefully the framers divided power and blended functions nords to slow down deliberation and ensure the slow triumph of deliberations. the passions of the house, just do a word search through the federalist papers, and it's striking how many times the idea of reason and passion occurs, and how centrally all of the structures were set up to ensure the triumph of reason. then there was a lot of concern

about the size of the house. so another amazing document that we have in the national constitution center in philadelphia. and dear c-span friends if you haven't gotten the message yet, come to philadelphia to see these great documents, there were 12 surviving copies of the bill of rights. george washington sent out 12 copies survived at the national constitution center. the very first amendment isn't the one involving freedom of speech. there shall be one representative in congress for every 30,000 inhabitants. if that amendment had passed there would be 6,000 representatives in congress today. also the size of the chinese national congress today. the reason they were so concerned is because they wanted

enough representatives to be responsive to their constituents, but not so many that the size of the assembly would become unwieldy and degenerate into demagogues. here their cautionary tale is kleon innagens. they reduce the assembly to invading sparta. subsequent scholarship has suggested that aristotle, plato and later democrats may have done kleon an injust is, and atheenian government was more effective in disbursing knowledge of people with different backgrounds. and may have fallen not because the war, but because of the plague but the war itself it may

not do it justice to athens to reduce it to demagogues, this was the framer's vision as it was the vision of florentine critics of democracy, as well as those in britain and france who were trying to defend those governments. one representative in congress. it fails as the original second amendment, which says congress can't raise its salary. that became the 27th amendment. our first amendment was the framer's third, it was the first amendment that happened to pass. it doesn't mean the framers weren't centrally concerned about the speech. they believe our rights of speech are natural rights that come from god or government we

are born with certain natural rights. remember that the right of complete freedom of conscience is the preeminent national right, because the new hampshire constitution says in its preamble. the opinions of men being the product of reason, rather than force oar violence cannot be coerced. my reledgeous beliefs must be the project of reason. i cannot alienate them. that's why the rights are unconscionable. the right to alter and abolish government whenever it threatens the unalienable rights we refused to surrender. we have to teach this to our students too. we hold these truths to be

evident that all men are created equal. they are endowed with their creator. among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. whenever government becomes destructive of these rights, the right of revolution is an unalienable right because it can't be surrendered. that right is embodied in the amendment process of article five, which you can see from the wilson draft, which wasn't specified until the last page of the convention when they filled in the details about how many states were necessary for ratification. the right of revolution was central also to the convention because the constitution was illegal according to the pre-existing conditions of the articles of confederation. they require unanimity. nine out of 13 states was

necessary, that broke the existing rules, that was justified because the right of revolution or amendment is an unalienable right, and, therefore, a thoughtful considered judgment of a majority of the people of the united states must be allowed to be enacted into law. that is why some scholars, again, this is my dear law schoolteach schoolteacher. a thoughtful deliberate way which prevails over time. article five might be permissible. and we might amend the constitution under the existing rules as happened during the convention and the post civil war. they were formerly illegal, they were ratified at gunpoint for the rebel states to be readmitted to the union, and that too was justified under the

unalienable rights of the people to abolish government. we talked about the cooling mechanisms of congress. let's turn to the presidency. the obvious is the electoral college. it was supposed to be a group of wise men who would look over the scope of available candidates and choose those of the highest character and intellect. we know that that idealistic few of electoral college -- it never served that kind of aristocratic -- i mean, interest lecture ali aristocratic functions. with the rise of political parties in the 1800s, soon

became a rubber stamp for the parties themself. a transformation that was reflected to the 12th amendment, which assumes the existence of political parties. the political parties was one of the major explosions of passion the framers could not and did not anticipate. they now the of parties as a form of faction and they imagined instead that representatives of the people and representatives in the electoral college would deliberate free of partisan passion. the parties developed in a way that proved to be a substitute for some of the cooling mechanisms that hadn't materialized as planned. many of the greatest constitutional transformations in american history have come through mobilized political parties, and that's because the parties soon formed themselves on constitutional terms. the republican and democratic

party formed by madison and jefferson was organized around the principle of popular sovereignty and states rights. and liberty and states limitations on federal power. the class between hamilton on the one land and madison and jefferson on the other has defined american constitutional history. in 1856, when the republican platform was drawn by the father of william howard taft and others in philadelphia, it was based on the principle of an individual union channeling james wilson and on opposition to the kansas/nebraska act. >> these great parties were -- for most of american history, ways of aggravating people from different regions. eastern manufacturer's and

western farmers in a case of the republicans. and southerners and small business people in the case of the democrats, rather than being mobilized around personalitieie and that's why the parties were able to choose moderate candidates who favored the con sti fusional platforms of the parties rather than degenerating into the factions that the founders feared. >> we're talking about the presidency. that vision of a president chosen by an impartial party organized around constitutional principles. and above all, not directly responsive to the people, was changed in the election of 1912 so my new hero is william howard tafrt. he is our most judicial

president and presidential chief justice. he yearned to be chief, he took the presidency with the greatest reluctance and fought the election of 1912 constitution against the populist demagoguery of roosevelt and woodrow wilson. theodore roosevelt insisted the president could do anything the constitution didn't explicitly forbid, unlike taft who said the president could only do what the constitution explicitly allowed. taft was our last madisonian president, a position informed by his judicial background. he served on the sixth circuit and pined to be on the supreme court, a dream that he eventually achieved and became what arguably one of our greatest chiefs since -- after taft and roosevelt split, taft was moved to action with the greatest reluctance in order to defend the constitution against

roosevelt's new populist incursio incursions. roosevelt endorsed new progressives, mechanisms like the popular initiative, the referendum, and the judicial recall of unpopular decisions. roosevelt attacked individual judges by name and demanded that the people overturn their decisions. in the constitution center in philadelphia, in our majestic i.m. pei temple to the constitution, there is a quotation in the library that says, the people are the makers of the constitution. and it says, and when they disagree with judicial decisions, they should be able to overturn them by popular vote. it's an appalling expression of populist enthusiasm, and i call to you, as i -- and to our dear c-span viewers, to send me alternatives to this excursion, this excess of populism to we can replace it with a quotation from madison or the other framers expressing a devotion to reason, rather than passion.

so, taft runs for president because he rejects wilson and roosevelt's notion of the president as a direct steward of the people. it's very important for us to teach our students that the framers did not conceive of the president as a direct expression of the people's passions who would channel their will. the national constitution center, as you know, is nonpartisan. we are required by our inspiring congressional charter to increase awareness and understanding of the constitution on nonpartisan basis, and i can say with complete nonpartisan confidence that the idea of tweeting presidents would have appalled the framers. it is exactly right. it says so in federalist pen. you're tweeting, i'm sure. the framers didn't want federalist ten says, taking notes is fine, though. madison would approve, just like madison.

>> i'll tweet it to the president. >> you can tweet to him, but he's not supposed to listen to you, because madison is considering, should the people be able to issue direct instructions to their representatives and their presidents and he says, no, because you want to set up barriers and cooling mechanisms, and the reason this is nonpartisan, our first tweeting president was president obama. he was the first president to set up a twitter account. and the framers and madison didn't think that that kind of direct instruction by the people to their representative s or direct communication by the president and other representatives to the people was a good idea because they want slow reason to prevail. so when roosevelt and wilson are insisting that the president can channel popular opinion, taft is appalled and he runs for president. so the greatest defeat in political history, with great distinction to serve as chief justice. there's another important change

in 1912 that transforms congress, and i'm getting this from william connolly's wonderful book on madison. it was in 1912 that wilson insists that the congressional committee system, which requires the parties to slowly consider bills that go through regular order was channelled -- was challenged, and wilson, in addition to insisting that the president is a direct tribune of the people's will also says that the president in congress, like the king in parliament, should be able to do whatever he likes over the objections of the minority and without compromising with the minority. and he sees the president in congress as a kind of parliamentary figure and his two books on congress and the constitution endorse this sort of parliamentary vision. george will, the great constitutionalist, came to the constitution center recently to talk about madison and said that all of american history can be seen as a conflict between two

prettyt princetonians, james madison and woodrow wilson and views wilson's populist indulgences in the election of 1912 as the beginning of a path. input from the minority, precisely the opposite of the slow deliberation and multi-interest compromise that the framers thought was central. so, we've talked about the congress, and we've talked about the presidency, and remember, what i'm trying to do here is distill the essential lessons that we have to teach our students and to all americans, and just to review, congress is supposed to separate powers and have checks and balances in order to ensure slow reason. the president is not supposed to communicate directly with the people and is supposed to be

chosen by the electoral college. independent judgment. and the judiciary, the most dangerous branch -- sorry, the least dangerous branch as hamilton calls its, and the most dangerous branch as basical calls it because in his view, the judiciary has been transformed beyond the framers' view. madison saw the bill of rights as an inspiration to the people that would promote self-restraint and reason. remember, he had initially opposed the bill of rights on two grounds, because it would be unnecessary or dangerous. unnecessary because the constitution itself is a bill of rights and by granting congress only limited power, would allow it to assume no power to abridge speech because it had been granted no such power. and dangerous because madison assumed that because our rights were natural and came from god or nature and not government, they were so capacious, they couldn't be reduce odd d to a s,

limited list and future citizens might wrongly assume that if a right wasn't written down, it wouldn't be protected. but george mason, ron dofl and gerry, madison came to his senses and endorsed the bill of rights. the national constitution center has put online and i want all of you to bring to your students and i want all americans to download and learn from. using this incredible tool, you can click on any one of the amendments and see its antecedents in the revolutionary era, so you can click on the second amendment, for example, and see the two states, virginia and pennsylvania, said the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves or for purposes of killing game.

whereas the other states, led by george mason's virginia declaration of 1776, always the best place to begin because madison and jefferson have mason's declaration by their side, talk about the right of the people to organize themselves in militias to defend liberty in the face of federal tyranny and standing armies. so it's a wonderful nonpartisan way of seeing the textual evolution of the bill of rights and you can see the rights evolve in realtime. the other extraordinary thing that you can do in the interactive constitution is to have the top liberal and conservative scholars in america nominated by the federalist society and the american constitution society explore areas of agreement and disagreement. so once again, quick on the controversial second amendment and find nelson and wink ler, the two leading and conservative scholars with a thousand words about what they agree the second amendment means. what a remarkable thing to be able to bring to our students. it's like a unanimous supreme

court majority opinion, every word in that statement is agreed to by both sides and then you can look at their separate statements and see areas of disagreement. and to do this with all 80 clauses of the constitution is the most extraordinary, gratuitous, incredible free tool that's gotten 17 million hits since it launched two years ago and i'm thrilled that just last week in aspen, colorado, david coleman, the head of the college board, announced that all a.p. students will be required to take a two-week course at the constitution center and the college board are creating around the first amendment and the interactive constitution, and we're hoping to bring the entire interactive constitution with the college board not only into a.p. classes but to all classrooms across america, and i have given this plug. i hope you'll forgive it because it's in the madisonian spirit of promoting cool, slow reason over time. we can't have informed opinions about the bill of rights or

about supreme court opinions without listening respectfully to the arguments on both sides and recognizing that there are good arguments on all sides of most contested constitutional questions. the constitution is made for people of fundamentally differing points of view and therefore we need to teach ourselves and our students to read the majority, read the dissent, consider thoughtfully and slowly with an open mind to separate our constitutional and our political views, asking not what the government should do but what the constitution allows the government to do and then to be open to the possibility of changing our minds. that is the civic exercise, the constitutional exercise that we're trying to promote at the constitution center and it's the essence of madisonian deliberation. and this brings us back to the judiciary because this was what madison hoped its citizens would do. he said the reason to adopt a bill of rights is that it will convince citizens to think twice before violating rights. they won't infringe speech or vote to oppress minorities once

they're reminded that freedom of speech and freedom of conscience are fundamental principles. it was only later, principally after the passage of the 14th amendment, that the judiciary, rather than congress or public opinion, became the main enforcer of rights. congress -- the court struck down only two federal laws between mar bury versus madison and dread scott and the notion of a modern vujudiciary vigorouy enforcing rights in the face of modern threats is essentially a 20th century construct that has to do with the incorporation of the bill of rights against the states. july 9th, monday, is the 150th anniversary of the 14th amendment to the constitution, one of the most significant constitutional anniversaries imaginable, and how heartening it is that the original understanding of that unsung hero of the 14th amendment, hugh black called him the james madison of the 14th amendment,

john bingham, the congressman who drafted the 14th amendment. he hoped that the 14th amendment would incorporate the bill of rights against the states and require the states as well as the federal government to respect the fundamental privileges or munties of united states citizenship which included most of the guarantees of the bill of rights. his hope was thwarted by the supreme court in the infamous slaughterhouse cases soon after the 14th amendment was passed and it took most of the 20th century, beginning in the 1920s when the 1st amendment was applied against the states to the 1960s when most of the other parts of the bill of rights were applied to vindicate his hope. and i -- and i would like to have a vigorous debate with you and with our fellow citizens about whether the courts today are performing a function of cooling and checking that madison didn't specifically anticipate because he didn't, mostly, expect judicial enforcement of rights, but that

may substitute for some of the atrophying of the other cooling mechanisms that madison put in place. so the idea of judicial engagement or having judges strike down federal and state laws may or may not be more justified now that the other branches, primarily congress, have stopped playing its checking role and other forces have sped up deliberations so that passion and hasty decisions need to be checked. that leads to the final branch that we have to talk about, and that is the media, the fourth branch or the shaper of public opinion. it is fascinating that madison, in his notes for the national gazette in 1791, is centrally concerned about new media technologies, namely the broadside press, that he believes will slowly dissipate reason across the land. he's moved by the fact that the federalist papers themselves are

distributed in the newspapers. again, we have at the constitution center earliest copies of the federalist papers in the new york newspapers published soon after the numbers were written. and madison thinks that a class of elite journalists, who he calls the literati, will slowly disseminate reason over the extended republic through these broadside newspapers. i'm seeing some rye checkals in the audience but that was the hope that the federalist papers are not beach reading. you have to dig into them. but they were published in newspapers and the idea is that citizens would buy newspapers like "the national gazette" which are partisan newspapers but they published thoughtful essays and they would slowly be informed by the literati, by the leading citizens and by journalists and they would suppress their passion and allow cool reason to prevail. and madison thought these new

media technologies would maintain the benefits of the extended republic in making it impossible for factions to organize quickly, but also counteract the detriments of the extended republic by allowing information and reason to disseminate across the land. you can't have a popular government without popular information and it was crucially necessary for citizens to educate themselves about complicated factual arguments and about the principles of government in order to make informed decisions that made self-governance possible. so the media is central to madison's conception and his defense of free speech in the virginia resolutions opposing adams' infamous sedition act remains one of the greatest expressions of faith in free speech in american history, both madison and jefferson in opposing the sedition act, which allowed the republican president to put his critics in jail, but not to jail the critics of the republic of -- sorry, the federalist president can imprison his critics but the

republican vice president, thomas jefferson, can be criticized with impunity, according to the sedition act and jefferson and madison said that because our rights of speech and opinion are natural rights that come from god or nature and not government and the right of unbridled criticism of public men is central to the triumph of reason in a democracy, therefore, the only kind of threat that could justify the suppression of speech is the threat of imminent violence. and brandeis challenged them in the greatest speech ruling of all time, whitney versus california, where brandeis talks about, once against, the citizens cultivating their faculties of reason. this theme emerges in whitney, and he says, those who made our revolution believe that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that in its

government, the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. they valued liberty both as an end and as a means. they believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. that's a quotation from peracles's funeral oration and represents his athenian as well as jeffersonian faith. they believe that the ability to speak and think as you want are means indisuspensable. that without free speech and assembly, discussion would be futile. that with them, discussion affords. ordinarily, adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine, that the greatest threat to freedom is an inert people, that public discussion is a public duty and this should be a fundamental principle of the american government. in those extraordinary words are contained all the themes we're talking about, the states in reason and not only the opportunity but the duty of citizens to cultivate their

faculties of reason rather than passion, channeling jefferson's belief that we all have certain faculties raising from passion at the bottom and reason at the top, but reason has to be cultivated through rigorous self-education and also this idea that as long as there's time enough to deliberate, that theme of time again, the best response to evil speech is good speech, and speech can only be banned, according to brandeis, if it's intended to likely to cause imminent violence. go kill jeff, the lecture's gone too long, that should be suppressed. but short of that, tweeting, jeff's boring, or the lecture's going on too long, in europe, if you tweeted that, i could sue you under this new rights of the european union has recognized called the right to be forgotten on the internet, and a yueurope judge would have to decide if i'm a public figure and if your tweet is in the public interest and if they guess wrong and google refuses to remove your

tweet, then they'd be liable for up to 2% of their annual income, which was $60 billion last year. this concentrates the mind. google's removed 43% of the tak take-down requests it's received in europe. that could never happen in america because of the madisonian and jeffersonian faith that offenses to dignity are not sufficient to suppress speech because of our overwhelming faith in the power of reasoned deliberation. we think that as long as there's time enough to deliberate, then speech should prevail. friends, the great challenge to this madisonian faith today is the element of time. is there time enough to deliberate now? in this frantic world of tweets and referenda, brexit votes and twitter polls and instagram. when people are making decisions with snap judgments and the very impetuous passion the framers feared, is facebook and twitter

consistent with madisonian democracy? this is the central, urgent question that we must discuss together as citizens, and it's clear that the speed with which information is disseminating and the ease with which factions can mobilize online are direct threats to the madisonian faith. madison thinks, don't worry about factions mobilizing quickly. america's so big, they'll never be able to find each other. now we're chuckling. now, in a minute, on a chat room or an instagram post or on reddit, the most mobilized and polarized factions can find each other from across the country and around the globe, can quickly coalesce into mobs and punish any ideological dissident from their extreme positions, forcing our representatives to dig in their heels and take positions like armies in polarized camps.

we are living in an america defined by polarization. some have called it the big sort or referred to filter bubbles and echo chambers. this is a time when, according to objective statistics, america is more polarized than at any time since the civil war. that's how extreme the divisions are. in 1960, the most liberal republican and the most conservative democrat overlapped by 50% in congress. today, there is no overlap between those parties. and because of geographic self-sorting, where people choose voluntarily to live in blue and red enclaves and because of virtual self-sorting where people on facebook and twitter will only read articles they only agree with or share articles that confirm their preexisting passions, we are completely walling ourselves off from hearing positions of the other side. this is the exact opposite of what madison hoped for. he believed that by slow

deliberation with the opposite point of view, we could allow slow reason to prevail. now we have polarization and snap judgments. what is to be done? this is an urgently important question that we must address as citizens and teachers and all citizens have to converge around recognizing that this is not a partisan problem, it is a constitutional problem of the highest magnitude. now, i do not have the solutions for you this morning. i want to begin a conversation with you in a moment, but i should say that the constitution center has started an exciting initiative called a madisonian constitution for all. what would -- asking the topic we're talking about today, what would madison think about our current congress, presidency, courts, and media, and how can we resurrect the triumph of reason rather than passion today? it's co-chaired by the heads of the federalist society and the american constitution society and by senators mike lee and

chris in the senate and congressional visiting scholars, and we're going to launch it in the fall with a special issue with the atlantic magazine that will ask some of these questions and we're going to spend the next few years trying to identify concrete solutions to the problems i've set. but just to put one or two on the table to begin our discussion on the social media front, facebook, which has been strongly sensitized to the dangers of fake news and polarization recently, have start an academic project to explore the problem of fake news. they've found that people are more likely to share fake news than real news because it appeals to passion rather than reason. if you see something that's really angry and emotionally galvanizing, people will share it quickly without reading it. that's why researchers in britain were able to predict the brexit vote before it occurred.

they saw that the leave messages appealed to angry passions rather than reason. the remain messages were complicated economic arguments, and based on the fact that the leave messages were shared more widely, they predicted the vote before it occurred. this is, again, a madisonian distypo yeah. what is to be done? well, facebook could, if it chose, put higher up on its algorithm, only posts that people actually read. imagine that. you know, it's inspiring from a madisonian perspective, although slightly creepy from a privacy perspective. that facebook knows how long you're spending on post that you're reading. so they could choose to put higher up on the algorithm stuff that people read. that would be one example of a digital cooling mechanism in the madisonian spirit. they could also, if they wanted to be more interventionist, put higher up on people's feeds arguments from sources that they might be inclined to disagree

with. the scholar in his book "republic.com" years ago suggested putting links at the bottom of cnn page, you put a link to fox news and so forth. it seemed technologically quaint at the time because faced with a choice between a link to something they disagreed with and the opportunity to watch cat videos, people may just go to the cat videos but now the facebook algorithm literally controls what we see on their news feeds and they could, if they chose to be more interventionist, ensure a more robust diversity of views. this would raise grave principles of free speech principles as well as law. should facebook be in the business of deciding what we should see? do we want the algorithm to be madisonian rather than based on consumer preferences, and since the constitution says congress shall make no law, it doesn't say facebook shall make no law, facebook is not required to behave in a madisonian way and

ultimately is responsible to its shareholders. but these are -- and therefore, there is a legitimate and should be a robust debate about whether we want the platforms or the government or voluntary self-restraint and the citizens to ensure that we develop our faculties of reason by exposing ourselves to different point of view but no one of any political persuasion can deny the urgent necessity for us to examine the task together. i think it is time for a question and answer and i want to learn from you about these important questions. let us together try to begin to identify other madisonian solutions to this urgently madisonian problem, but the task could not be more necessary. it is the highest concern for the future of democracy that we, fellow teachers, educate our

students to cultivate their faculties of reason, that we remember, with brandeis, the importance of leisure. brandeis was so excited to learn from the -- his favorite book, the greek commonwealth, the greek word for leisure was unemployment. absence of employment. he said, what a happy land back when unemployment could be used for leisure. but brandeis continued, leisure doesn't mean less work. it means more work, but more focused work on cultivating reason and on reading and collecting facts and on reading tolstoy and industrial reports and the founders and philosophy so that all of us are capable of what he called the duty of public participation. your task is urgent. it is central. there's nothing more important than teaching students about the essence of american democracy, because democracy will falter

into the mob in precisely the way that the founders feared unless you continue on your urgently important task and therefore i'll just close with two inspiring phrases of brandeis. he was called isaiah by many, including franklin roosevelt, partly because he looked like the prophet isaiah with his impressive shock of white hair and his tendency to pr ophesy and pace up and down but he also was called isaiah because of that beautiful phrase from the prophet, come, let us reason together. and isn't that a beautiful phrase, it encollapapsulates brandeis's and the founders' hopes. if we would govern by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold. thank you so much.

>> can you stand? tell them where you're from is that he has an idea. >> madisonian reason, but how would you explain that much of the revolution was, in fact, a product of passion? pain, the sons of liberties, tea parties, and even much of the declaration was designed to appeal to people's passion. was the revolution a product of passion, not reason? that would be my question. >> that is a wonderful question, and just to repeat it for -- to make sure everyone heard it, the revolution, tom says, was arguably a product of passion rather than reason. pain and the other

revolutionaries motivated people in opposition to tyranny. was madison distinguishing too strongly between passion and reason? and i think the answer to your question is, yes. it's interesting that payne was a much more open fan of athenian direct democracy than madison and hamilton were. and the greeks did not draw as firm a distinction between passion and reason as the enlightenment framers did. they believed that there could be reasoned passion and passioned reason and indeed, they had civic ceremonies designed to cultivate the productive passions rather than the unproductive ones, and some -- and the ten tribes of greece during the height of 5th century athens would file into the dimos and set aside their differences and it wasn't -- and

the ten representatives -- the five -- there are 500 people, so it's 50 tribes and my math is bad. anyway, there are a whole lot of representatives filing into the dimos, and some say that it was once those ceremonies down and the tribes began fighting with each other through tribalistic polarization that the whole thing broke down. also, modern scholarship suggests that the firm distinction between passion and reason is too overstated. there's a suggestion that the enlightenment giants, like descartes, distinguished too strongly between passion and reason, and both are necessary for informed decision making. so i think payne and the unchannelled direct democracy is exactly the right model, and as we think about resurrecting reason today, we can't neglect both modern neuroscience and

ancient greek learning about the importance of productively channeling passions so that it can motivate people to defend liberty and to ensure the triumph of democracy without degenerating into mobs. so, thank you for that very helpful thought. >> yes, sir, in the back. >> rusty from maryland. you were talking about technology and the speed at which things happen, how that's dampened down the cooling off effect. increasingly, being one of the old guys in the room, everything's going so much faster every single day. we have students now, even young teachers, they're waving their watch at a laser to order coffee and buying a car from a virtual gumball machine. now we're talking about essentially virtual elections. in a practical sense, have you thought about how we would approach slowing this down without just looking like the old gray-headed luddite? >> this is also a central, crucial question.

you say things have moved so fast, we're all used to immediate results and to buying and voting and thinking and expressing ourselves online. how do we slow things down without looking like meaningless luddites and that -- that's the hard question we have to set up. i mean, the first thing we have to say is, the framers are not luddites. they're radicals. they're radicals. the idea of having slow, thoughtful deliberation by the majority is a radical idea in a world where kings and strongmen and thugs prevailed. so, there's nothing luddite about the enterprise, and there's also nothing luddite about embracing social media technology for the remarkable ways in which it can fulfill the framers' hopes, the same technologies that allow us to buy gumballs or to watch cat videos also allow us, within moments, to download the federalist papers or the most inspiring books about the

anti-democratic tradition in -- throughout history, which i did when i had the incredible experience of going to athens itself just two weeks ago or to listen to the most elevating music ever created in the world at any moment. but it requires self-discipline. it's up to us to use these extraordinary technologies for high purposes and to promote reason, rather than to amuse ourselves to death. so, part of it is not rejecting these astonishing technologies, which -- how excited brandeis or madison must have been about the ability within moments to download the greatest thinking of all of history. madison was sent by jefferson all of these books in french philosophy during the summer when he was preparing his notes on democracy. now we can get them in a moment, so we just have to marvel and thank the almighty that we live in a world where we can have access to these extraordinary

information, if we can train ourselves to use it properly. but the other question about how to slow things down or just put speed bumps or brakes before instant voting is a political and constitutional question. so i think one thing, you know, if we can persuade our fellow citizens and our students that instant voting is not good. changing the constitution and fundamentally withdrawing from the european union based on a one-off vote is not a madisonian idea. it is not possible in america, even with social media technologies, to make fundamental constitutional change with a single one-off vote. thank goodness. this is one of the many parts of the constitutional system that survived. amending the constitution is extraordinarily hard. and it should be. madison feared a second convention. he thought, unlike jefferson, who wanted a convention every ten years, that it was basically a miracle that given the fact that it was practical

politicians who came together in philadelphia, they pruoduced th genius document that he did and he feared that a second convention would degenerate into mobs because it would be the same legislators who were wreaking such havoc in the states. i don't have the answer to how to harness or slow down these technologies in order to promote reason rather than passion, although the facebook algorithm is just one small tweak, but it is crucially important, as you suggest, not to resist these technologies and to say that people should live in an age of horse and buggies and quill pens. we have to enthusiastically em wras the bry -- embrace these technologies which is where we and all of our students live and train ourselves to use them wisely for reason and also debate constitutionally about ways of preserving the structures that prevent us from using the technologies to make quick decisions that can't be reversed. thank you for that. yes? >> no tweeting, but notes. >> okay.

>> my name is idell and i'm from south carolina, also. you a used the term, fake news. and i thought fake news has always been with us since "the gazette," engravings, william randolph hurst, joseph hulpulit. is there a danger in giving this a new term in that people will dismiss the other side by using the term, fake news? >> yes, there is a danger. yes, there is. i'm so glad you raised that question. jefferson rejects any attempts to distinguish between facts and opinions. he says, because the natural rights of conscience are individual, and each individual must decide for him or herself what is true and what is false, to empower a judge or a government official or a 27-year-old lawyer at facebook to decide what is true and what

is false would be anathema to our inail yelienable rights of conscience. so i reject proposal business some that facebook should decide what is true and what is false and label the false stuff. that is up to citizens to decide for themselves. this is not rejecting the enlightenment faith in facts. i mean, we must, as a society, converge around the idea that there is a distinction between truth and falsehood, but ultimately, deciding what falls on which side is up to each of us as individuals. that also doesn't mean that, you know, facebook can't identify accounts that are created by bots intentionally to create falsehood and downplay them and something like that. if it's clear that stuff -- that the intentional falsehoods are

being deliberately distributed, that may be a role for technology rather than law because american law allows the suppression of falsehoods only when they cause harm to reputation, and you could imagine falsehoods that don't cause actionable harm because they're essentially political speech. but that nevertheless could be downgraded because they're false. but your -- i thank you so much for reminding us that what -- i mean, i may think that something is fake, and i may be convinced that facts suggest a and the news says b, but that's my -- that's up to me to try to persuade my fellow citizens to embrace and ultimately each of us have a responsibility on our own to cultivate our faculties of reason and not to make informed decisions about that and that's again why the job of all you teachers in this room is so crucially important. news literacy is helpful. teaching your students to distinguish between reliable and unreliable news sources is helpful. teaching them to be thoughtful

madisonian consumers of news so they can seek out positions that they disagree and debate them is helpful. listening to news sources that bring together opposite points of view, and here, since i'm plugging away, the constitution center's educational materials, i had the incredible privilege of every week hosting a podcast called "we the people" where i call up the top liberal and conservative scholar in the company and debate the constitutional issue of the week. and i just learned so much from these amazing podcasts and so do our listeners. i hope. and i can't have an informed opinion about any of these issues until i've heard both sides and i want you to encourage your students to do that too. but absolutely right. let us not have the government or the president or facebook deciding for us what is true and what is false. >> thank you. >> thank you so much. >> ryan.

pig piggy backing on the idea you had earlier, what are your thoughts in regards to a second constitutional convention that are called for separate amendments to be proposed by the states or opening it all up again? what are your thoughts? >> the question is, what are my thoughts about a second constitutional convention, either limited to specific amendments or one that would be open. so it's not a hypothetical or fanciful suggestion. 27 states have called for a convention of the states that would propose the balanced budget amendment to the constitution. you only need 34, so 7 more would produce the convention, and remember, there are two ways to propose an amendment, either two-thirds of both houses of congress can propose the amendment or two-thirds of the state can call on congress to summon a convention of the states to propose an amendment and then that has to be ratified either by three quarters of the state legislatures or by special conventions called in three quarters of the states. so, it's not completely beyond the realm of possibility that

seven more states could call for a balanced budget amendment and that we would have a convention of the states. what are my thoughts? we've debated this question, of course, at the constitution center, and i think there are -- i'm just going to give you the arguments on both sides, and then i'll tell you what i think. the argument in favor of it is that we, the people, rule. and if we feel strongly enough about a balanced budget amendment to want to enshrine it in the constitution and congress is refusing to enact this amendment because they, for their own political reasons, think that it would be not in their interest to balance the budget, then why shouldn't the people be able to call for a convention. i think of other amendments that might not be able to be propose bid congress but could be proposed by a convention of the states, like term limits, and some argue, george will is one of them, that term limits are good madisonian cooling mechanism that prevents representatives from becoming too entrenched and polarized.

people would be less likely to pander to their base if they were term limited and might be more madisonian and yet the supreme court, in an opinion that some think was wrongly decided by justice stevens, said that federal term limits are unconstitutional, so you would need a constitutional amendment to have them, but congress is not going to propose it because they don't want term limits so why not have a convention of the states. the argument against it is that the danger of a runaway convention. so, you could call a convention just for a balanced budget amendment or a term limit amendment but we know from the founding and from the civil war that a convention, once called, is unconstrained by law and can propose whatever it likes. and in this incredibly polarized time, the argument goes, the people who are delegates to the convention would be the same polarized state legislators or congressional representatives who are already dividing america so dramatically now, so a polarized convention might well repeal the first amendment or propose things that appeal to one side but not the other.

now, the counter to that fear is, fine, they can propose what they like, but first of all, it has to be a majority that would propose anything in order to get reported out of the convention and more significantly that the high ratification requirement, three quarters of state legislatures or special conventions is so hard to meet that if people tried to repeal the first amendment or do other mischief, it would never pass the ratifying convention. i'll tell you what i think in a second, but just giving you the arguments on both sides. based on what i've said, who believes, with jefferson, that there should be frequent constitutional conventions and we should have one now? and who believes with madison, that it's very dangerous to have constitutional conventions and we should not have one now? this is a madisonian group. not everyone was voting, but you want to hear more arguments on both sides.

i think i'm with madison here. given polarization, i think it unlikely that you'd get a majority to call the convention to begin with, and i'm not convinced that the convention itself would overcome polarization unless deliberation were structured in a more thoughtful way. james at the university of texas has shown through his deliberative polls that when people are given an opportunity to hear competing arguments and are required to deliberate over a period of days, often they can become less polarized. so perhaps if this convention were structured in a way that wasn't allowed to vote -- my fear is that the convention would convene and immediately vote on twitter, you know, if it was a multi-day convention and you had to hear all arguments, maybe that would be okay and maybe the check of the three quarter ratification would be adequate, but right now, i think better safe than sorry and i'm with madison.

>> my name is nicole larson, and i'm from indiana. when it comes to louis brandeis, when louis brandeis had the opportunity to be a member of woodrow wilson's cabinet and then turned down that opportunity or turned it away and then was nominated for the supreme court and accepted that, i kind of asked this question the other day to chief justice roberts, but in your opinion as well, when -- for the powers of the government, when you're in that position and you are no longer designated to identify by your political party that you support or that you were a member of, tell us what you think europeans are throughout history of being on the supreme court, the motives of your position but then the power that you have with the people as well to not be identified by a

political party, firm in your beliefs and what you are in favor of, whether you agree or disagree with the situation of the case at that time. >> wow. great question. and of course chief justice roberts' answer is much more relevant than mine, and i intended to ask you what it was, but i'll check it out. i am -- reject the idea that the court is a group of politicians in robes. i agree with chief justice roberts, who has said very powerfully and repeatedly that it is important for the court to stand for a kind of nonpartisan legitimacy that transcends politics, and it is inaccurate, s simplistic for the public to perceive the court as five republicans and four democrats or what have you. i think over time, while there is a strong correlation between the considered will of the people and the court's judgment, in other words, the court has tended to reflect thoughtful, considered popular opinion over time, and on the rare occasions when it's thwarted it, as during

the new deal and the civil war, it's provoked backlashes that have led to judicial retreats and that's a madisonian function, because remember, this is not the court reed raading t election returns on a daily basis. it's reflecting the thoughtful current of reasoned popular opinion. that's exactly what madison thought that it should do and that the constitution was supposed to embody. so in that sense, the court has been appropriately but cautiously responsive -- responding to what justice ginsburg has called nudges rather than -- well, she talks about measured motions, basically, the court is sometimes moved gently ahead or pushed gently behind, but not dramatically thwarted popular reason. but the other thing i want to say and i really want to teach at the constitution center and hope all of you will teach as well is to distinguish between a judge's political views and his or her constitutional views. it is urgently important to teach citizens about the different methodologies of

constitutional interpretation so they understand that there are different kinds of liberals and different kinds of conservatives. chief justice roberts is a institutionalist who makes institutional legitimacy his highest priority and he said -- i had the honor of interviewing him right after he got on to the court. he said, i hope when people go back to my opinions, they'll see that many of them reflect a conservative institutional legitimacy and look at these nearly unanimous opinions where the justices avoid polarizing broad constitutional decisions and converge 7-2 or 8-1 on technical grounds. this is chief's vision. and i think he's -- he has said he's modeling himself after chief justice marshall and i think it's an inspiring vision that is good for the court's legitimacy and for what it's worth, but not all conservatives share that vision. justice thomas is an

originalist, as justice scalia was and justice gorsuch is an originalist as well and they think the constitution should be interpreted in light of its text and original understanding and original public meaning regardless of whether that's good for the court's legitimacy or will lead citizens to perceive things in a partisan way, and they will overturn decisions they think are inconsistent with the original understanding, even if the heavens fall, as the expression goes. and then, justice suitor was a berkian traditionalist who thought that precedent was extremely important. on the liberal side, we have incrementalists like justice ginsburg who criticized roe v. wade for moving too broadly and deciding a hotly contested question in the most sweeping terms, rather than merely deciding the case at hand and allowing the political process to take its place. with pragmatists like justices kagan and briar, who have joined

justice roberts in a series of 7-2 decisions, over the dissents, because they believe that the function of the court is to function as a court and to reach practical solutions that both sides can converge around in a madison sense. and then justice sotomayor, who is an inspiring crusader for her vision of the correct constitution and the tradition of justice brennan, regardless of its practical consequences. so, here are the -- i really want to work with you to teach these methodologies. first, tense and original understanding. second, history and tradition. third, precedent. four, pragmatism. fifth, natural law. justice kennedy, who just retired, believed that we do have certain rights that come from god or nature and not from government, and that should be strongly enforced by the government and by the court regardless of whether they're enumerated in the text of the constitution.

so, both the right to privacy and autonomy, which justice kennedy summarily summed up. the mystery to have human life. justice scalia dismissed that and called it the tweet mystery of life passage but it's a strong expression of the natural rights of autonomy and dignity that the court has affirmed now repeatedly in, and that represents a natural rights-based philosophy. so if we can teach our students not to succumb to the easy mode of reducing every decision to 5-4 politics, encourage them to read the majority decision and read the dissent, and identify the judicial philosophy that's animating the different justices, so they can understand why, in the recent case involving warrantless searches of a motorcycle, that was 8-1

with justice alito the only dissenter, because he is more of a law and order justice who believes in executive power and thinks the executive should have great deference, unlike all of his liberal and conservative colleagues. this isn't to say that we don't live in an incredibly polarized time and we're about to experience the most explosive and divisive supreme court confirmation hearing since 1987, since robert bork, and the country will be dramatically tested because the stakes are very high and i'm not dismissing the fact there's a big difference between a liberal pragmatist and a conservative pragmatist and so forth, but it misses everything that is beautiful and meaningful and inspiring and limiting about constitutional law to reduce it all to politics. many do, many of my very distinguished colleagues in the academy do, and as a shorthand, it's not, you know, it's not untrue that there's often an overlap between the politics to the justices and their results,

but not the reasoning. they reason to these decisions for different reasons, and all judges will say that they are honestly motivated by their methodologies and their correct views of the constitution rather than by politics. i don't think any judge has ever voted, thinking, i want to help this party or that result. they have world views, and it's our job as citizens and students of the constitution to understand them and teach them. so, let's make teaching of constitutional methodologies part of our arsenal and just as all law students are required in constitutional law classes to separate their political and constitutional views and learn the methodologies of constitutional interpretation, let's teach all citizens those methodologies, starting in middle school and then all the way up to lifelong learners. thank you so much. >> meagan from new jersey, but right outside of philly, so we run a lot of field trips to the constitution center. >> wonderful. please keep coming. >> you had mentioned before, to go back a bit, about the

electoral college and that was one of madison's cooling mechanisms. i guess my question is twofold. number one, madison obviously saw a lot of the undoing of his original intention of the electoral college. i wonder if he ever wrote about it. i've never really read or heard anything about what he felt about the electoral college and how it contributed, how it wound up being, as you said, a rubber stamp. b, should we be a little bit more concerned about the electoral college? usually after an election like 2016, 2000, there's a lot of talk about the electoral college, and then it kind of dies out and a lot of it is dismissed by, oh, you know, the losers just get upset about the electoral college, whatever, deal with it. however, i've read a lot and also actually c-span did some interesting lectures on it and how the dangers of the electoral college could just be the next example of, you know, minority rule or faction rule when we're looking at the numbers of people who live in different parts of the country, could there be an argument that the people are

being less represent bid the electoral college and it's not even just the presidential elections. when you look at both political parties channeling so much money and attention and political favoritism to states that might wind up helping them in a presidential election, you know, are there a lot of dangers of the electoral college as it stands today with the country becoming more polarized and did madison see any of that coming? >> what a great and deep and important question. i don't know what, if anything, madison wrote on the electoral college after having founded the democratic republican party and i'm sure there are people in this room who, if he did, will know it better than i. but we did have a great series of debates in podcasts at the constitution center on the question you posed, has the electoral college -- is it not serving its original madisonian purposes and the argument against it is just the one that you made so powerfully, which i won't repeat because i can't do it better than you can. the argument in favor of it was made by a brilliant scholar who

basically said, yes, it's true, it doesn't serve the purpose of wise aristocrats choosing people of the best character but it does serve values of federalism and it would not serve madisonian goals to have purely -- to have a president cho chosen by new york and california. basically, there's such a diversity of views throughout the country that allowing states throughout the country to be represented will ensure more of a mix of madisonian reason than simply having the blue states repeatedly elect the president. now, the counter to that is the one that you just made in a really interesting way, which is that maybe those -- giving each state the number of representatives that it has in congress doesn't serve madisonian reason, because in a polarized world, with low voter turnout, our congressional representatives are pandering to the most extreme factions in

each of their parties, and the moderate middle is not represented, and therefore, we may be in the hands of factional minority rule. the counter to that is the electoral college is just done numerically, not in terms -- the people who serve in it are not themselves popularly elected, so you know, unless you're assuming that all of those red state people are actually democrats or not being -- wouldn't vote for the presidential candidate, then maybe there's not a political process failure. probably the most immediate solution would be either some kind of proportional representation so it's not a one winner takes all system but you can divide the number of electoral votes as some states do and that would ensure that in a divided country, a diversity of views is represented in the

electoral college. another solution is the compact of the states where ten states or so have pledged to give their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote and a certain number of more states say yes, then that would guarantee a kind of popular election. the chances of that actually getting out of states seems low, but that's a possibility. but all that is -- so those are some of the arguments on both sides. there's no question the electoral college is not serving its original function. it's not serving any madisonian function at all in a deliberative sense, it's a rubber stamp. the defense of it would be some kind of geographic representation in the election of the president is helpful in a divided country because you don't just want a few regions deciding everything. there's much more to debate and would look forward to more discussion about that. >> kevin from southern new jersey right outside philadelphia as well. >> excellent. >> throughout your lecture, you spent a lot of time citing hamilton, madison, and j in the

words of the federalist papers and i was wondering if you might be able to bring in some of the anti-federalist argument against the constitution and your opinion, what you feel arebetwe federalists during the ratification time pick >> a wonderful question. please forgive me. and on madisonian feature. george mason was a hero pick he would like to have a monument. it is not far from the african- american museum. it is not that hot today so you can make a. realism -- pig realism -- pilgrim is him.>> the main concern was the lack of the bill of rights. it was remedied by the adoption

of the bill of rights but more broadly the antifederalists were concerned about federal power that will be unchecked by either the judges or the other branches. the second amendment where they have a wonderful paragraph where they described the conflict. i need my constitutional reading glasses to read it. i am going to see if i can find it. it is a new app. the international application available in the app store. the right to bear arms and describing how they agreed and disagreed and it says implicit in the debate between federalist and anti-federalist were assumptions. the federal government had legal authority over the army and militia and second that the federal government should not

have any authority at all to disarm the citizenry and they disagreed only about whether the armed populace could adequately deter federal oppression. that is a wonderful paragraph because i just read this paragraph and both sides agree but they are both federalist and anti-federalist agreeing about what powers are being going and they are concerned about the remedies and it determines, the enforcement mechanisms to ensure that the federal government does not overstep its constitutionally assigned balance and they were not competent that the populace could deter federal oppression in the federalist were more confident. my broad sense is that the anti- federalists supported the broad goals of the constitution to have a federal government with

the limited and enumerated powers and to ensure that the natural rights of the people were retained by them and couldn't be threatened by the government. they disagreed about whether the structure created adequately limited the government to avoid tyranny. that is why the question of what would madison think about the government today is a question that is like antifederalists thinking. to the degree that madison is concerned the bill of rights will be a parchment barrier and liberty will be determined by the ability of citizens to educate themselves. the antifederalists might have wanted more strong connections but they would have fed -- had agreed with that. unlike the division between the republicans and democrats and policy issues i think they were

both committed to a limited government strong enough to achieve common purposes. they constrained liberty and they disagreed about the constitutional means for achieving that goal. thank you for that. >> i'm from california. as i listen to you, i am hearing that in our country we have a crisis of carriage and a willingness to use constitutional mechanisms to exercise reason more often than passion but i wanted to ask you about a regular order in the legislature. the constitution does not prescribed how congress should operate the congress has always operated with mechanisms and principles that force the legislatures to use reason of her passion and make decisions. you mentioned earlier the

upcoming confirmation process and recently we have had changes in the way the senate works pick and eat a simple majority to get a supreme court justice confirmed and what are your thoughts on that are and regular order for with the legislature and may bear do we need some constitutional circumscribing of congressional behavior so that we have the leaders using reason more often ? a >> wonderful. regular order is one of the most madisonian solutions imaginable. this wonderful group of constitutional walks and i use this in the highs sense of praise. if we had to pick a single reform to resurrect it would be regular order. those who were not among the initiatives, regular order requires that they go through the committee process and are considered over a period of time rather than being pushed

through by leadership without deliberation and without consideration or criticism by the other party. john mccain received the liberty metal in philadelphia from vice president biden. one of the most moving ceremonies i have the privilege of attending. they said that was not during the decades during the senate and insured the people of both parties would listen to the arguments from the opposite point of view and you could not have a parliamentary system that would circumvent that in the hewlett foundation which is a madisonian initiative which is very generously supporting institutional reforms in congress, has identified the resurrection of regular order is another priority. how precisely could be

resurrect lee, it is not -- resurrect but it is not clear but that idea of forcing deliberation is crucial. what are other ways that we can force or at least into the benefits of deliberation and congress? for supreme court confirmation hearings. it is a tourism to dismiss hearings as a kabuki dance as senator biden said in 2005. a political theater. they ask political questions and the nominees dodge them and we learn nothing. i completely reject the characterization of the hearings. when you go back to ever hearing you will find -- ever hearing you will find the nominees clearly had the philosophies and ways that were precious pick he was an originalist and insisted that

he rejected their original label and endorsed the right to privacy to anticipate his right to conception of the mystery of life. he said a short list of qualities that should be consulted and identifying unenumerated liberties are the right to self performance and personality in the right to dignity. his views in marriage equality cases the justice asked a similar question. one of the greatest barriers -- heroes and he performed just as he did and the cries of no more suitors should not have been cries of surprise he said exactly what he would do. the confirmation hearings are not kabuki theater but they are probably public education

opportunities in which the result is preordained. the presidents nominee will be confirmed because the filibuster has been eliminated the confirmation can take place by the majority vote but the fact is we don't have an obligation to educate about the constitutional votes -- views of the nominees. if you are republican or democrat regardless, i would think you would have a specific obligation to find out what kind of conservative has been on the dish nominated and whether that is a pragmatic or a traditionalist or what is the president? the conservative hero said there were certain presidents should be considered super because they have been affirmed by justices of both political parties and although he is a

strong originalist he believes that certain presidents are entitled to respect because they are embedded in the fabric pick we must find out from the nominee what he or she thinks about that question. all of this is a function in public education and it goes back to the theme of what you're work as teachers is important and why we have this world of partisan polarization and democratic politics and have enough respect for citizens and c-span is really the most beautiful educational platform that exists. the only place that gives access to long hearings and talks and all of you wonderful viewers who are watching this at 3 am and i am sorry you cannot sleep but i am honored you are listening to this lecture because you are educating yourself about the constitution.

that is with the hearing should before and that is what will save us as a democracy. people informing themselves of complicated arguments so they can make up their own mind here's to regular order resurrected.>> >> i have been frustrated with the polarization of political views and the appeal to the emotional side of the issue that we are talking about. on the news stations, news sources, where do you get your news? >> from the national constitution center.>> i do start there. we have a great daily blog which has the constitutional news of the moment. i learned from the podcast, i know about the constitution, i cannot have an informed decision about all of the stuff unless i have heard a good

argument from both sides. these are technical, open questions and not presuming to have an opinion until you have taken a moment to listen or google. i am lucky enough to do the podcast but i read the times and the wall street journal in the washington post i kind of google around a bit but i don't , i think the times in the journal the washington post are doing heroic work and attempting within the limits of all of our filters as citizens to tell the story the best and in the spirit of fake news it is important not to dismiss the work of professional journalists in their efforts to tell stories neutrally as the focus on a nonpartisan stuff and it is important to get that but i don't watch tv except c-

span. >> one of the takeaways that i'm having is as teachers we can control so little of what happens in the world. we are ballplayers in a big game. the one thing we can control is education. that is our game and what we are after. it seemed to me that civic education needs it sprucing up. your edge -- organ is it -- organization is an advocate. what are your policies that you think should be improved and what would madison say about's of his -- about civic education pick >> he said it is essential to the room five -- survival of the public. the grounds that unless they

learn about the science of government and democracy will collapse. what is really important about madison and jefferson and all of the framers's it is not an endorsement of just education in general. they thought education was important but the recent surveys show educated people are more polarized than people with higher education despite we should not fancy the word. madison is very specific about education and they science of government. the principles of the constitution. that is where the constitution centers notion that citizens must be trained to think like constitutional lawyers or at least think in constitutional terms. specific education is not just telling people to get out to it. it is important but that is not

educating yourself about the structure of the government we need to teach our fellow citizens about all of the complicated ideas that we have been talking about. i try to instill it but it took an hour. that is not good enough. we need to make a list of principles. checks and balances and be able to explain quickly and urgently in a way that is relevant to people's lives why they are important and how do we show it is relative -- relevant picu tell stories about why this is relevant. you can tell a story about how the supreme court justice said that the government can not track our movements using our cell tone -- cell phones but it can take our records to re- create our movement in public. you can tell the story about how that opinion sparked the american revolution pick king

george tried to rummage through people's houses and this was so objectionable that the framers asked the revolutions to oppose that and john adams said the revolution was born. the constitution center has a multifaceted approach to civic education. teaching history through storytelling and teaching citizens to separate the politicals in constitutional views and encouraging civil dialogue by bringing different points of view together. that is what we are trying to do with the podcasts and other things. you teachers are inspired and i want you to join us and help us bring this to your kids. lesson plans and leaving questions to bring it to life

to introduce it into the classroom and we want the citizens to follow this inspiring and necessary enterprise as well . the thing about it is -- it is just so necessary for democracy and we are all citizens. we are in a perilous place pick we are seeing waves of populism sweep across america and around the globe. we are seeing what countries and europe without constitutions are doing in the face of populace threats eliminating their supreme court's and threatening journalists and undermining fundamental principles of liberty and we are wondering whether america in the face of these new technologies and forces can preserve the structures that have defined us as a nation.

it is necessary in order to preserve and it necessary to fulfill your faculties as a human being there is nothing more meaningful than lifelong learning pick every moment we spend elevating our faculties and learning new history and reading new literature and being inspired by great music and converging around the principles that unitas is one we rise higher as human beings. this is not an enterprise just for students in middle and high school and college but it is a lifelong commitment to elevate your life as a citizen pick you will rise us up as human beings and help us rise together. when we engage in this enterprise we will understand that the things that divide us are -- these are irrelevancies. the difference between this law or that all this controversy

where that is less important in the fact that we are united by the principles of the constitution. we converge around the principles of the declaration of independence and red or blue americans we are one as lincoln said. civic education is important. the work is crucially important and i want to end by thanking each of you as teachers for teaching history in these embattled times when technology and science are all the rage . you understand the crucial importance of kindling younger students to love language and learning and words and to throw to the inspiring students -- stories and converge around the great document that unites us, the u.s. constitution. thank you so much. [ applause ]

we are at carter g. woodson home national historic site.