and that's the madisonian, that's the solution of the madisonian dilemma. madisonian being, referring to james madison, of course. who wrote the famous passages in the federalist papers. >> host: , -- yeah, the question is tricky because when you, when you have a minority, the minority, i guess, is basically protected through the constitution, through the bill of rights? how is the minority protected in our system? >> guest: well, the minority's protected in a couple of ways. one is the forbearance in the majority. you know, the majority is not automatically a vicious crowd. they often allow behavior they don't like in the interest of liberty, in sympathy for a minority. and in cases where they don't and the constitution speaks, then the court protects the minority. >> host: one of the things that, switching slightly. your colleague who you described in the book is a great man, and you wrote an appreciation of him in the book -- alexander bickell -- focused on some of this quite a lot. and he also talked, what i thought was a wonderful quote, talking about

the crux of the difference between the madisonian and the will sony and approach to politics -- wilsonian approach to politics is the following. as i draw the differences between these two, recalls a teacher who asked for a class of eight-year-olds to draw a picture of a whatever each of them chose. as they drew, she circulated among their desks. she paused at the desk of little sally, she asked, what are you drying? -- drawing? sally said, i am drawing a picture of god. the teacher said, nobody knows what god looks like. sally said, they will in a minute. [laughter]in 30 minutes or so, you will have a picture of my theory on the role of religion in american politics. i will begin by noting three pertinent peculiarities -- but we owe so much to the generosity of the danforth family. the first is this, i write about politics, primarily to support my baseball habit. i also have the bad taste to mention the chicago cubs, now standing in the belly of the beast. it is cardinals nation. i grew up northeast of here in champaign, illinois. midway between chicago and st. louis. and at an age to te