Why Have Civil Dialogue? | Constitution 101

0:12[Music] why is it important to have civil dialogues why is it important to listen to perspectives that you may not agree with in advance well according to the founders of the constitution all of american democracy depends on your mastering this skill because having civil conversations is central to the discovery and spread of political truth and also to the rights and responsibilities of self-government and the whole theory of american government is contained in one of the most inspiring supreme court opinions in history it's called whitney versus california and it was written in 1927 by a great supreme court justice called louis brandeis and i'm gonna recite this inspiring paragraph for you and then

1:01let's think together about how it really expresses the core of the american idea here we go here's louis brandeis in whitney versus california those who won our independence 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 they believe that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile that with them

1:57discussion 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 political duty and that this should be a fundamental principle of the american government wow they're such inspiring words every time i recite them uh i'm struck by how true they are and let's unpack what brandeis is saying uh they believed that uh liberty was the secret of happiness and courage was the secret of liberty that's a quotation from pericles funeral oration so brandeis is channeling the ancient political philosophy of plato and aristotle and he's also been reading jefferson over the summer of 1927 and those words they believe that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think

2:47brandeis god i believe although he didn't attribute them to a letter from thomas jefferson in 1820 where jefferson used the same words and jefferson got those words again without attributing them i just figured this out by finding the primary source from a series of wig pamphlets called cato's letters which the founders quoted a lot and the idea is that the freedom of conscience or freedom of the human mind is a natural right and we have not only a right but a duty to exercise our freedom of thought because we have a duty to cultivate our faculties of reason being guided by reason is the only way for what brandeis called the discovery and spread of political truth in other words in america no one has a monopoly on truth the government can't tell you what to

3:36think your fellow citizen can't impose his or her beliefs on you it's only through the process of political discussion that the truth emerges and the best response to evil counsels is good ones brandeis says and generally truth is supposed to emerge from the marketplace of ideas but brandeis's central idea in this piece is not just the marketplace of ideas which was actually a phrase attributed to a colleague of his called oliver wendell holmes but the idea that public discussion is a political duty the only way that government can be responsive to the will of we the people is if we are completely free to express our perspectives and that means all perspectives that means uh perspectives that you may agree with and those that you don't agree with and it's only by allowing

4:26all of those clashing and diverse perspectives into the public square that uh government can reflect the will of the people which only emerges through this process of deliberation and debate so now you see what what we're doing here together is crucially important we're learning how to be engaged citizens exercising the duty of public discussion it's not just a right that you have the government can't tell you what to think but it's also a duty that you have to express your opinions thoughtfully and deliberately after listening to other points of view and it's that process of listening to other points of view that allows you both to make your arguments persuasively um but also is a requirement of a opened democracy

5:15and that's why justice holmes who i also mentioned was so right when he said the constitution is made for people a fundamentally differing points of view it's impossible to say it better and that's why it's so important for you to listen to those differing points of view before you make up your own mind you