Homeroom with Sal & Jeffrey Rosen - Thursday, September 17

Hi everyone, welcome to the homeroom live stream! Sal here from Khan Academy. A happy National Constitution Day for all of y'all from the United States. We'll be digging deep into the U.S. Constitution with one of the world's leading experts on it. So, start putting your questions in on Facebook and YouTube, and we will be able to surface these questions.

But before we jump into our conversation, I'll give my standard announcement. Reminder that Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization. We can only exist through philanthropic donations from folks like yourself. So, if you're in a position to do so, please go to khanacademy.org/donate. I also want to give a special thanks to several organizations that stepped up when they realized that we were running at a deficit even before the COVID crisis hit. And when COVID hit, we had to accelerate a whole series of our programs. Our server costs went up because our traffic went up dramatically. Registrations went up.

So special thanks to Bank of America, Google.org, AT&T, Fastly, Novartis. But I will remind everyone we are still running at a deficit, especially for next year. So, any support you could provide is very, very valuable. So with that, I'm excited to introduce Jeff Rosen, who I've known for many years because we've collaborated on some things at Khan Academy.

Jeff, good to see you! Happy — was it Constitution Day?

Happy Constitution Day, Sal! Absolutely! And it's great to see you too! So glad to be here.

So, maybe a couple of quick questions. Why is today National Constitution Day?

September 17th, 1787 was the day the Constitution was signed in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It wasn't made a national holiday until 2004. There have been precursors of it; in 1940, there was something called Citizenship Day. But basically, ever since a law in 2004 sponsored by Senator Robert Byrd, the U.S. has recognized the anniversary of the day when the Constitution was signed.

Makes a lot of sense! And for those not familiar, what does the National Constitution Center do, which you lead?

The National Constitution Center, like Saul, your phenomenal work, is a non-profit that teaches people about the Constitution. We have this amazing online resource called the Interactive Constitution that contains videos, so that we've done together with you and with people like Justice Neil Gorsuch and Elena Kagan. It has early drafts of every provision of the Constitution. It has essays by leading liberal and conservative scholars describing what they agree and disagree about the Constitution.

Most excitingly, recently we're offering live classes on the Constitution that you can find on the Interactive Constitution or at constitutioncenter.org three days a week. My colleagues and I just turn on the computer and are offering classes for middle, high school, and college kids about Constitution 101 — everything from the beginning through the Bill of Rights. It's so meaningful, as you know, Sal, because you've been such a pioneer to be able to use this COVID crisis as an opportunity to offer free online education.

And friends, if you're watching at home, I hope you'll join us for these classes. We just did one today at noon for Constitution Day — a live class with Justice Gorsuch, who's the honorary chair of the National Constitution Center, and we had 4,500 students of all ages—middle school up—asking Justice Gorsuch amazing questions.

So that's what the Constitution Center does! In addition to all that, we're a beautiful museum of the Constitution on Independence Mall in Philadelphia. We're now open again, so if you happen to be in Philadelphia, come see the very earliest drafts of the Constitution as well as the Reconstruction Amendments, the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, and be inspired by the thrill of learning about the U.S. Constitution.

And this might be an obvious question, but I think it's worth asking. So the Constitution—actually this wasn't obvious to me when I first learned it—you know, you just learned the word Constitution, and like literally, I was in my 30s one day when I woke up in the morning. I was like, "oh," because it constitutes the country! It like says what the country is made of, how does it run, et cetera, et cetera. I never made that connection my entire life until I was like 38 years old.

But why does it — why is it important? Obviously, it's important to have a constitution, but why is it important to keep reflecting on it and studying it? You know, to have students be able to talk to Supreme Court justices, to have a museum around this — why is that important to keep reflecting on the Constitution?

You know, you're so right to emphasize that word "constitute." Because a constitution is what constitutes us as a people—"We the People." Those words of the preamble — "We the People of the United States" — were hugely significant! The framer James Wilson insisted that the preamble begin with "We the People of the United States," not his original draft, "We the People of the States of Rhode Island and Virginia," and so forth. Because we believe that we the national people have the sovereign power. It wasn't like England, where the king had the power, or where Parliament had the powers. We, the people as a whole, have the power.

And we all know, friends, that these are such divided times. According to some scholars, we are more polarized at any time since the Civil War. The text of the Constitution is the one thing that continues to bind and constitute us. It doesn't mean that we agree about what it means always, but we can agree and disagree respectfully on the basis of our constitutional, not our political views. And in that sense, studying the Constitution and the various arguments on all sides of constitutional questions helps us have the civil dialogue that the framers thought was necessary if we are to continue to be constituted as "We the People."

And even what you just pointed out about how early revisions had "We the People of the States" versus obviously the Constitution we have, which is "We the People of the United States." You know, we take even words like "united" for granted. That's just the name of our country — the United States! But that was a really important point because you could have constituted as essentially a confederation of quasi-independent states or nations, or however you want to talk about it.

But, and that's obviously what the Articles of Confederation were all about. But then they said, "Well, that's too federated. We're gonna be one people."

That's exactly right! And as you say, it was the defect of the Articles of Confederation that led those guys to come to Philadelphia in 1787. The Articles of Confederation viewed each state as sovereign, and in order to do anything, you had to have unanimous consent. So it was impossible to pay off the war debts, to have foreign policy. Individual states were raising tariffs against each other.

So the framers come to Philadelphia with this very difficult task. They have to create a central government strong enough to protect common purposes, but constrained enough to protect liberty. It could have gone lots of ways. It's so cool! If you go on the Interactive Constitution, you can see the early drafts of the preamble. And the very first words that Wilson chose weren't "We the People." It was just "Resolved, the government of the United States shall consist of a legislative, judicial, and executive branch." That was it. Those three branches of government were the big idea! But note then, after further debate, it was clear those branches don't have the sovereign power. None of them can speak for us. We the people are sovereign.

But then the next profound question: which people are sovereign? Is it the people of the individual states, or the sovereign states? Now, in insisting that the United States were sovereign, and that the style of the United States, according to the second draft, shall be the United States of America, Wilson was introducing a radical idea. James Wilson—or rather, Abraham Lincoln when the South tried to secede from the Union during the Civil War—invoked James Wilson's idea of national popular sovereignty and said you can't do that, Southern states! We the people of the United States as a whole, having made the Union, we need the consent of the entire people to change it. And it took the Civil War to settle that question.

So look at how much we've reflected on, and we haven't even gotten past the first three words of the Constitution! Just by digging into the text, the history, the case law, we can learn so much about the evolving notion of who we are as a people.

That's very powerful! And actually, another thing which you touched on — you know, these are things that I had like these epiphanies in my 30s and I was like, "Oh, of course!" You know, in the United States, we call each state a "state" because they were initially envisioned to be like a state, like a quasi-independent state. In most countries, you call these provinces; you don't call them states. But we've kept that, even though we really are part of one country.

Quick question, really kind of a technical question, which I think I know the answer to, but let you answer it. From YouTube, Smart Bears is asking, "Jeff, what are the prices to enter the classes?" I'm assuming the ones with the Supreme Court justices. "Can you attend the classes worldwide? What do the classes talk about?"

So glad you asked, and thrilled to share that they're completely free! You can sign up on Zoom, and that'll allow you to chat questions just as you're doing now! But we also stream them on YouTube, and all the archive videos are available on our YouTube site and on the Interactive Constitution, which you can find at constitutioncenter.org.

What do the classes talk about? We have a complete schedule from the fall through the spring, week by week, and you can find those on our remote learning resource page. And just this week, we taught about the Constitutional Convention, and my colleague Curry Sotner wheeled her Zoom camera around Signers Hall. We went up to individual statues of particular framers and talked about their ideas and how they influenced the convention.

We're going to be talking about the Electoral College, about separation of powers. We'll do deep dives into each of the major amendments, all four clauses of the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the Fourth Amendment protecting unreasonable searches and seizures. We'll talk about Reconstruction and slavery in the Constitution.

It's just such a thrill! We just have this kind of crazy idea that everyone from middle school to high school all the way up is engaged enough to learn the kind of substantive constitutional law that Justice Gorsuch and the Supreme Court interprets every day. And it's really exciting to see everyone from middle school students, and we do different middle school and high school classes, jumping right in reading the Supreme Court opinions, debating the ideas.

It's very inspiring to see how citizens are able to rise to the challenge! So I would love it if everyone who's here would just check out the schedule, watch them live, watch the archive videos on YouTube, tell me what you think! jrosen@constitutioncenter.org and learn about the Constitution together! It's such a great privilege we have.

No, I'm excited about that. Frankly, I want to learn more, but also for my family to engage with that! I think that's incredible. You know, going into the Constitution itself, and obviously people could—I actually highly recommend people to look at the text of the Constitution. I think most people watching are fully capable of reading it. You don't have to be a lawyer; you don't have to be a historian. It is quite approachable.

But you know, one of the things that has always fascinated me is this notion of amendments. You know, and we have the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments. How the original authors of the Constitution — how much did they think it was going to be an evolving document? I mean, I guess they started off kind of out the gate evolving it a little bit with the Bill of Rights.

So, and do you think they would have been surprised that we haven't amended it more?

They would have been surprised by how much we have amended it! Such a great question! I mean, we can tell something about that from the debate over whether to have a Bill of Rights in the first place.

So James Madison, who's the main author of the Constitution, originally opposes a Bill of Rights because he thinks it's unnecessary or dangerous. It's unnecessary, he says, that the Constitution itself is a Bill of Rights since it only grants Congress limited powers. Therefore, Congress can't claim, has the power to abridge free speech, for example, because it's not granted that power. And then he says it's dangerous to have a Bill of Rights, because if you have a list of rights, people might wrongly think that if a right isn't written down, it's not protected. He thought, channeling the Declaration of Independence, that our rights come from God or nature, not from government.

And therefore, you can't make a closed list. There are so many of them; you couldn't even begin to write them all down! But then the Anti-Federalists persuaded him to change his mind. They basically said, "Better safe than sorry!" All the state constitutions have Bills of Rights, since everyone knows what the rights are, let's write down the main ones, which they did, adding the Ninth Amendment, which said that the enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. That's a reminder that don't assume if it's not written down it’s not protected.

You know, as to the question of did they expect it to change more, would they be surprised? There have been only 27 amendments! There was definitely a variation of views on this. Jefferson, who was not at the Constitutional Convention—he was in Paris at the time—thought there should be essentially a new convention every generation. You had to allow each generation to go back to first principles and draft a new Constitution.

And it would be great to have lots of amendments, or even to start from scratch! Madison completely disagreed. He was at the convention! He thought it was basically a miracle that this group of fallible human beings was able to come to the agreement that they did! And it would be really dangerous to roll dice and open things up to another convention.

So he was much more reluctant to have more amendments, and he wanted us always to be guided by what he called reason rather than passion. He wanted a very slow and deliberative process for constitutional change. Perhaps he would not be dissatisfied; there have been relatively few amendments. So, that was some of the debate.

But it's remarkable, isn't it, that there have been only 27 amendments in all of American history, those first 10 by the Bill of Rights, and each of them is worth studying! One final thing I’ll say is this evening at 6:30 PM live, free on constitutioncenter.org, we are giving our Liberty Medal, the 2020 Liberty Medal, to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

It's an incredibly inspiring series of video tributes from her favorite opera singers and special friends, talking about all that she's done for the Constitution! And she has a very memorable vision — she says, "The Constitution has become ever more embracing."

And when I asked her once what she meant by that word, she meant embracing the left-out people—not just grudgingly, but with open arms! So in Justice Ginsburg's vision, the Constitution was intended by its framers to be increasingly embracing, so the promise of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal could be extended to all men and women, to people of all races, creeds, colors, to immigrants, to LGBTQ people!

She believes that that more embracing Constitution was envisioned by the framers. Now, others disagree. People who consider themselves constitutional originalists believe that the Constitution is only supposed to evolve through the amendment process, and any efforts to expand its protections through judicial interpretation are a violation of the original understanding of the Constitution.

So that debate broadly between calling them originalists or strict constructionists and living constitutionalists is very much alive on the Supreme Court today. And it's great just to study the different methodologies of constitutional interpretation!

So you, friends who are watching, can make up your own mind about who you agree with. Are you an originalist? Are you a living constitutionalist? Would you mix and match different methodologies like pragmatism or representation reinforcement or textualism? We can kind of walk out by thinking like a justice and talking about those different approaches.

But it's always really inspiring to try to approach these questions not in political but in constitutional terms! In other words, don't ask what you think the government should do in a particular case, but what you think the Constitution allows or forbids it to do. And be guided in your answer to that question by being faithful to your methodology. So if you're an originalist in one case, you should be that in another case, even if it leads to a result you don't like, and vice versa for a living constitution.

So that's some of our evangelism is to excite all of you students who are watching to think like a constitutional lawyer, learn those methodologies, and make up your own mind!

That was fascinating! What would you say—you know, it does feel like earlier on in our history we had more frequent amendments for very good reason. We had some major issues in our early phases of our country around slavery, around women not having the right to vote.

And obviously, even though the Constitution got amended, many of the inequities, many of the problems have continued, and to some degree, some of them are still there. What do you think? And to some degree, maybe this more interpretive version versus an originalist version of the Constitution maybe makes the amendment process a little bit less of a must-have, is one theory.

But I'm curious, you know—well, I have a question from actually from India. Hussein Hakeel says as a lawyer from India, enlighten us regarding the procedure of amendment of the Constitution of the U.S., and the reason why I’d love you to answer that question is because my perception is it's a very hard thing to do.

And my second or third part of this question is, what do you think is in the running for amendments? I mean, you know, we think we hear a lot of people talk about the Electoral College or is, you know, every state getting a senator—only two senators! California has two senators while the next 40 million people have, you know, 40 senators or whatever.

What do you think is in the running in maybe our lifetimes where we might see an amendment?

Great question! A team from India! India has such a distinguished constitutional tradition, and your Supreme Court is really one of the great and really influential and important Supreme Courts around the world. So how do you amend the U.S. Constitution?

Well, there are a bunch of ways to do it according to Article Five of the Constitution, which sets out the amendment process. First, the amendment has to be proposed. There are two ways it can be proposed: it can either be proposed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress or by a special constitutional convention called by Congress on the application of two-thirds of the states. Most of the amendments that have been proposed have used the first method — a proposal by Congress. We haven't had another constitutional convention since the first one.

Then it can be ratified in two ways as well: it can be either ratified by three-quarters of the state legislatures or by special conventions called in three-quarters of the states. So that's why the Constitution is so hard to amend, because you've got to jump through all of those hoops. And three-quarters is a really high bar!

What amendments are most likely? The one that's very much on the table is the Equal Rights Amendment. Just last year, Virginia ratified the Equal Rights Amendment after its proposal in the early 1980s. Some claim that because Virginia represents basically the puts us over the three-quarters hump, the ERA should be part of the Constitution.

But others disagree, because the original ERA had a time limit and said that it had to be ratified by the 1980s. The time limit has passed and therefore, in addition to the fact that some states have rescinded their ratification, people say it is not valid! Justice Ginsburg, who is one of the most influential advocates of the Equal Rights Amendment, thinks it would be safer to start from scratch — that there's enough doubt about the validity of the ERA that it would be better to propose it and re-ratify it, because you want to be sure that it's definitely part of the Constitution.

And then in terms of what other amendments are likely, surprisingly, the amendment that has been proposed most often and ratified by most states is— I want to ask you to guess, Sal, because it wasn't intuitive to me—but it's the Balanced Budget Amendment which has gotten nearly two-thirds of the states. I think it's like two, three or four states short of the three-quarters benchmark. So, if that's probably the first one likely to be ratified, if that were actually to happen.

Then, there's also been a term limits amendment that's not nearly as close to being ratified. And those two are at the top of the list.

So just to make sure I understand, so the Balanced Budget Amendment actually was not aware of this. I mean, they should be tracking this in the news! That would force a balanced budget on the federal government!

Exactly right! So that would be a huge thing because then all of a sudden fiscal policy as a tool becomes significantly stopped, I guess, especially for writing deficits. Imagine in the time of COVID, given the deficits we are running, all of that would be unconstitutional if we had a Balanced Budget Amendment. So we have huge implications!

Fascinating! Once the state ratifies it, can they undo their ratification or do they have to vote again to undo their ratification?

They have to vote again, and there are all these really interesting legal questions about whether you're allowed to or not. Several states did undo or rescind their ratifications of the ERA, and there's a debate among lawyers about whether those rescissions are valid or not. In the end, it's sort of up to, well, the last contested amendment we had was the 27th Amendment. It was originally proposed as the original second amendment back at the time of the Bill of Rights, and it says that Congress can't raise its salary without an intervening election.

It got a bunch of states that ratified, and then people forgot about it! In the 1990s, I think a college student said, "Hey, we're two states short of ratification or so! Just a few more ratifications, since there's no time limit here, would make this part of the Constitution." He got a failing grade on the paper because his teacher thought it was so outlandish. But a bunch of states took up the suggestion, ratified the amendment, and the Archivist of the United States decided on his own that it was part of the Constitution after the final ratification came through and certified it, and then it was inscribed in the Constitution as the 27th Amendment!

And the story Justice Gorsuch told this at noon today — he thinks that the guy had his grades raised after the amendment was ratified! But it's a great example of how when there's no time limit on an amendment, it's kind of up to, well in that case, just the Archivist and then people's willingness to accept it about whether or not it's valid.

And the question of rescissions is equally interesting!

That's incredible! That's a facet when did this happen?

What, what? Well, I think it became— I can pull out the Interactive Constitution; you guys will figure it out, but it was in the early 1990s.

Wow! And the Equal Rights Amendment—you know, I watched the—I forgot the name of the Netflix. I watched it with my wife a couple of months ago about the attempt to pass the Equal Rights Amendment in the 70s and early 80s, which was—and about the whole women's rights movement and all of that—that was all intertwined with that!

I highly recommend it! I wouldn't recommend it for like really young kids; it gets a little bit adult in some of their things, but what would be the implications if the Equal Rights Amendment gets fully adopted?

That's a really interesting question! And here, I'll just plug the weekly podcast we do at the Constitution Center called "We the People," where every week I call up a leading liberal and conservative scholar and debate questions like the one Sal just asked. We did have a podcast on the ERA and what it would mean a few months ago, and as usual, it's complicated. People disagree about what it would mean!

But the progressive scholar thought it would be a strong basis for reproductive rights. Justice Ginsburg has argued that restrictions on a woman's right to choose violate not the right to privacy of male doctors, but the right of equality of women whose life choices are constrained by not being able to choose to be caregivers or not based on their own individual choice.

So it might be used to argue for a right of reproduction and to argue to strike down restrictions on that right. Others say that it would require, for example, LGBTQ people to have transgender bathrooms and would forbid bathrooms that are marked for people who identify as male or female. Others disagree about that. Others say that it would allow courts to root out unconscious gender bias as a form of a violation of discrimination on the basis of sex rather than intentional discrimination, which so far the Supreme Court has held is the only kind of discrimination that's forbidden.

Now, you can argue all of this round or flat as the lawyers say, and you could say that since the Constitution already guarantees equal protection of the law, and since the Supreme Court just last term in a 6-3 decision by Justice Gorsuch held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in its forbidding discrimination on the basis of sex covers not only gender discrimination but also discrimination on the basis of LGBTQ status, that an ERA wouldn't add all that much to that existing statutory protection.

The final thing I'll say, and when you ask a great constitutional question, there's always a technical answer that you can't know unless you've heard the arguments on both sides. I didn't notice until the podcast Justice Ginsburg when she was an advocate arguing before the Supreme Court said that discrimination on the basis of sex should be treated just as skeptically under the law as discrimination on the basis of race! The lawyer's test for that is called strict scrutiny, and it means that any burdens on the right have to be necessary to achieve a compelling governmental interest.

The Supreme Court never quite adopted Justice Ginsburg's standard, and in the Virginia Military Institute case, which she wrote, which struck down separately equal military academies for men and women, the court said that gender discrimination should be treated nearly as skeptically as discrimination on the basis of race. We needed an exceedingly persuasive justification, and an ERA would unequivocally guarantee strict scrutiny and require a compelling interest for gender discrimination. And in that sense, it would certainly put discrimination on the basis of sex on the same legal plane as discrimination on the basis of race.

That's fascinating! And I mean, it's also fun to see how passionate you look! You know, you're like an artist when you get into this! You know, just to make sure we're not leaving everyone behind, I do have two questions from YouTube: SmartBear is asking, "What is an amendment?" and Nish786 is asking, "What is meant by amendments? I feel so lost."

So, that's another thing! Amendment literally means to amend, to add to, modify. Anything you would add to anything! You amend! To my explanation of amendments, I just would add synonyms: change, alter, put in, add!

I think that was one of your words: change, alter, add, is what an amendment is!

So, the original Constitution—remember, we said didn't have a Bill of Rights, so the first ten changes to the Constitution are called amendments. The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. And you had to amend or change the Constitution to guarantee that right of free speech because it didn't appear in the original Constitution!

So an amendment is a change to the Constitution, but it's actually quite a deep question, of course, as all of your great questions are! Because in changing the Constitution, you're incorporating a principle into it that has just as much weight as the original principles.

So in some cases, you have to read the original Constitution in light of its subsequent amendments. And to give the most important example, the original Constitution only bound Congress; it didn't bind the states. It says Congress shall make no law abridging free speech. It didn't say the states shall make no law.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was intended to apply all of those original amendments against the states as well as Congress through the Privileges or Immunities Clauses, called the doctrine of incorporation.

And the bottom line, friends, I know it's getting technical again, but it's usually important to just think of this: after the 14th Amendment passed, after the Civil War, the states are just as prohibited from infringing free speech as Congress was before the 14th Amendment. They were free to infringe free speech under the federal Constitution!

So that's what an amendment is! And anytime you want to change the Constitution—at least change its text—you have to pass an amendment.

Yeah, you're definitely adding to the text of the Constitution! I guess you could—or to the overall text, I guess you could say, because you're adding more. And it could be a change to, to your point, with the 14th Amendment! Or it could be clarification, you know? The First Amendment doesn't contradict the rest of the Constitution, to Madison's point. But it makes it very clear that you have the right to free speech!

Jeff, I mean, time goes by super fast whenever we have these interesting conversations! I'll just end— you know, a few people were just asking a few questions. You know, I've known you for several years, and I always like geeking out with you about anything! But especially history and the Constitution.

But Nirbhay Saluja from YouTube says, "Jeff, what is your inspiration for your academic aspect of life?" Maybe I'll interpret that like why did you get into this? Why— you know, how did you get into being the head of the National Constitution Center? What has driven kind of your clear passion for this subject?

Well, I've just always loved reading and history and words, and I was an English major in college. I had some sense then that my mission in life was to bring together English and government. I didn't even know what that meant, but I just felt impressed to try to pursue that passion, and I found that in the study of the Constitution in law school!

I went to law school, and I just was kindled with excitement about the significance of studying the text and trying to understand the arguments on both sides and looking at the philosophical foundations and just growing and learning and serving this much broader goal, friends, which is that this document unites all of us!

So my path was that I began after law school as a journalist. I was writing about the Supreme Court full-time for a while, and I loved doing that! Then I started teaching constitutional law at GW Law School, where I still teach, and then, out of the blue, as many of the greatest opportunities in life do, the chance to work at this amazing institution, the National Constitution Center, presented itself!

I've been lucky enough to work there since 2013, and I just feel lucky every single day I go to work! My amazing colleagues and I just have the opportunity to teach and learn and grow along with all of you.

And it's such a privilege in these times to have this task, this mission of convening people of different perspectives to learn about the Constitution! Constitution Day is a great way to do it! It's wonderful to do what you, Saul, because you're just doing so much to inspire people around the world to learn about the Constitution.

And I want to thank not only all of our incredible friends who are here in the U.S. but also those of you who are tuning in around the world to be inspired by this great document of human freedom, which has meant so much to unite we the people across America and around the globe.

No, that's so inspiring! Actually, one last question— I know a little bit over time, but I can't—I really want to ask, just given, you know, all you hear about in the media and the news is on both sides! You know, it's very polarized! You know, one party will view the other party as you know, detached and crazy and then likewise and symmetric!

Some people will even invoke that we, you know, constitutional crises! This is not— where do you think we are on that journey? Do you think the— that, you know, all the tension we see in politics are just part of our, you know, growth as a nation, and we're gonna get to a better place? Or do you have worries?

Well, there's no doubt that it's a very serious time for America. Those statistics, which are by historians, that we're more polarized than at any time since the Civil War are very concerning! In 1960, there was a 50% overlap between the most conservative Democrat and most liberal Republican in Congress. Today, there is no overlap! And we all know how social media has amplified the partisanship and the anger of our political discourse in a way that seems to empower the very factions which Madison defined as any group—either a majority or a minority—animated by passion rather than reason, devoted to self-interest rather than the common good.

It seems like we're seeing a lot of that rule by passionate faction, by tweet and share, rather than by the reasoned deliberation of the framers before. On the other hand, I have to say that, you know, having this amazing job that I do, I have the opportunity every day to see how when you just take the time to sit down and have a thoughtful conversation with people of different perspectives — and I encourage people to do exactly what I'm encouraging all of you to do now — which is to set aside your political disagreements, because we're not gonna persuade each other about politics, but to have enough humility to learn deeply about something you don't already know the answer to. Namely—what does the text say? What were the original founding stories that gave rise to it?

What has the Supreme Court said? What are the philosophical arguments that undergird these principles? How should they apply in light of changing technologies? These are such hard and rich questions that you end up, after spending some time thinking about it, I always end up in a surprising place having learned something that I didn't know before.

So I am very encouraged that as long as we continue to create the spaces, the platforms like you're creating, Saul, like we're trying to create at the Constitution Center, where people can just take the time to have these civil dialogues, I am optimistic that the U.S. Constitution will continue to provide a framework for civil dialogue and that we the people will continue to rule ourselves by reason.

No, well that too is very inspiring! And I got to say, because I've had the luxury of, you know, we've done this in a few Khan Academy videos and National Constitution Center videos where we went into some of the Supreme Court cases. You know, a lot of these cases, I entered in like surely they would vote this way; any reasonable person would!

But when you actually go into the details, the intricacies of the case, you're like, "Oh, I guess they do have a good point!" And oftentimes you switch your position when you really learn what's going on! So yeah, I love that call to just double, triple click on things! Don't just take it— you know, just don't look at things and get outraged as quickly as possible! You know, try to exercise some humility and understand the other side!

So Jeff, thank you so much! Happy Constitution Day, and I think this was a real treat on Constitution Day!

Happy Constitution Day, everyone! So excited to learn with you! And check out the Interactive Constitution! Pick an amendment or a clause that you didn't know about, dig in deep, and enjoy the learning! It's just such a joy to be able to learn and grow together! Happy Constitution Day!

Alright, thanks! Thanks, Jeff! Well, thanks everyone for joining! As always, really fun conversation! I highly recommend going to the National Constitution Center's website, looking at the Interactive Constitution, attend those classes. You might see me as one of your classmates in some of those classes because I think not only will it help you appreciate history and how law and nations are constituted, but it'll actually build your critical thinking skills!

And I actually think the more people that dig into these issues at a higher level of depth, I actually think that can help the polarization problem because you can still disagree with the other side, but you can start to understand some of the reasoning for why a reasonable person might come to a conclusion that you don't!

So with that, thank you so much for joining! Let's see, I think the next show is going to be on Tuesday of next week. So have a good weekend! See y'all!