Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center and the author of The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America. We discuss how the Constitution is a framework for a productive conversation for people with fundamentally different points of view.

For the Founders, personal self government was a pre-requisite for political self government. In order to deliberate with fellow citizens and vote wisely, citizens ought first be their best selves, which puts a high bar for citizens to educate themselves. In fact, the founders thought education was central to creating the perfect citizen. Thinking in constitutional terms opens citizens up to hear arguments they might disagree with, which in turn makes it possible to change their minds. Jeffrey Rosen stresses that “that openness, that curiosity to diverse points of view is exactly the point of the Constitution”.