Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
Honestly with Bari Weiss
00:00
The Founding Fathers and the Constitution of Knowledge
The Founding Fathers were skilled social psychologists who understood the challenges of democracies collapsing into tyranny due to demagogues exploiting people's passions. By creating a large nation with delayed communication, they ensured that passions would cool, allowing for deliberation and preventing hasty decisions. They developed a mechanism that leveraged differences in views to produce better policies and truths, as explained in Jonathan Rauch's book 'The Constitution of Knowledge.' This intricate constitutional system was designed to manage human emotions, differences, and argumentativeness effectively.
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