Context Podcast Digital Collection

Doug Exton: Thank you so much for joining us for what does it mean to be a citizen in a program conducted by the Idaho Humanities Council? This program is funded by the. Why it matters civic and electoral Participation initiative, administered by the Federation of State Humanities Councils and funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. I'd like to remind you all that you may submit any questions using the Q&A feature located at the bottom of the screen.

Man with me is a wonderful group of people from across the US. We have Doctor David Gray Alder, Doctor Dr. Lara Brown, and Doctor Caroline Heldman. It's wonderful to have everyone here join me and I turn it over to our wonderful panel.

Dr. Lara Brown: Thank you.

Dr. Caroline Heldman: Thank you. Doug. I think I am starting things off. I just want to give a couple of minutes of perspective on this fantastic question. And thank you so much for hosting an event that feels more important than maybe any other time in my lifetime after the, violent insurrection that happened on January 6th, I think a lot of us are asking what it means to be a citizen.

What obligations do we have to government? What obligations do we have to one another? So I approached the question of what it means to be a citizen from really two perspectives. One is a top down perspective or an institutional legal perspective about basically who is a full citizen in the U.S. like who counts, who's a first class citizen and who's in steerage?

And then the second perspective would me would be more from the individual level. What it means to be a citizen, or maybe implied in that question is what it means to be a good citizen. So I want to talk about both, of those, vantage points or perspectives. And then talk about some of the challenges, that we have seen in recent decades to ideas of citizenship.

So, for example, you know, the ladies were not remembered, in the Constitution, and black Americans were counted as 3/5 of citizens. In the Constitution. So, a lot of this is, has was actually part of our founding. And one I would argue that we actually haven't reckoned with because it carries forward when you set up institutions and practices, and codify things, you put them into law.

Even though we have a long history of basically extending the idea of who counts as a full citizen, we're we're not there yet. We have a long way to go. So if you look at that history, though, early on we saw the barriers, to the voting for voting rights, which is, I think, a great universal marker of who counts fully and a citizenry.

It's not enough, but it's a kind of a base level, measure of that. You saw the early property requirements for white men fall by the wayside, right? And then in 1869, Congress passes the 15th amendment, technically or formally giving African-American men the right to vote. But immediately, for example, Louisiana passes grandfather clauses that cause the number of registered black voters to drop from 44% down to 4%.

And then you see states across the South. Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, etc.. Passed grandfather clause, laws. And also Jim Crow goes into effect. And so black Americans wouldn't really see their voting rights enforced until 1965. And some would argue that that's still a struggle today with voter demobilization that's cropped up in the past, ten years.

There are big holes and big pieces of of the citizenry, who are not who don't have the same rights as others even though they have the right to vote. So, for example, the Equal Rights Amendment, which grants sex as the highest level protected class in the Constitution, has not passed, even though it's been 100 year battle to get that into the Constitution.

I think it's instructive to look at the three primary pillars of democracy, because really, what we're talking about are some Americans have experiences that are more democratic than others. So if you look at the three pillars, you have popular sovereignty, political liberty and political equality. Popular sovereignty is this idea that government only has legitimacy if the people decide the government has, legitimacy.

So you can see statistically, that the laws are not being equally applied to everyone. And then when it comes to things as basic as like voter ID laws, right, we know that they disproportionately demobilize, older Americans who are less likely to have licenses. Transgender Americans who are less likely to have licenses, their name matching, what they what, the voter rolls says, students.

So younger voters and black Americans who are less likely to have, driver's licenses in all 50 states, we also see practices like voter turning right where, if names are similar in a voter database, they're assumed to be the same person and are churned. We know that this, you know, that African Americans are more likely to be targeted for churning and therefore demobilize, not able to vote or face issues voting because the name that oftentimes the last name is coming, historically from, a slave owner's name and passed along.

So black Americans have, for example, have a much greater likelihood of having, similar names which get churned at a much higher rate. So, lots of limitations on who gets to be a full citizen or a first class citizen, but then what does it mean to be a good citizen from an individual perspective? So shifting that perspective and giving us lots to kind of grind through, this evening.

So what does it mean to be a good citizen? I think there's some base level requirements. The first is that you have, basic level of interest for the public good. And I, I think this is more important than ever because we're living in a pandemic. So, for example, not driving recklessly or wearing a mask and socially distancing, just a basic level of interest for the public good, meaning people who are not you.

And then I guess the third element would be being outraged. Or taking action when government violates when the government or fellow citizens, who are not stopped, violate the rights of others. Right. Infringe upon their liberties. And then, of course, a base level of participation in democracy. I think voting is a good start, but also working on a campaign, talking about policies over the water cooler, advocating for certain positions.

And all of this requires, I think, something that's, increasingly under threat, which is, level, this level of information about what is happening. So I'm increasingly concerned, that our democracy really only operates when we have an informed citizenry, and given that social media and online media have have demonstrated or revealed that a sizable number of Americans are very susceptible to conspiracy theories and misinformation, I think that poses perhaps the most kind of pressing concern about our democracy right now.

And then lastly, I would, you know, a base level of tolerance regardless of beliefs. I would go a step further and say, you know, because we are baked in racism, sexism, ableism, and a lot of other kind of biases into our founding documents, into our early institutions, that have carried forward. And while much of it obviously has been improved, those base levels of bias, exist amongst our citizens in our, our laws and our practices and the ways in which even the same law is applied to different Americans.

We can hold these beliefs. We can hold beliefs, that are negative toward other groups. I don't think it's it's healthy. But most Americans do. And we you know, use heuristic shortcuts and stereotypes, that end up translating into dehumanization of other groups. But it's not okay to actually act upon that if it infringes upon the rights and liberties of others.

So again, this gets us back up to this, basic level of concern for the public good and empathy. So just to to quickly summarize the challenges here, inequality is baked into our founding documents and institutions, and it is carried forward, even though I think our history has a long history of expanding rights and liberties, we have a long way to go.

Online and social media sites, produce mass information or misinformation or enable that to happen in a way that threatens democracy. Online, social media have profoundly eroded social discourse. Our leaders, especially contemporary leaders, have set a new low bar, for civil discourse. And I think all of this, limits the ways in which we can be good and full citizens in the US.

Dr. Lara Brown: Wow. So, Caroline, thank you so much, for offering both sort of the legalistic and institutional as well as the individual. I know when I was thinking about this topic, I thought really about a couple things. One about the history, not just the institutional legal framework, but also the history in in terms of the waves of immigrants who came to the United States, who became citizens and became a part of this American community.

And it is kind of this constant where this idea of what we have of America, that it is a place of kind of openness and an open, accepting country, that it is, in fact, revitalized because it is often people who are who are born here who actually bump up against many of the legal limitations that you were just, referring to.

So I do think that that is fascinating. I also think when I think about the civic space, you know, one of the things that our framers really did have in mind was a notion that religion should be sort of about the freedom of association. Right? You should be free to associate with whatever religion you so choose. And the government should not, advocate for and or infringe upon that association.

But I also think it's fascinating that our framers deeply held to this idea of natural rights, right? That we are each, endowed by our creator, and natural rights are what are given to us by God. So even if you do not have sort of a sense of the same God, the idea that our natural rights come down to us as human beings from a higher power is actually pretty also extraordinary.

Now, what this meant, I think, and I would argue that when you think about the wall of separation that our framers talked about with religion, I would argue that they actually got just all wrong. It shouldn't be a sort of vertical wall to wall that we think of as separating two equal rooms, but in fact, it should be a floor and a ceiling.

And in between that floor and the ceiling is, I think, our civic space. So above the ceiling, our natural rights come down to us and they are not something that we can, if you will bust through the ceiling around to mess with. But then at the same time, religion was something our framers believed would help to civilize us, meaning that they believed that it would help us learn how to become good people.

And I'm not saying that you necessarily have to associate with a religion, but I do think that the moral principles that underlie the vast majority of the world religions are precisely about helping people to become better human beings, so they treat each other with more respect and with some level of humility and kind of social conscience within their communities.

And I think part of the problem that we have is that we have sort of lost the idea that actually we need to be taught how to engage in the civil and civic space. That and obviously, as you just, eloquently laid out, it wasn't believed that, if you will, God gave all of us natural rights in the beginning.

So I think we were in this fascinating world where there is this challenge to recreate a civic space for our citizens that is both more open than it has ever been, and yet requires something of everybody to be involved with it. And by requiring something, whether it is, a certain amount of education. Right. We talk about how important it is to be informed, to have a sense of what truth is and to also have a sense of trust.

It becomes very difficult, right, to try to make sure that our education system does all of the civics that we need, that we are able to teach everybody how to have dialog and how to debate without demonizing. I think we are struggling in this country in some ways, because, quite frankly, we have more democracy than we've ever had.

And that in and of itself, Madison would tell us, would create a sort of highly pluralistic space where there would be a lot of conflict. And so I do tend to look at where we are right now with a great deal of optimism, as much as it is disquieting and disconcerting. And I say that because in some ways, we've never had so many people in our civic space ever.

And I think that part of that problem is we haven't yet learned how to be civil to one another in this place. I mean, I'll just sort of wrap up by saying, look, at some level, it was kind of easy for our framers, right? They were all Protestant. They were all white. They were all property owners. They were all men.

You know, it's kind of easy to get agreement when you are all very similar, even if they had a series of different ideas or if most of their differences were spawned because some were engaged in agriculture and others were engaged in banking and finance, you know, the agreement was easier, and I think more of what was discussed was transactional as opposed to sort of identity based or in one way or another.

What we see now, which are which is really tribal. So I think we have so much opportunity, but I think we also have a long way to go to learn how to treat each other well and to think about a civic space that is sort of above our community, but if you will, below, our natural rights.

Dr. David Gray Adler: Wow. It's, it's really nice and difficult to follow two such renowned scholars who have covered so many of the points I would have chosen to cover, and have done it far more competently than I might have. And so I think I'll just tear up my notes at this point and start a new line of discussion.

I have to say, I admire, so much of what, both of my colleagues have said, beginning with Caroline's, very important comments on the gradation of citizenship in this country, and moving through Lara's allusions to the social contract. By, citing natural rights. And speaking of the need to repair, the conditions in this country, they're so important, if we hope to achieve a better democracy.

And so I was deeply worried and wondered if we would get to this point. So when we think about this through line of democracy that I've mentioned that it's a great responsibility of, citizens from Athens to America to participate in politics. It means, first and foremost that people have to become informed, as the founders of our nation

agreed, in order to participate in a meaningful way, people would need to be informed so that they could, in fact, not only observe what government is doing through reading newspapers, which constituted, the, the primary and almost the exclusive means of ascertaining what government was up to through the development of policies, passage of programs and laws, but also that they would be able to, to express their views in a way that reflected some considered thought, some analysis, and maybe some insight.

So this puts a high pressure on American citizens and the very conditions, that surrounded the, not only the formation of our republic and the adoption of the Constitution. As Caroline mentioned, precluded the participation of so many in this grand experiment called democracy. So what to expect of citizens at the founding? Whatever else American citizens did, James Madison famously wrote in Federalist 51, that the great challenge that we faced then, and I would say it remains the challenge of our times, was how to persuade government to obey the Constitution and the laws.

And he famously recited, what we all know that we place a principle, reliance upon the separation of powers and checks and balances. But oh, by the way, the American people, the citizenry have a very important role to play in maintaining governmental accountability. And I think we have all understood this very important role that the citizenry plays to live up to Madison's expectation, as seen in the comments of so many, including, the the lesson or the statement by, Ben Franklin, recited at least a billion times now, that when he was asked by a woman, just what kind of a government have the framers given us?

And that's what helped to feed the great debates and the fears, frankly, as to what America might become in those early years when there were so many fears that America would indeed become a degenerate system and go the way of the ancient Roman Republic, all would be lost. We can fairly say that the framers did not have great confidence that the American republic, would persevere.

In fact, they they thought it probably was not. They were fairly pessimistic. At any rate, the founders were leaning on this great pillar, citizen participation. And and it runs all the way through into the 20th century, for example, when the famous Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis in Olmstead versus New York, set forth, I think, the most eloquent charge for American citizens at any juncture in our history.

And that is to say that the greatest menace to our freedom is an inert citizenry. And that's exactly what I think many Americans have come to fear at various points in our history. You could cite the 1950s and the the oppression of McCarthy ism. For many, it has run through the last four years. But it is, say, a streak of concern that should, frankly, always encompass our thoughts about democracy because it is fragile.

And that's why, to return to, a point so well made by Lara. When we think about the institutional role in our system, and we return to the social contract, we have to remember, that people need to defend their rights. They have to speak up. They have to, let people know that they're outraged, as Caroline said.

And this means that there is a great responsibility on the citizenry, number one, to hold government accountable, whatever it takes. We have to hold government accountable. And this can inspire, resort to a number of institutional mechanisms, perhaps most recently, the device of impeachment, which is still unfolding, before our very eyes. A number, number two, would be Americans have to appreciate the virtues and values of American constitutionalism has expressed and articulated in the Bill of rRghts.

All you have to do is to look at the First Amendment, to see how important citizen participation, was, to the founders, if they did not believe in freedom of speech, they would have not they would not have carved out the right to speak freely, to engage in dissenting speech. And it's important to bear in mind that the, the founders of our nation were probably the greatest dissenters in the history of the world.

After all, they dissented vigorously, against the English government. So they well knew the value of expression of ideas, and it wouldn't stop with free speech, after all, because the First Amendment enshrines freedom of the press, which you recall Thomas Jefferson and the others believed was even more important than freedom of speech. Why so? Because in order to be informed and thus, allowed and able to participate, the American citizens had to have access to information.

They provided ample protection. But the mere presence of those protections in the law of the land are not enough to ensure protection, because, in fact, at every turn, there would be a great interest among politicians eager to pursue their own agenda, to advance their own sometimes ruthless ambitions, to suppress speech, to suppress the press. And so it is incumbent upon American citizens, as they say, to defend the virtues and values of those institutions in our constitutional order that provide protection for us to participate in a meaningful way, through, through direct expression of ideas.

And third, just wrapping up quickly so that we can exchange some ideas. It's not enough, for Americans to, stand aside and watch others do the heavy lifting to maintain, our democratic institutions and values. It's not enough to stand on the sidelines and say, well, I applaud what so-and-so did, or worse yet, to essentially sit on their hands and hope that others will do the right thing.

I think the call of democracy is the call to the American citizenry to do the right thing. It is not merely an idea, it's an act, an act that requires vigilance. 24/7 and so as we move forward, if we do in fact find ourselves, breathing a sigh of relief, as the with the outcome of the election, and we hope that maybe we have turned a corner in facing down deliberate efforts to undermine democracy in the name of authoritarianism, we should not be so foolish as to think the challenges will not remain.

They are at every turn. And I would say, as I wrap up, that, in fact, having seen the grave challenges to American democracy in recent times, we should be keenly aware of efforts by others to embrace and imitate those challenges that help some to rise to great heights of power in this country. So we want to remember in the end that our democracy is fragile and that it would perish.

Surely perish if we don't tend to the business of repairing it and defending it at every opportunity. I'll stop there.

Doug Exton: Well, Thank you all.

And the most important aspect of a democratic system is a recognition that your opponents are legitimate actors, with which you both agree to the rules of play. And I think what is so troublesome to me about where we have been for the last two decades is that we have seen politicians consistently talking about how our system is rigged, how the system is broken, how the system is not working for the people, and therefore what needs wrecking is the system.

And, and this is where I think, we need to do a better job of both explaining how the system protects both majority and minority rights, how it actually works to balance these interests off one another and compete in a fashion that not everyone is happy with the outcome, but the outcome of the process is a democratic engagement.

Dr. David Gray Adler: You know, those are excellent insights. Let me just say one thing. And then, Caroline, probably will have some things as well to say. You know, I think it's very, very important to remember that from the standpoint of officeholders, politicians, that they must agree to play by the Democratic rules. And they have not in attempting to tear down the sideboards of democracy, to rip out the platforms and the pillars that uphold the democracy.

They have represented a clear and present danger to our democratic system. So that's important to remember. And there are rules. There are conditions, to which nations that aspire to be a democracy must comply. One, obviously, is the absence of violence. We have to agree, to abstain from violence. And that's just one reason why January 6th is so infamous and always will be remembered.

So is so for. And in addition to that, we can't resort to other means of violence when, when the insurrectionists entered the Capitol and we're asking, where's Nancy? Where's Pence? And so forth, perhaps with the aim of killing them, assassinating them. We have to remember, Americans have to be very clear on just what those threats of violence and death represent for democracy. Assassination short circuits participation in politics.

Not many are eager to participate, if in fact, they may face, the end of a gun. I'll defer to Caroline.

Right. Here's the interesting thing. I don't know people who are villains in their own stories. I just don't know those people. People do generally think they're doing the right thing. The problem is that given the criteria I articulated, there was a violation of perhaps the most basic principle, which is that they had to be informed they were acting upon a demonstrable, a demonstrable lie, the lie being that the election was stolen. 60 plus, lawsuits dismissed that, recounts.

I mean, this is this is an election unlike any that we've ever had, in the sense that it was more litigated. It was more, investigated and analyzed and than previous elections, because there were so many legal appeals, there were so many appeals for recounts at the state level. So we know that it is a demonstrable lie that the election was stolen.

But here's the kicker: three quarters of Republicans still believe that it was stolen. This really speaks to the power, the the profound power of online and social media sources where if I had I don't know how much it would cost me, estimate if I had $10 million, I could convince a sizable chunk of the American population of a lie.

So the fact that three and four Republicans who are, you know, they're a third of the country of the country is Republican, a third is Democrat, a third are independents. So this chunk, the third of the country, who are Republicans? Three and four of three out of four of them believe this lie really speaks to how how much our democracy is under threat.

Because if you can run a campaign and convince millions of Americans of a lie, and then they can, a small number of them can go and act upon that. In a way, I think that is is perhaps one of the darkest days for democracy. It's, it's, it's one of of a handful. But we will this will go down in the history books as being this profoundly, dark day, a threat to democracy.

And, David, as you point out, they're looking for public officials in order to harm them. Yeah. They these insurrectionists, to get back to the question, absolutely believe they're good citizens. But again, mass manipulated to a campaign of propaganda, it should really give us pause for concern about our institutions themselves. And in fact, some of the other questions are asking that as well.

So so that addresses that and the, those specific insurrection and democracy, it begs this larger question of where we are if if you have enough money or you have the podium of the white House, or you have enough cameras on you that you can convince millions of Americans of something that is factually not true. And I would say that applies to masking.

That applies to, you know, some anti-science as well that we've seen, emerge in the past four years. It's scary when we can't have common facts. We don't believe in science in the same ways. And that we can be so gullible or manipulated to believe something that that causes, incredible violence against our system of government.

That gets back to what you were saying, Doctor Brown, about, you know, that kind of attacking it from the inside, like believing that the system itself is broken.

Dr. Lara Brown: I mean, let me just say too, what is so striking to me about January 6th was that those individuals who are Americans came here and said that they wanted to attack and overthrow, you know, those who are in Congress. And there is just a sort of place where I stopped because it's like, what are they revolting against? These members of Congress they voted for. Many of the people in that building are, in fact, people who were supported by these people.

How it just becomes about, the guillotine and not, the ideas. And I think, there was great danger in what we saw, but there is more danger in the disinformation that was promoted and believed. And then, as you said, believed by these individuals to be true. I mean, there's there's a comment about, the courts not reviewing, the cases.

That's actually just not true. There were, there was a court in Pennsylvania and there was a court in Wisconsin that asked for evidence of fraud. And in both instances, the, the attorneys representing the president's campaign, president Trump's campaign declined to provide evidence because they did not have any. And so it is so important to realize that cases were not just dismissed out of hand, they were dismissed for failure to actually have a case.

Dr. David Gray Adler: You know, and just to pick up off that last point, Lara, the reason why the Trump attorneys did not introduce evidence, was not only because they didn't have it, but attorneys can be punished. They can be disciplined by the bar association if they lie. So so those attorneys did not want to put their names on documents asserting, fraud and a rigged election.

And yet to the point both of you are making, that didn't stop them from spreading disinformation outside the courtroom. And so I come back to a fundamental point urged by Caroline, that's very important to me. And that is that we here in America need to renew our enlightenment roots. Our founders were children of the enlightenment. And that means that if we're truly going to engage in a meaningful discussion along the lines anticipated by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Number One when he stated the grand experiment asking, is it possible for people to govern themselves through discussion and debate, or must we forever suffer the imposition of government upon us?

Reasoned discussion and debate clearly implies, elevation of the importance of facts, of truth, of evidence. And I think it's so critical as we go about the business of promoting civic education in this country. And we three are clearly dedicated to civic education in different ways, that there has to be, an absolute renewal of emphasis, to the idea of the importance, the governing of authority, of truth, evidence and facts, and no longer allow misinformation, disinformation to subvert that commitment, because that would undermine and perhaps destroy our democracy.

Dr. Lara Brown: But I also think, and this is where when I look at these issues, I am also, somewhat concerned, I would say, about the ever vigilant mindset of a citizen. So Thomas Jefferson implored us to be ever vigilant toward our government. And you know, Dave, as you said, right. We should hold our government accountable. But there is also a place where this vigilance turns to paranoia and cynicism.

And then there is an observation of the process as being flawed, when in fact, it's just because you don't like the outcome that you are receiving. So for instance, I, I often described this to people by saying, look, I'm somebody who's owned a car most of my life. I don't currently own one because I live in Washington DC and I walk, but I have owned a car.

But I guarantee you, if I installed a video cam into my mechanic's shop and I saw oil coming out of the bottom and I saw a bolt like landing on the ground, and then I saw it being hooked up to a computer, and I didn't know what the readout meant. I would probably be convinced that my mechanic was screwing me.

So forgive my my bluntness, but I think that that's the truth. I would be paranoid about what I was seeing because I didn't understand what the process was of an oil change. And I think to a certain extent, that's kind of where we are right now. We have actually a lot of transparency into our government, and then we have a lot of people who were talking about, you know, a sort of regular thing, like a committee hearing or a committee chair having the ability to control the agenda.

And they have somehow decided that it's because they're against somebody or they're doing something malicious, to malign a certain group of people. And I think we really have to get away from this idea that most of government is somehow extraordinary. In fact, most of government is somewhat procedural and relatively boring. And the idea that every day it's breaking news because somebody is rigging something is just, I think part of what's degrading our conversations.

Dr. Caroline Heldman: We have another question here regarding an independent press. Do any of the three of you believe America currently has an independent press that is not governed by a particular viewpoint, if so what would that outlet be? I get this question all the time. I only I, I only recommend four. And I know there are a lot out there that have great like medium and long form analysis.

NPR is my go to, they aggravate me all the time because they don't they don't add a moral coat to things. They just kind of say, what's happening. I'm like, but say that'st's a threat to democracy. Or say, you know, make a moral claim. They don't do it. So NPR, Politico, which is actually the most trusted source for political news, and then the Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal is great.

But I do think it has a bit of a liberal bias. I also like the Daily Beast. I'm sorry, a conservative bias. I like the Daily Beast. It has a liberal bias. I stay away, so I will go to that. But I stay away from recommending that. And just to the New York Times and the Washington Post, because they have the budget to go and find the original stories.

And as somebody who works in media, I can tell you that most of the punditry, most of the coverage is just echoing what other people have already found. And where do we go? We go to NPR. We go to Politico, we go to the the, New York Times, and we go to The Washington Post, because those are the sources that are producing, the original information, and they're doing it in such a way, by and large, it doesn't have much of a slant to it, but I'm sure that Doctors Adler and Brown have other ideas.

And, David, you want to go next.

Dr. David Gray Adler: You know, I well, I agree with you. Those are my go to sources and I recommend those to audiences everywhere. The reality is, back to, Lara's point. We have so many who don't understand, how the system works. And so they are very vulnerable to assertions of fraud and rigged elections. So we really need to emphasize to the American people the need that citizens must seek their information, from, professionally organized news, enterprises which subscribe to the journalistic canon of ethics.

That's what's critical. And then the second thing I would say, and then I'll defer, is that so often when I hear people, whether it's a member of Congress or otherwise, say, well, the media, the media's biased, they, they misread the facts all the time. If that's the case, I say to them, okay, I'm listening. What story are you talking about?

And they probably can't identify a particular story, but if they do, I say, okay, good. Okay. What's another one? Can you cite another one? And that is the idea here is to pin them down, make them speak analytically as opposed to just engaging in the drum tom, drum drum of media biases. Because if we just allow general assertions in our system to go unchallenged, then it weakens the quality of our discourse.

And if indeed they can point to specific stories on Trump or somebody, then that can create a really interesting discussion. But I don't ever let people slide. I want to know which stories they're talking about.

Dr. Lara Brown: So I would just add probably my favorite place to go is actually a, automated news aggregator called memeorandum. And the reason why I go there and it's m e m e o r a n d u m is that what it actually does is tell you what is being read the most in the political news world at that moment in time.

It updates minute by minute and it shows you sort of, it groups the stories.

By, the topic. So why I really love going to that aggregator is because what I can actually see at a very quick glance is how the Wall Street Journal is covering the same story that The Washington Post is covering, is covering the same story that The New York Times is covering. So I'm able to see what they're headline

slant is typically, if you get past the headline and maybe the the lead paragraph, you will actually find that the vast majority of news is identical. It is really just about sort of that

first way that they try to catch their audience. And then this goes to, I think the second thing, most people believe that there are really strong media biases because most people are only reading the opinion sections. The opinion sections of of the news are really what gets spread around the internet more than the sort of page A1 story. Very few people are in fact clicking on the A1 news story and they're instead clicking on what, you know, Tom Friedman said, or what Bill Kristol said, or what you know, prominent, pundits are saying.

So I think the big issue is to become informed, you have to I think, look at some of these aggregators, like Real Clear Politics, where they show you the sort of left and right angle on the same story. Take a look at memeorandum. You can see how the different news sites try to catch their readers

through their headlines, but then you've got to drill beyond the opinion pieces because those really are arguments. They are arguments for or against an idea. But they are not about the actual news.

Dr. Caroline Heldman: And I would add that Fox is propaganda, MSNBC is propaganda. So that we've talked a lot about print, we've talked about aggregators. There are definitely stations that are, cable outlets that are trying to get you to believe something by giving you the same type of information again and again. I don't actually think they're equal in looking at factual information.

There's a bit more science based, and fact based with MSNBC, but it's still trying to get you to to take in a certain type of perspective. I would argue the same thing applies to Sinclair and some other stations that have very specific, approaches. They're interesting to look at. As Lara pointed out, very interesting to look at left, right and center and how they're being framed.

So if you only had ten minutes a day, that's what I would do. We have a big question about capitalism and compatibility. Dean asks, is capitalism compatible with a Republican form of government? In particular, the financial incentives to consolidate media outlets in the name, in the name of profits and in the process creating a monopoly on the information that's available to the citizenry.

Dean does note Fox, Cumulus and Sinclair are examples of concern. Lara, would you like to take that question?

Dr. Lara Brown: Well, I mean, look, there is a reality that, one of the reasons why we're we're sort of in a place where we, I would say, have a lot of not good news. And we've lost so much local news is precisely because of the capitalist forces that have really decimated newsrooms across this country. I mean, it is stunning how often I will be reading online, you know, in The New York Times, in The Washington Post, and I will find typos right, in what are essentially papers of record.

And I say to myself, how can you have a typo? And it's because the editors are almost all gone because no one is buying papers anymore. I also think it's massively problematic that, we are mostly tuning in to national news. The reality is, the news that impacts you on a daily basis is news in your community. You should, you know, if you don't have sort of a local news source, my gosh, come together, create a nonprofit and get people to start covering your city council and your state legislature.

Start knowing what is happening in your community, because I guarantee you that's even more important than what's happening in Washington to your life and your well-being. So I do think you're right that capitalism is hugely problematic in this current media environment where the internet allows everything to sort of happen for free. But real newsgathering is not free.

It is very, very expensive. But on a larger scale, I think there are positives to capitalism. Capitalism is a system based on competition and markets. And the truth is democracy is, to a large degree, also a system based on competition and markets. And it should be about the market of ideas and the competition between ideas. Unfortunately, because we have this problem in our media market, we also have this problem in our democratic market because people aren't being informed.

Dr. David Gray Adler: How are we doing, Doug, on time? Doing good. It is a little bit past seven, but if all three of you are willing to go a little bit further. I don't see any issue with staying on a little bit longer. Great. Yeah. So let me just say quickly, while there, while democracy and capitalism have some compatibilities there's also an essential conflict between the two, because capitalism attempts to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few, which we've seen occurring in America, while democracy has as its great aim, as Aristotle said, the distribution of political power as widely as possible.

are a candidate for high office, it also creates a problem for accountability. Because if you are, let's say, running for the US Senate, you could take position A on an issue in North Idaho and position B in southeastern Idaho. And nobody may know the difference. Which gives you an opportunity to clearly fool the electorate. We don't. So that's a that's a problem here that reflects the economic crisis that, has consumed us as well.

Dr. Caroline Heldman: I would just add to that that I wrote a book a few years ago called Protest Politics in the Marketplace. And one of the, the primary themes is this incompatibility between unfettered capitalism and democracy. And I don't dislike capitalism, right. Capitalism just gave us a vaccine in ten months. Right. Capitalism is also probably part of the reason why our distribution plans have, have not worked the way that they should have.

So I see it as, you know, this double edged sword. With that said, as David pointed out, unfettered, it does, it does two things. It concentrates wealth in the power of a small number of people. It also, allows for the small number of people, to that, that small group, in addition to generally represent corporate interests in government.

Right. So we get corporate capture of government because of unfettered capitalism. And so, corporations set up rules that benefit them. Powerful people set up rules that benefit them. If you look at the like John Gaventa, who's written this brilliant book about power, right, in 1978. He, he argues that the way in which you get maintain power is, you get a seat at the table and then you set up the rules to benefit you, and then you, use media and other mechanisms to convince the everyday people that their interests or your interests that they're aligned.

And then, you convince folks that, well, you could be a billionaire or a millionaire someday, too. So the tax code that just benefited me and shifted all of this public wealth, let me say that again, public wealth into private hands. Tax, these tax breaks for the wealthy shift public money, public wealth into the hands of a small number, private, smaller number of private individuals.

Right. You convince folks that that's within their best interests when it's not. So, yeah, I think we really need to look at, at capitalism, being one of the primary drivers as to why wealthy elites are using mass misinformation campaigns in order to turn the gentry against itself when it should be unified. It's something that we have seen since the founding of our nation.

So Amelia asks, what are your views on the impact of the concept of relative truth on democracy?

David?

Dr. David Gray Adler: Relative truth. What an interesting concept. So we want to we do certainly want to distinguish between, what became commonplace in the Trump administration and Trump years of stating quote unquote alternative facts. That was a way, to undermine truth, and evidence. And so we don't want to allow that approach, to, convulse our democratic discourse, because that means that, if you are free to establish alternative facts, then there really are no facts, and therefore everything goes.

If everything goes, if everything is permissible, is every, if everything is up to be contested, then it's a free for all. And there are no rules, no limitations, no regulations. This was the studied approach, to undermining democracy. So relative truth, I would say, has a tendency to lean into alternate facts. And so instead, what we have to do, even though we're not going to pretend that there are quote unquote objective facts, what we really seek in a democracy through the process of argumentation and discourse is to, stake out a position and to bring all the evidence to bear to support your position.

And that's when we have the discussion and debate, that would be worthy of a democracy and lead us back to the classical, position on free speech, from, from John Milton through John Stuart Mill, forward. That through discussion and debate, we hope that the best idea emerges. So, we can have a common table, common round table of understood, convention on what constitutes evidence and facts.

I think that is, very achievable goal, in a reliable way. But we cannot permit, folks like QAnon, to so terribly distort and demean our process. They contribute nothing of value to our discussion and debate.

Dr. Caroline Heldman: Maybe one last question.

Dr. Lara Brown: Can I just add one quick thing to that? I mean, I do think what is interesting, right, is that even when we understand, in a court case, right, eyewitnesses, are considered very important, right, to any sort of court case moving forward. What what was the eyewitness account? The problem is, we also know that eyewitnesses are almost always pretty bad at in, getting at an objective truth.

Because what we see is seen through each of our own very biased eyes. So it is, this is where truth becomes difficult. We have to allow essentially multiple eyewitness accounts to the, the same incident or the same fact so that we can actually kind of circle it and, and approach what is the truth. Right. It's kind of the best knowable truth you can get to.

But I think we, we do as you know, David said, we have to make sure that, sort of you're all talking about the same event. Because when you're not talking about the same event, there is no knowable truth there. You know, you're talking about the moon and somebody else is talking about Jupiter.

And then maybe we can all address the last question, which is, what are some ways we can participate in the polity to hold government accountable to act?

Dr. Lara Brown: So I would just say that if it were up to me, I would ask every American to read the Federalist Papers. And I know that that sounds like a really big, heavy lift. And it is. Right. There's 85 essays. It's not a small book, but at the same time, each one of those essays, was an op ed.

I mean, that's the way to think about them. They were essentially 1500 to 2000 word op eds written by, three of our framers of our Constitution. And what is so great about those, from my perspective, is that they tell us how our system, our system is meant to work. Not always that it will, but how they hoped it would.

You know, for instance, it is it is amazing to me at some level, how many Americans fail to realize that our system is not just about majority rule. In fact, we have a lot of ways in which our national government system is is basically created to ensure minority rights. And by minority, I mean a small number.

I don't mean, you know, a group of people. I mean a small number of people, who constitute a minority, how it protects minority rights. That's what the US Senate is all about. And then we also have a way in which our ten years of office also are lagged in our government. So the rotation in our government actually has a built in delay factor to it.

And what that means is that change is never going to happen overnight. So I always think to me, that part about, of being a good citizen means recognizing what our, our system can and cannot do, tempering your expectations and realizing that when you commit to this country and the political process, you are in fact committing to the long game.

You are committing to the rules and the process, not a person or a party. And that means that it's about a lifetime of sort of, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you don't like the compromise. It doesn't mean that the system is bad. It just means you have to keep plugging away to try to advocate for why your beliefs are the right ones.

And you have to remember that everybody else who is plugging away advocating their ideas are also believing that they are in the right. So, I mean, I just see it as like, democracy's a long game. It's not one election. It's not one candidate, it's not one president. It's a lifetime of commitment to a process of, a never ending debate.

Dr. David Gray Adler: Caroline, what do you think.

Dr. Caroline Heldman: I would jump in and say that, I think, that that folks should stop or do as much as they can to stop consuming, terrible information. Whether it's, you know, just muting everyone is posting anything political on Facebook, which is not a good source of information. I am highly concerned about the completely different media ecosystems that we have where people have different experiences of reality because of their different media.

So go to the, you know, go to the NPR Up First podcast or go to the the four primary sources that I think we all agreed on. But I also think beyond that, reaching out to folks who are deep in the mire of QAnon or deep in the mire of believing the big lie about the election. And that's what I'm going to call it from here on out.

It's it wasn't my original term, the big lie, something that gets repeated again and again and again. That just isn't true. Reaching out to those folks, I know that a lot of those ties have been cut in the past four years, so, reaching out and trying to, not from a place of condescension, but trying to pull people back to reality, for lack of a better term.

But I think on a broader scale, the framers, and we could talk about that, we could debate this, all night. But the framers did not anticipate the damage that could be done from such a misinformed and agitated citizenry. And so I do think we need to, regulate social media companies in the same way that we regulate public utilities because they contribute so much to the public good.

It's actually not that hard to fact check. It's it's something that they don't want to do because it would cut into their profit. Again, capitalism infringing upon and threatening democracy. But I think we need very serious reforms and limitations, on what social media companies are doing because, they are now tools, anti-democratic tools for certain folks to get power at the expense of our democracy.

Dr. Lara Brown: Can I just say that I think we wouldn't have to regulate what people say on these platforms if we required more transparency about who was saying it. I actually think the way to get around some of the misinformation and disinformation and the grifting that is just happening, I mean, there's just a lot of scamming people, for personal profit is to, in fact, require people to not be anonymous.

So in other words, everybody had to be verified. And then you could very quickly ensure that people would be, to a certain degree, more responsible. And those who weren't would be more obviously, able to be kind of shamed or put, in prison for trying to scam or make money or defraud people.

It does. Right now. We get to get back to the policy debates, which is such an invigorating part of being an American citizen.

Dr. David Gray Adler: I like, I like everything you guys have said. I want to finish it quickly by saying, and what I would advise citizens to do is to remember our enlightenment foundations that in fact, truth, science. Excuse me, truth science, facts and evidence matter to a democracy. In fact, our democracy is so vulnerable to demagoguery if we don't emphasize those points.

Number two, I want citizens to think seriously and deeply about our democratic norms, about the virtues and values of American constitutionalism that have given them in many ways, the opportunities, to, to achieve, success in our society, that without democracy they would not have achieved that success. So don't be so quick, to embrace, doctrines and positions that would undermine democracy.

And number three, I returned finally to that point about governmental accountability. We have to hold our officials accountable. And this is not exclusive of the responsibility of people in government to hold themselves and others accountable. This means Congress, for example, needs to conduct an investigation into the big lies distributed, for example, by Ted Cruz and Josh and Josh Hawley that no doubt contributed, to the fuel, that was feeding the insurrectionists.

And there has to be a price to be paid if you deliberately mislead America. Governmental accountability is the starting point, for renewing, some democratic, strengths here in the near future. This was fun. This was so much fun.

Dr. Lara Brown: Absolutely. I mean, I don't I do think the biggest thing that we're all saying is stop paying attention to the showman and start paying attention to the workhorses, right? Too many show horses in our in our politics and that is part and parcel of what has been our conversation, for too long.

Dr. David Gray Adler: I think that's right. And instead of instead of engaging in what we would call common sense, how about some uncommon sense? Don't buy the products, from snake oil salesmen, but just say no, not interested.