Department of Special Collections

The Center for the Study of Democratic
Institutions Audio Archive


Program 122: Res Publica (The Public Thing)

Scott Buchanan suggests that Americans are not yet fulfilling the role of public citizens that the Constitution envisioned for them due to a misreading of the First Amendment. Rather than seeing it as merely proscribing the areas in which government may not infringe upon the rights of the citizen, he argues that it should be read as prescribing what the government must do to encourage citizens to exercise the freedoms guaranteed under the Amendment. July 1964. [CSDI program number 122; UCSB tape numbers A7680/R7, A7681/R7]

icon Listen to part 1: (21:57)
icon Listen to part 2: (21:40)
icon Download: Res Publica (The Public Thing), Part 1 (8.8 MB)
icon Download: Res Publica (The Public Thing), Part 2 (8.7 MB)


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CSDI Audio Archive Information

The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI) was founded by Robert Maynard Hutchins and was based in Santa Barbara, California, from 1959 to 1987. During that time it brought together many of the most capable and distinguished minds of the times to discuss vital issues facing American society of the day. Thanks to donors Neal Linson, Ceil Pulitzer, and Stanley Sheinbaum, a project has begun to digitize and make accessible on the web some of the most important conference proceedings, talks, and dialogues recorded by CSDI.

CSDI Audio Archive Homepage

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