thank you for joining us live at a town hall in new york city for this very, very special addition of why is this happening. he is incisive, he is big hearted, he is very, very, very smart, and admit it, he s taller than you expected. please give a warm welcome to my friend, my beloved colleague, msnbc s chris hayes. [applause] well, thank you! hey! oh, stop! stop it! [applause] how are you? good! making. thank you, thank you, thank you. thank you, sit down, sit down. thank you. that s extremely kind. i hate attention and positive feedback. [laughter] that was a really, really hard to 20 seconds for me. so thank you for cutting it short. it s amazing to be here in my hometown of new york city. i ve got some family here. so, tonight, we re gonna talk about democracy. and that we re in, we ve probably talked more about democracy in the last, you know, for five years than i had in all of my time as a journalist before that, i would say. like, even that is a topic seems a littl
probably talked more about democracy in the last, you know, for five years than i had in all of my time as a journalist before that, i would say. like, even that is a topic seems a little weird. we all know america is a democracy, and there s a certain type of history that you re taught that i think is part of americans civic culture, deeply. almost kind of civic religion. which roughly goes the following. the founders rebelled against the tyranny of the crown. and the injustice of monarchy. and they conceived in liberty a new nation founded on a government by, of, and for the people. that s the lincoln gettysburg address version of it. and they rejected, basically, the idea that there is some authority above all of us that has dominion over us. that each of us are imbued with the ability to determine our own faith collectively as a we.