“ACK-shu-ally, we’re not fifty states. We’re one country“.
Show of hands if you’ve heard at least one progressive, lodged far on the left side of civic education’s Dunning-Kruger curve, say something like that.
Among the many failures – or acts of sabotage – of modern American education, perhaps among the biggest, most dangerous shortcomings is the complete collapse of civics education.
Modern students seem to learn nothing aboujt:
- Why the Constitution existed – to provide a framework for self-government
- What the Constitution does – limit the powers of government, and enumerate the checks and balances on power
- Why our nation is called the “United States” – and why the constituent parts are called “states” rather than “Provinces”, “Counties”, “Ridings” or “Administrative Districts”. They are, or were intended to be, individual nation-ettes
- What Federalism is – in the US’s case (like post-war Germany), a balance of powers and rights between the federal and state governments.
- Gridlock was built into the system, because gridlock is a virtue. The government that governs least, governs best – and gridlock ensures minimal government. (This particularly galls “progressives”).
- And perhaps most importantly? The Constitution, its enumeration of powers, and Federalism itself, was designed to help a nation that was from it’s founding not a whole lot more divided or less fractious than it is today, coexist.
With that in mind? Perhaps the Dobbs decision, and the court’s new-found originalism, are a big step in the right direction for a nation more divided in many ways than before the Civil War.
Because the alternative to a renewed federalism is a national divorce at best, and civil war at worst.
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