Just finished reading the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It’s a little weird that this isn’t required in high school civics. My class only read brief descriptions of each, not the original text.
Just finished reading the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It’s a little weird that this isn’t required in high school civics. My class only read brief descriptions of each, not the original text.
@mdrockwell It is required in South Carolina. In fact, it's one of four courses with state mandated end-of-course standardized exams.
@mdrockwell Then people who say they're defending the constitution would have to know what they meant. :-)
@JMaxB it appears you have a certain set of people in mind. I'm curious, who are you alluding to?
@mdrockwell Where would I begin? In conversations I sometimes get the impression that the constitution might as well just be the first or second amendment, or even a subset of those.
@JMaxB @mdrockwell I once had a heated argument with a local newspaper editor who insisted that our (national) Constitution was created to protect individual rights. I pointed out that it was created to establish a form of national government, and that individual rights were an afterthought. He did not relent.
I've had other similar arguments, the more memorable ones being those with interlocutors who did not, and seemingly could not, recognize that the states are legally sovereigns, that they formed the national government, through the Constitution, for limited purposes and with limited powers, and that, originally, they were allowed to do things the national government could not, like establishing religions (as Massachusetts did into the 1830s).
@ReaderJohn @mdrockwell Interesting about MA establishment of religion. I dimly remember a story of someone who tried to set up an Orthodox church in some eastern city (NY? Boston?) but was told by the Man that Orthodoxy was just a form of Papism, which wasn't allowed there.
If they'd asked me (which for some reason they didn't) when writing the constitution, i'd have advocated for a parliamentary republic with no executive branch. The "two-party system" seems somehow to follow inevitably from the constitution, and I think that's a very bad outcome. I don't know about my other views, but I do think that the executive branch has done nothing but harm. So there are my marginal constitutional opinions.
@JMaxB Hold those thoughts. It doesn’t seem unlikely that, rather than splitting the county into Coastovia and Flyoverstan, we might prefer another Constitutional Convention.
@JMaxB could you elaborate on the two party issue? While I agree we need more, viable parties, what specifically in the constitution do you believe lead is to a primarily two party system?
@JMaxB I think a parliamentary system is inherently flawed because it doesn't sufficiently distribute power.
@ReaderJohn "Most notably, all three Constitutions seek significant limits on executive power." Vindicated! Interesting article. None of these reforms are gonna happen though.
@mdrockwell seems strange you didn’t have to read it... we did both in middle school and in high school, pretty in depth. I wish we had read all, instead of just some of the Federalist papers. It would have dispelled a lot of myths.
@mcg It was added at least as far back as 2012. There's been a US History EOC for a while, but the Constitution was specifically added to the course and exam. I seem to remember the discussion when it happened but by this point in life, yesterday might as well have been 25 years ago.