A Better Understanding of Civics Would Be Quite a Boon to America
Almost every adult American has an opinion as to what educational class, formerly taught in public schools and discontinued due to lack of funds or interest, should be brought back and reinstated in an attempt to address some glaring defect of American culture.
As suggested here, a case can be made for “home economics”; there is no doubt that our kids leave high school with a grossly inadequate understanding of investments, checking accounts and credit cards, garbage disposals, nutrition, and dozens of other life essentials.
Certainly, most of us wish music were still a part of our kids’ educations.
If I were going to make the choice, and I could only pick one, I’d made it civics. Maybe we are at this dismal point in U.S. history precisely because we have such a poor grasp on the working of the federal government, that most people have no idea what the president can and cannot do. For example, can the president:
• Order the Justice Department to end an investigation into his alleged criminal behavior?
• Base his thinking on Russian meddling in our elections on the assertions of an avowed enemy of the United States, when those assertions are directly and completely contradicted by all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies?
• Ban people of a certain religion from entering the United States?
• Authorize the breaking of international and domestic laws regarding the handling of asylum seekers at the southern border?
• Order the sell-off of all federal lands to private corporations (mainly oil companies)?
• Profit from his office?
• Offer to pardon those who commit crimes in doing his bidding?
• Encourage physical violence?
• Use his power to persecute political opponents, e.g., Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?
• Attack the free press?
• Falsely assert that the U.S. voting system is rigged, causing voters to believe that their votes don’t matter?
• Use the National Emergencies Act to build a wall on the southern border?
• Attack judges who make rulings blocking his orders?
• Sell arms to countries that are committing war crimes?
• Compel electric-grid operators to purchase power from coal plants?
• Order CEOs of American companies to disconnect from China?
• Railroad an environmental policy that does enormous damage to our oceans and skies?
It might appear that the answer to all these questions is No, though, in truth, most of these are grey areas in which the current president has gotten almost everything he’s asked for. Would this be the case if the common American were well versed in precisely where the executive branch stops and the legislative branch picks up? Hardly.
