We the People Are Failing Our Government

 

Airplanes fly because the people who design them understand physics. They know how pressure changes as air flows over a curved surface. They understand lift and drag, and how force and mass relate to each other to determine acceleration. They’re experts in the science of materials, in finite element analysis, in instrumentation and control systems and combustion and ten thousand other arcane details of science and design and manufacture.

None of this means that they get it right every time, as Boeing’s recent travails remind us. But they get it right often enough to make air travel the safest means of transportation.

Imagine for a moment that all those aeronautical designers and engineers were hired by people who knew nothing about aeronautics, and who were neither competent to evaluate the resumes of their potential hires nor to evaluate the work done by them once they were hired; and, worse, that the candidates for the positions knew that their interviewers were clueless. How would that affect the quality of the men and women employed? How would it affect the viability of air travel once a generation or two of wholly unvetted “engineers” had been allowed to fiddle with the existing designs?

Our founders gave us a government. It is a complicated yet elegant machine composed of interlocking parts intended to work simultaneously in concert with and opposition to each other. It was created by men who were experts in the theory and practice of government, men who had diagnosed the failures of numerous prototypes and, based on those diagnoses, designed a new form of government, a constitutional democratic representative union of independent states: a republic with formal restraints on both the reach of the government and the whims of the people.

We the people are tasked with hiring the men and women who staff the critical positions in that government. If we know little of how our government was intended to function, we have no sound basis for evaluating the people we vote into office nor the policies they propose. Today there is ample evidence that we are a nation of civic ignoramuses. How many understand what the much-maligned electoral college is, how we got it and why it’s important? How many understand the damage done by the 17th Amendment to the carefully balanced tension between the House and Senate? How many are equipped to see the sheer lunacy of the Green New Deal’s call for a broad usurpation of our rights as citizens? How many understand even the idea of a constitutionally limited central government that is not merely prevented from performing certain tasks, but rather that is constitutionally authorized to perform only a small number of specific tasks?

We are failing to provide a competent civics education to our children, and have been for generations. We have a population ignorant of the most basic aspects of government but which we nonetheless exhort to vote, as if merely standing in the booth were the totality of civic duty. A large proportion of the electorate has the legal right to vote but lacks the moral standing to do so because it knows nothing about the thing for which it has a sacred duty of stewardship.

We can not blame the children for the failures of their teachers, who themselves know next to nothing about the nature of our government. I don’t know what it will take to trigger a rebirth of pride and interest in our nation’s history and in the framework on which it was built and the ideas behind it. But if we reach the point where we’re analyzing the wreckage following the crash, it will be too late.

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  1. Freeven Member
    Freeven
    @Freeven

    Jim George (View Comment):

    Henry, your posts are always among those to which I look forward as I always learn greatly from them and also from the comments your posts prompt; this one was certainly no exception and I thank you for it. As I read some of the comments, with the emphasis of some of them on the moral component of our obvious societal collapse, I kept trying to remember the John Adams quote about the Constitution being designed only for a moral people–the old fashioned way, as we not long ago had to just remember things without the aid of search engines — but finally had to “give in” and ask Google for help (maybe I have just inadvertently stumbled on one of the problems in our current educational morass!) so here it is:

    “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. “

    As something of an agnostic, I’ve always been struck that Adams identified both morality and religion as central to the survival of the United States. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on the nature and importance of humility in promoting virtue. My working theory is that all virtue stems from genuine humility. One benefit of religion is that posits something greater than man to which we are accountable — so it starts with humility, then builds on that.

    • #61
  2. Freeven Member
    Freeven
    @Freeven

    Jim George (View Comment):

    Henry, your posts are always among those to which I look forward as I always learn greatly from them and also from the comments your posts prompt; this one was certainly no exception and I thank you for it. As I read some of the comments, with the emphasis of some of them on the moral component of our obvious societal collapse, I kept trying to remember the John Adams quote about the Constitution being designed only for a moral people–the old fashioned way, as we not long ago had to just remember things without the aid of search engines — but finally had to “give in” and ask Google for help (maybe I have just inadvertently stumbled on one of the problems in our current educational morass!) so here it is:

    “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. “

    Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between stoopid and “educated.”

    • #62
  3. Freeven Member
    Freeven
    @Freeven

    Henry Racette (View Comment):
    I don’t know why we lost our civil traditions, and our participation in and understanding of our own government. I’m not convinced that it’s because we lost our faith. But it seems the proximate cause of our poor choices of representatives and policies is our lack of civic knowledge, not our lack of faith.

    I don’t know if that’s true, but if so, it’s an interesting observation. My impression is that our loss of civic knowledge and our loss of faith went hand in hand, along with a loss of civility and some other things. It’s as if, somewhere around World War 2, we lot lazy about transmitting our values to the next generation and things snowballed from there. The war was won, life was good. Perhaps there was a sense in the air that this was the new norm, that we didn’t have to try so hard to maintain it.

    “Loss of faith” doesn’t just mean becoming increasingly agnostic or atheistic. It can simply be taking your faith (and other values) for granted, and increasingly allowing those without faith to set the agenda. Put the wrong people in a few key positions (in government, schools, churches, etc.), and combine it with a general sense of well-being and complacency, and it doesn’t take long for things to unravel.

    Sowell said that every generation born is like an invasion of barbarians, and that it’s a race to see if we can civilize them before it’s too late. That’s a sharp truth, and we seem to have gotten hold of the pointy end of it.

    • #63
  4. Slow on the uptake Coolidge
    Slow on the uptake
    @Chuckles

    Freeven (View Comment):
    Put the wrong people in a few key positions (in government, schools, churches, etc.),

    This is a truth spoken millenia ago by the Apostle John, and one recognized long before that.

    and combine it with a general sense of well-being and complacency, and it doesn’t take long for things to unravel.

    In fact, you get the wrong persons in there and they may PROMOTE a general sense of well-being and complacency.  Or the opposite.  Fire and Ice, we have historical examples of both.

    • #64
  5. Mark Camp Member
    Mark Camp
    @MarkCamp

    Slow on the uptake (View Comment):
    This is a truth spoken millenia ago by the Apostle John, and one recognized long before that.

    Slow on the uptake,

    Which verse?
    Cheers,

    Mark

     

    • #65
  6. Slow on the uptake Coolidge
    Slow on the uptake
    @Chuckles

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Slow on the uptake (View Comment):
    This is a truth spoken millenia ago by the Apostle John, and one recognized long before that.

    Slow on the uptake,

    Which verse?
    Cheers,

    Mark

    Try the Apocalypse.  Or Ezekiel.  Or Jeremiah.  Also, one example of promoting Fire is 1 Kings 22:11, 12

    • #66
  7. Tex929rr Coolidge
    Tex929rr
    @Tex929rr

    More proof from yesterday!

    https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/aoc-billionaires-ta-nehisi-coates-interview

    “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said that “no one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars” during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day discussion with author Ta-Nehisi Coates on Monday.

    Ocasio-Cortez said billionaires make their money “off the backs” of “undocumented people,” “black and brown people being paid under a living wage” and “single mothers.””

     

    • #67
  8. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Tex929rr (View Comment):
    “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said that “no one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars” during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day discussion with author Ta-Nehisi Coates on Monday.

    Interesting. I wonder how governments get their money.   

    • #68
  9. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Freeven (View Comment):

    My impression is that our loss of civic knowledge and our loss of faith went hand in hand, along with a loss of civility and some other things. It’s as if, somewhere around World War 2, we lot lazy about transmitting our values to the next generation and things snowballed from there. The war was won, life was good. Perhaps there was a sense in the air that this was the new norm, that we didn’t have to try so hard to maintain it.

    “Loss of faith” doesn’t just mean becoming increasingly agnostic or atheistic. It can simply be taking your faith (and other values) for granted, and increasingly allowing those without faith to set the agenda. Put the wrong people in a few key positions (in government, schools, churches, etc.), and combine it with a general sense of well-being and complacency, and it doesn’t take long for things to unravel.

    We can know, if we look, that the Communists, the extreme wing of the Leftist Progressives, worked really diligently and openly in America during the two decades between the world wars. We were active in opposition to that threat and dealt harshly with it until sometime around the sixties. As @freeven has noted that is when the strength of our values began to fail. Our country became prosperous so that time formerly spent in family and close community endeavors now went asunder so that the things taught in earlier times were lost or taken for granted. The Communists have been there to fill the void in a much more subdued mode than previously. President Trump has given us an opportunity to take stock and see if we can salvage the Republic. It is a bleak picture.

    • #69
  10. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Tex929rr (View Comment):
    “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said that “no one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars” during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day discussion with author Ta-Nehisi Coates on Monday.

    Interesting. I wonder how governments get their money.

    If you listen to Democrat candidates they will tell you how much they are going to raise taxes or sometimes they won’t tell you but you know it’s coming when they describe what they plan to do.

    • #70
  11. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Tex929rr (View Comment):
    “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said that “no one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars” during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day discussion with author Ta-Nehisi Coates on Monday.

    Interesting. I wonder how governments get their money.

    If you listen to Democrat candidates they will tell you how much they are going to raise taxes or sometimes they won’t tell you but you know it’s coming when they describe what they plan to do.

    In other words, they take it?   

    • #71
  12. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Tex929rr (View Comment):
    “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said that “no one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars” during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day discussion with author Ta-Nehisi Coates on Monday.

    Interesting. I wonder how governments get their money.

    If you listen to Democrat candidates they will tell you how much they are going to raise taxes or sometimes they won’t tell you but you know it’s coming when they describe what they plan to do.

    In other words, they take it?

    oh, yes!

    • #72
  13. Jim Beck Inactive
    Jim Beck
    @JimBeck

    Afternoon Freeven and Bob,

    Freeven you have suggested that post war there were societal changes, perhaps loss of faith, loss of civic virtue, getting lazy about teaching our culture.  I think you are generally correct.  At 72, my question has always been why was my parents generation characterized by over achievement and my (boomer generation [a horrible generation]) characterized by under-achievement.  I do not think the post WWII generation got lazy, US church attendance was at its highest, and many adults joined the Great Books societies to increase their knowledge as adults who had survived the depression and the war, not exactly lazy.  Also adults were much more likely to belong to Rotary, Elks, Mason, Eastern Star, and dozens of other social and charitable groups. These adults were participants in civic life, not like their children became (me).  

    Bob said “our country became prosperous so that time formerly spent in family and close community endeavors now went asunder so that the things taught in earlier times were lost or taken for granted.” This is also true.

    I think there is something about prosperity or guaranteed security that is destructive of the obligations which hold us together.  During the WWII all the children, the boys serving in the forces, and the ones who had married and moved away sent money back to their parents in my mom’s family.  With prosperity we don’t need each other, and with a generous safety net we don’t even need to be married, the govt will supply our needs.  We can be untethered from family responsibilities.  Also post WWII raised children were the first to have television all their lives.  I think the television was another rival input to cultural values, mostly pushing more liberal values, for those of you old enough “Queen for a Day” reality TV.   Also the television created as new category, teenagers, who had enough wealth to support their own music, TV shows, and create a cultural force, ie, the anti-war movement.  Television also gave teenagers the tools to silence their parents and strip them of moral authority.  Television showed us the racial world of Jim Crow, and the protests for elemental rights, like to go the the same schools.  Television also showed us the “War”, Nam.  Television did its best to discredit our efforts, our country, our soldiers, and as teens who were draft eligible, the boomers used it against their parents and govt.  So we have a world where the youth are throwing race, and militarism back in the face of their parents and while we are at it let’s rubbish other traditional values, we trashed modesty, chastity, “why don’t we do it in the road”, and maturity, “hope I die before I get old”.  One motto was “never trust anyone over thirty”.  Well at 72, I haven’t been trustworthy for 42 years, yikes.

    • #73
  14. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Petty Boozswha (View Comment):
    We have consistently debauched the educational system in this country since the 1960’s on the altar of student’s self esteem, and will be playing the price for many decades to come.

    That, not this:

    Henry Racette: We are failing to provide a competent civics education to our children, and have been for generations. We have a population ignorant of the most basic aspects of government

    The failure was to allow people hostile to the Constitution to take over the education system. 

    The watershed event may have been the hiring of the Communists and neo-Marxists of the Frankfurt school by Columbia University in the 1930s; this led to the corruption of the social sciences and of the education establishment.

    That said, there was already a significant Communist presence among urban teachers, particularly in NYC where there was a powerful Communist faction in the teachers’ union.

    Diana West’s The Red Thread and American Betrayal have useful details, as do various of David Horowitz’ books.

    • #74
  15. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Henry Racette (View Comment):
    I think the quality of primary education has declined.

    No, the quality of primary and secondary education was wrecked by an activist minority as described by Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

     First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

    Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

    The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

    Henry Racette (View Comment): I also think more people are voting who should not be voting because they are disinterested and ignorant.

    Whether this is worse than Tammany Hall’s machine voting and its equivalents in other cities and the present day might be an interesting discussion. 

    • #75
  16. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):
    I think the quality of primary education has declined.

    No, the quality of primary and secondary education was wrecked by an activist minority as described by Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

    One. In some ways my kids learned more stuff in elementary school than I did. In others they missed out on a lot of what I learned.

    Two. The “activist minority” was part of the progressive project starting about a century ago, which took control of schools away from parents and local communities. To have any idea of changing that, it’s helpful to understand the debates pro and con that were taking place back when it was happening. And then we might find out that we ourselves are a good part of the problem.  Those debates didn’t hit rural Nebraska, one of the last holdouts, until the late 50s and early 60s; my parents were partisans on one side of the issues.  

    • #76
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