What Explains Today’s Political Craziness?
Extreme socialist proposals are on the rise, and a shocking number of Americans — particularly among the young and “educated” — are taking them seriously. Where have these ideas come from?
Abolish the Senate. Abolish the Electoral College. Make the Supreme Court and President subservient to the House of Representatives. Open the borders and give all entrants the right to vote. Eliminate or shackle law enforcement.
These proposals have a common goal — to facilitate enactment of the socialists’ agenda.
The proponents claim the U.S. Senate is “undemocratic” because it gives two votes to each state, regardless of population, which restrains the power of big-city voters. In addition, the six-year terms of senators, and the internal procedures of the Senate, create barriers to fast-tracking legislation that might be supported by a narrow majority. The Electoral College is deemed undemocratic for similar reasons. The President is an undemocratic force in that he or she can veto measures adopted by the legislature, and the Supreme Court is undemocratic in that it can strike down legislation favored by a majority of the people.
These proposals have not suddenly sprung up from nowhere. They have incubated for a long time, including in our schools. The Fairfax County Public School System (FCPS) is illustrative. Its policies and its social studies curricula can easily lead our youth to conclude that our Constitution is seriously flawed.
The leftists are right in one sense. The Constitution does not establish a purely democratic system of government. The Founders quite deliberately rejected such a system, for good reasons. Political thinkers have recognized for more than two millennia that unfettered democracy can lead to rash measures and tyranny of the majority, trampling individual rights and liberties (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Montesquieu, James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, to name a few). Historical experience has confirmed, again and again, that the “people’s will,” if unrestricted, can lead to mob rule, chaos and dictatorship. The aftermaths of the French and Russian Revolutions are cases in point. As constitutional scholar Jonathon Turley states in his recent book Rage and the Republic, “the greatest threat to a democratic system in history has been the rise of majoritarian tyranny, the despotism of the many over the few.”
To avoid this, our Founding Fathers opted for a constitutional republic — a system where the people select their leaders but where the leaders are constrained by a written constitution. In the U.S. Constitution, federal powers are limited and enumerated; other authority is left to the States. In addition, federal authority is divided among three co-equal branches, each having checks and balances on the others. Also, the Constitution requires legislation to be approved by two separate bodies (a Senate and House of Representatives), which are elected by somewhat different constituencies for different terms of office. And, when the legislature does enact a law, it is subject to an executive veto and judicial review. A further check is the Bill of Rights, which protects individual liberties against overreaching conduct by the legislature and the executive. All of this was intentionally adopted to thwart the goals of those who might seek to enact radical, ill-considered, unfair legislation.
In my high school Civics course in the 1960s, I learned that our Founders were wise and far-sighted in adopting this framework. I suspect that almost all readers of this article received similar educations about our constitutional system.
How about today? Unfortunately, not so much.
In early 2022 Fairfax Schools Monitor obtained a copy of the Curriculum Guide that FCPS was providing to teachers for the U.S. Government course taken by 12th graders. It is a shocking document.
The course summary states that the priority is to teach students “social science thinking skills and practices, with an emphasis on the concepts of power, position, bias, and agency.” The Guide for the two-week unit on the U.S. Constitution (HERE), states that it is “a study in power and privilege.” It explains that the three “essential standards” for teaching about the Constitution are (i) to understand the federal system of government “with an emphasis on the concepts of power, position, bias, and agency”; (ii) to “analyze the harmful impact of bias and injustice on the world”; and (iii) “to stand up to exclusion, prejudice and injustice.” Teachers are told that the “intended learning outcome” is to “develop [students’] understanding of agency, power and privilege by analyzing the American Constitution” and “to analyze the harmful consequences of bias and prejudice in the founding of America’s government structure ….”!!!
In other words, instead of teaching that the Constitution created a wise, carefully-crafted structure for stable and reasonable governance, FCPS teachers are told to portray it as a deeply flawed instrument that embodies bias, injustice and privilege.
The Curriculum Guide does not specify how the Constitution is allegedly flawed. Presumably, however, it is referring to the facts that the Founders were all men, that the 1787 Constitution did not give women a right to vote, and that it didn’t abolish slavery. The first two of these points simply reflect societal norms of the Eighteenth Century, not a denial of rights that women enjoyed previously or elsewhere. And as for the evil of slavery, the designers of the Curriculum Guide fail to mention that it would have been impossible in the 1780s to unite thirteen colonies into a single nation if a prerequisite for doing so was to abolish slavery; that would have been a nonstarter for the Southern colonies. The FCPS course designers also fail to mention that the Constitution included a mechanism for future amendments, and that this mechanism was later used to prohibit slavery (the 13th -15th Amendments), and to guarantee that women would have the right to vote (the 19th Amendment).
In any event, even if the original Constitution was flawed because of its failure to grant equal rights to women and African Americans, it is grossly inappropriate to treat these failures as the main points to be learned about our governing document. To do so, as the FCPS Curriculum Guide does, impugns the Founders’ great step forward in creating a workable structure for governance of, by and for the people. It also undermines unity and patriotism in the 21st Century.
So, if you have wondered how stupid, crazy proposals to rewrite the Constitution can take hold, begin by looking at our public schools.
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Videos of on-the-street interviews with late teenagers or young adults are frightening. Whether in Times Square or on a Spring Break beach, it is demoralizing to see how ignorant these well off, educated potential voters are of geography, history, and civics.
Richard: I’ve seen some of those interviews too. They are very sobering.
Enroll your teens in Hillsdale College courses online. Most are free and they are wonderful. Treat them like a book on tape in the car. I tried to opt my high schoolers out of FCPS History and substitute Hillsdale accredited courses, to no avail. Even if they don’t do the entire Hillsdale curriculum, hearing the lessons is worth offering a counter point of view to what they are getting force-fed in the FCPS classrooms. We can’t move. We can’t beat the system. But we can vote and we can guide our children’s voting patterns because we are their first teachers. It’s up to US not to raise little nasty socialists! There are no short cuts here. Do your job and teach your children or someone else will. We can’t leave it to the school teachers anymore – Mark is proving that.
Margaret: Thanks for your comment. You are right that we need change. Unfortunately, it’s hard to come by in FCPS.
Well done Mark, as always. It is a shame that nothing is likely to change anytime soon in the FCPS system 😩😩😩
Very well stated Mark. These young socialists have degrees but are not “educated.” If you want to dig a bit deeper as to why teachers are teaching this stuff you have to understand Critical Theory which was based on Marx but expanded by Marcuse and others via the the Frankfurt School intellectual movement which started in 1923 as the Institute for Social Research. This has taken on religious aspects as it has made inroads into higher eduction and other institutions through out the US and Europe. It is worth learning about Critical Theory and its awful implications. Destruction of the family is one obvious objective.
Bruce: Thanks. You are right. Although I didn’t go into it in this article, a major emphasis of the FCPS social studies is to urge students to view history and issues through the lens of their personal “identity” (e.g., I am a Hispanic, bi-sexual female: therefore ….). This is a critical race theory approach.. It is designed to divide rather than unite, and it supports ideas of victimization and injustice.
Well said Mark and thanks. If you want to dig a little deeper as to why teachers are teaching this nonsense look to the Critical Theory advocates starting with Marcuse and his friends in the Frankfurt school with the formation of the Institute for Social Studies in 1923. Their thinking has morphed into much of what we are seeing today in so many of our institutions. If you look at the underlying thinking it is truly horrible.
I agree completely, Mark (and Richard). A science teacher knows that if you combine two chemicals, there will be a reaction (or not) or an explosion. The Socialists flying their flag under the Democrats’ tent, are creating an explosive combination – and they don’t even realize it. People need to know the facts and past results demonstrated through history,, if they are going to accept socialist principles. People are being promised a lot, but what would they be giving up?
We have to ask ourselves seriously if our educational system, including college, is negatively affecting youth. The founding fathers wanted universal education for an informed electorate. When I was in high school, I took Civics; I also had excellent history teachers who taught document-based history of the United States. Even when students asked pointed questions about controversial events in the past, they could be openly discussed in a non-judgmental atmosphere. I was taught about the Constitution, what it embodied, and how thoroughly different issues were debated back-and-forth by the founding fathers until they deemed the Constitution was ready to send to the States for ratification (And the states wanted a Bill of Rights appended – the first ten amendments.) I am aghast by how little “people on the street – or beach” know! Many can’t identify the first president of the United States; what the three branches of government are, or who the current vice p\resident is. Put this kind of questionnaire on a job application! One has to know the facts before they can challenge them.
This troubling trend is being constructed by many tools but sadly, too many of our educational systems are a handle fitting them all.
These are scary times indeed.. pray we don’t destroy ourselves from within.
Thank you Mark for another well done article based on facts!!!