The real beacons of hope I’ve seen have mostly been those children being homeschooled from explicitly Christian households; not unanimously by any stretch, but with a noticeable frequency, particularly among Catholics.

In a strange twist of fate the American Catholic seems more intellectually in line with the Founding Principles than the descendants of the Protestant founding stock. I would guess it’s the emphasis on the Natural Law which has been so carefully preserved and cultivated within the Catholic intellectual tradition that accounts for this, and it’s overlap with the Founding Principles. The present makeup of the Supreme Court is, I believe, indicative of this: 1 Jew, 1 1/2 Protestants, and 6 1/2 Catholics (Gorsuch seems to straddle the line with his Anglicanism/Catholicism).

I can’t quite figure out why, but the Protestants seem to have largely quit the field on intellectual/legal side of things. I suspect it is because of the assumptions and axioms of the only successful Protestant denominational approach, Evangelicalism, and it’s commitment to literalism which, while not wrong, can be stifling when compared to other traditions that encourage multiple approaches.

TRX,

Yikes. Something really did go screwy between 1960-1972, eh?

I had an ordinary American public-school education in the 1970s. None of that was covered at the school I went to, which was considered to be one of the best in the state.

I am glad to hear that someone is fighting the good fight.

“…and I’d estimate that only 25% of them retain it past the test in any meaningful way.”

That is distressing.

“While I understand that the comment was meant generally and that my own experience shouldn’t be extrapolated, my point is that we have likely entered a phase at which the capabilities and function of the schools are insufficient to arrest the decline.”

The schools alone are probably insufficient, but perhaps the remaining good teachers can lead by example. We can hope and pray that grassroots resistance will rally around such leaders. (Hope is not a plan, of course.)

“Our world is simply too fraught with distraction, and dysfunction, and given the vacuity of modern life unless one is a-typical in their interests, most people simply don’t see the utility in civics…”

If I were a young student, I would be grappling with great despair for the future, and I would probably have little hope that civics would still be operative in a few years. Again, we can hope and pray for improvement, but we can’t expect God to do all the work.

“Technological innovation has lobotomized us, not so much locally or individually (though it has done that) but rather culturally and socially.”

I suspect that the mainstream culture started eating its own a while ago. I don’t have a lot of solid evidence for this, but I think at least some of the young people realize that degeneracy is collective suicide. I hope that a critical mass of young people resist that collective suicide.

A true constitutional originalism would axe the so-called fourteenth amendment on the grounds that, inter alia, the federal government hath no power to accrue citizens beyond its limits.

I call BS on the refusal to teach civics/the Constitution. I have my students memorize, verbatim, the Preamble to the Declaration and the Constitution for an exam grade after several classes of preparation, we extensively review the three branches and their functions and duties, and I’d estimate that only 25% of them retain it past the test in any meaningful way. While I understand that the comment was meant generally and that my own experience shouldn’t be extrapolated, my point is that we have likely entered a phase at which the capabilities and function of the schools are insufficient to arrest the decline.

Our world is simply too fraught with distraction, and dysfunction, and given the vacuity of modern life unless one is a-typical in their interests, most people simply don’t see the utility in civics, even if you show them it’s uses.

Technological innovation has lobotomized us, not so much locally or individually (though it has done that) but rather culturally and socially. If such matters are considered esoteric, unimportant or low-status, most people simply won’t take the time to meaningfully commit it to memory, much less live it out.

I think I know why Americans are not taught how to obey their own very complicated laws. It is for the same reason American schools refuse to teach civics or the history of the Constitution.

American cops seem to love keeping the law unknown. They seem to love concealing vital information. They talk like armed con artists, concealing the grift. American lawyers are even worse. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”

America used to be predicated on the premise that every man had access to the same law. Now it is a Byzantine maelstrom of secret laws, secret regulations, secret interpretations of law, and star chambers.

The Minneapolis police force had the policy during routine traffic stops if you order a driver to place his hands on the steering wheel four times without compliance the officer on the scene may draw his weapon.

That was the case during the confrontation between George Floyd and the cops that originally confronted Floyd. The had to ask the man [Floyd] ten times to place his hands on the steering wheel before Floyd actually did.

It is not unreasonable to assume that a person unwilling to favorably respond to such a simple command from a police officer and do so repeatedly is up to no good in some manner.