A timely lesson in civics from Sen. Ben Sasse. Mike Sabo writes:
American civics has nothing to do with partisanship. It is, rather, the “stuff we’re all supposed to agree on,” no matter our policy differences. It’s the bedrock principles that we were supposed to learn in school – for example, “Congress writes laws, the executive branch enforces laws, and courts apply them,” as Sasse explained.
The American founders believed that all citizens needed a basic working knowledge of republican principles and how the government should properly function. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free . . . it expects what never was and never will be.”
Sasse contrasted civic knowledge with “subordinate, less important” disputes on issues of the day, such as tax rates, immigration, and foreign policy. The problem comes when we move from debating, say, the amount of tax that corporations pay to arguing about whether government really needs to obtain the consent of the governed.
[Mike Sabo, "Ben Sasse’s Basic American Civics,” RealClearPublicAffairs, October 19]
