1/16/2024

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal starts off with Justin Dyer’s piece on reviving civics education at our colleges and universities. He notes that, following the American Founders, who thought civics education was pivotal to sustaining republican government, “flagship public universities across the country” have begun “launching new schools and institutes to prepare leaders who know and appreciate the principles of a free and prosperous society.” These institutes teach a view of civics that “draws on multiple academic disciplines, including politics, economics, philosophy, history, and law” that “is anchored in the study of Western civilization and American constitutionalism.” Their aim, Dyer writes, is to foster “a patriotism that is spirited, thoughtful, and open to critical self-reflection.” In an age featuring both a creeping nihilism and an overweening moralism, civics aims “to secure a prosperous future by preserving and building upon the wisdom of the past.” In conclusion, Dyer notes that civics education allows us to “acquire knowledge of the character and basis of the political institutions we have inherited.” It “prepares us for” the difficult work of maintaining a full-orbed conception of liberty under the law.

At the Jack Miller Center’s American Arc blog, Elliott Drago interviews JMC fellow Andrew Porwancher, who is Professor of Legal History at Arizona State University. Porwancher says that what drew him to the study of history was storytelling, which “is the most ancient—and still the most powerful—form of communication ever devised by human beings.” He continues, “Historians are uniquely positioned by dint of our trade, with its central focus on the journey of humankind, to take full advantage of that primal desire for stories.” For Porwancher, an underrated fact from the American founding that more people today should know about is the Constitution’s ban on religious tests on the federal level of government. He calls this “a substantive grant of equality that distinguishes the document as a major advance for religious freedom.” Overall, Porwancher says that Americans need to understand that our country's founding "principles—majority rule, civil liberties, judicial independence, rule of law—do not endure of their own accord. Every generation has to fight anew in defense of our experiment in self-government.”