Free Republic

America, unfortunately, has long been suffering from a crisis of civics. Put simply, many Americans are woefully ignorant about the structure and features of their government. But every so often, an opportunity emerges to reteach some basics. The media's predictable shrieks and howls of "constitutional crisis" notwithstanding, we are in the throes of a grand separation-of-powers standoff that will both serve as one such edifying civics lesson. First: Enter the energetic executive. In his frenetic opening weeks, President Donald Trump has channeled the spirit of The Federalist No. 70, in which Alexander Hamilton argued that only a unitary executive can...

...to their faces

The growth of classical education schools is astonishing. The numbers keep rising; there is no sign that the movement is beginning to plateau. Schools open, networks are created, charters are authorized, and kids fill the seats. One would think that as more spaces are available the (supposedly) small number of parents who favor the classical way would be satisfied and demand would diminish. How many Americans want their children to study Latin, read the Old and New Testaments, and appreciate the High Art of the Renaissance? Couldn’t be too many, say intellectuals and educators on the left. Those enlightened practitioners...

Miranda Devine @mirandadevine Steve Bannon's letter from prison to @RaheemKassam @TheNatPulse "The reality is that there is no significant group of “undecided” voters left... People know where they stand when it comes to President Trump and his opponents. What remains unclear for some is whether they will actually participate in the voting process. These are the individuals who will decide this election. With relentless effort and personal contact, they will break our way. It’s our job to engage with them, ensure they understand what’s at stake, and motivate them to cast their ballots."

As the 2024 presidential election season reaches a fever pitch, a poll of a different kind has tracked our nation’s precipitous decline in history and civics education. Last year, the “nation’s report card,” a biannual study put out by the National Center for Education Statistics on the basis of a nationally administered standardized test, found that only 13 percent of American eighth grade students were proficient in history, while just 22 percent showed proficiency in civics. Earlier this month, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) released a report titled “Losing America’s Memory 2.0,” a data-point survey administered in...

A new college is coming to the University of Texas. The School of Civic Leadership received a unanimous vote from the Board of Regents and will build upon the current Civitas Institute. The institute touts itself as being a foundation for a “free and enduring society, including constitutionalism, limited government, free enterprise and markets, and individual liberty.” “Our goal then as it is today is to offer an education that prepares students for careers in public service, national security, the nonprofit sector, and the private sector. We have been impressed by the progress made and hope to build on those...

The nationwide test known as the “Nation’s Report Card” has revealed a historic low for eighth-grade history scores, and also saw the first-ever drop in civics scores, in the year 2022.As reported by the state-funded NPR, the latest results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show the lowest levels ever for history scores since the NAEP first began in 1994. This comes after several consecutive years of reading and math scores consistently dropping among fourth-graders and eighth-graders, which has been directly attributed to the “remote learning” model of learning that was implemented during the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic.Education Secretary...

UNC students aren’t getting a solid foundation in civics. UNC-Chapel Hill, for example, does not require its students to take a course in American government. It does, however, require them to take a three-credit course called Global Understanding and Engagement. A course in American history or government isn’t even required for majors where knowledge of civics is particularly important. UNC history majors, for instance, aren’t required to take a course in U.S. Government. But they are required to take “at least one History Department course in the area of African, Asian, and Middle Eastern History or in Latin American History.”...

President Biden has a civics lesson that he is fond of and regularly repeats. It is about how the United States is unique in the world because of the founding ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. “Unlike every other nation on Earth, we were founded based on an idea,” he notes before adding that “while we’ve never fully lived up” to those principles, “we have never given up on them.” An overwhelming majority of Americans, 89 percent, agree that a civics education about those founding principles is “very important.” And yet, a similar majority across the political spectrum, 71...

Critics warn that the Civics Secures Democracy Act (CSDA), which is backed by multiple Republican senators such as Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), could impose leftwing critical race theory on every public school in the United States if it passes. The bill's goals include support of “local educational agencies, elementary schools, and secondary schools in selecting and making available to all students innovative, engaging curricula and programs” pertaining to civics and American government, as well as to “diversify the civics, history, and government education workforce by offering targeted incentives.” While the bill does not expressly warrant the creation of a national...

The US economy is based on a free enterprise system where the markets, not the government, determine prices. For this system to function properly, there must be competition. "The fundamental purpose of our antitrust laws is to preserve competition and prevent markets from being monopolized," says George A. Hay, Charles Frank Reavis Sr. Professor of Law and professor of economics at the Cornell Law School. "If we had widespread monopoly our economy would be much worse off." The first of those antitrust laws is the Sherman Antitrust Act, enacted in 1890. ... There are three main parts of the Sherman...

Students in Rhode Island are asking a federal appeals court to affirm that all public school students have a constitutional right to a civics education, saying that they aren’t taught how to meaningfully participate in a democratic and civil society ... ...The plaintiffs have asked the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Boston, to reverse a lower court’s dismissal of the case, declare there’s a constitutional right to an adequate civics education, and send the case back to district court.... ...The defendants include Rhode Island’s governor, education commissioner and other education authorities. Their lawyer, Anthony Cottone, told the...

The Georgia Board of Education is the first state board to adopt a resolution to ban both the teaching of tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and “action” or “protest” civics in the state’s public schools. CRT is a Marxist philosophy that embraces the concept that all social and cultural issues should be viewed through the lens of race. “Action” or “protest” civics is an initiative that seeks to indoctrinate K-12 students into woke “action” political organizing, under the guise of restoring “unity.” Texas recently passed the first measure in the country to prohibit both CRT and “action” or “protest”...

The Civics Secures Democracy Act making its way through Congress threatens to create a national curriculum that would virtually compel teens to plunge into politics. It’s a horrible idea.Ever since the “don’t-trust-anyone-over-30” countercultural movements of the 1960s, we have been living in a culture that increasingly valorizes youth. In the view of the noted Harvard University cognitive scientist and author Steven Pinker, a technological change — the advent of television — is what propelled this social change.The baby boomers of the 1960s, the first generation to grow up en masse with a TV at home, received unprecedented access to each...

Why is there always such a push towards "federal programs to solve local problems"? Many of the Federal programs that are touted to solve programs affecting individuals should be on the state level or local level and not the federal level. The money is more "accountable" that way. The big lie about small L "libertarian" is that they're only for anarchy govt, when in actuality they are more for "Distributed Government" Why is this? That is because a lot of localities are no longer vested in local control of their own government as there is a constant human nature to...

A 13-year-old schoolgirl confessed that she lied about a French teacher who was beheaded after showing his class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, according to the girl's lawyer. Samuel Paty, a secondary school teacher in a town near Paris, was killed last October by a radical Chechen teenager after showing the cartoons to students during a civics class about free speech. The unidentified girl told police that she lied about being in the class and falsely accused Paty of asking Muslim children to leave the class while he showed the pictures. Her father, who has been charged in connection with...

We have just the perfect solution for American kids' deep ignorance about their nation's founding principles, system of government, and history. It's making them into political activists!It’s deja vu all over again. A coalition of government- and billionaire-funded nonprofits has a “bipartisan” plan for national curriculum goals, this time concerning U.S. history and government. Today this “state-led” coalition is releasing a major report they hope will get the attention of the Biden administration and state governors to “collaboratively” enact their vision nationwide. Remember, these sorts of national plans are supported by people on the right and left, so there can...

Ultra-Woke Illinois Mandates Are Top Threat to U.S. Education By STANLEY KURTZ Step aside, California. Minnesota, hang your head. Illinois is the wokest of all, and what it does will spread. Yes, woke K-12 curricula grounded in neo-Marxist Critical Race Theory are on the march through America’s schools. We’ve just learned that a California elementary school is forcing third-graders to deconstruct their racial identities and rank themselves by “power and privilege.” Although California governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a too-woke ethnic-studies high-school graduation requirement last fall, a reworked version, still saturated with Critical Race Theory, has just been released for public...

(This photo made available by the U.S. National Archives showed a portion of the first page of the United States Constitution.)The newly formed President’s Advisory 1776 Commission just released its report. The group was chaired by Churchill historian and Hillsdale College President, Dr. Larry P. Arnn. The vice chair was Dr. Carol M. Swain, a retired professor of political science. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the commission.)The unanimously approved conclusions focused on the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the historical challenges to these founding documents and the need for civic renewal. The 16-member commission was diverse in...

Attorney L. Lin Wood, who has been filing lawsuits for President Donald Trump challenging the election results, called on Republicans to withhold their votes for two GOP senators in an upcoming runoff election that will decide which party holds the majority of the Senate, Mediaite reports. In a series of weekend tweets, Wood asked Georgians not to vote for Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue unless they help overturn the election results in the state.