What said building up to the part you quoted about the decline of Civic understanding as taught in the schools, made me question something though.
He put the change in how we were teaching Civics around 1970. Now, I'm assuming he meant plain old High School Civics that everyone was taught in Public Schools and most Parochial Schools. I went to High School well before 1970, admittedly not a terribly sophisticated one. I was a good student, enjoyed learning more than most of my peers seemed to, got good grades, and I really liked Civics as a subject. Hard to recall precisely what was taught and not taught, but after High School, at a very fortunate job I attained to work my through college, I had to work with reporting of goings on and events at all stages of our government. This was pretty much entry level stuff, nothing requiring any advanced education. I remember feeling so ignorant about the mechanism of government and having to struggle very hard to keep up, crash course myself on this aspect of government and that over and over, and sort of figure things out on the fly. So I'm left with the feeling that even before the Vietnam War after WWII that the Civic education most of the ordinary people across the country received wasn't really very thorough even then. If that has any significance, I guess I'm saying that probably the level of ignorance on this particular subject is actually greater than Justice Souter referred to. And of course he's absolutely right about the danger of such ignorance to our democracy and our republic, and yes, you are right on the money about it being a foreshadowing of those who get sucked in to Trump's con so easily. Frightening with the only good news being the number of Americans coming forth (mostly at the last minute) to denounce his bid. And the dark cloud in the center of that silver lining is I don't think a lot of them have actually learned anything, really, but just want to now be on the side that's winning. Maybe that's just my own skepticism, though, and maybe they really get it....like Donald Trump in an interview four years ago. In an interview with Margaret Warner, he spoke about civic ignorance. Souter prophetically said:
“I don’t worry about our losing republican government in the United States because I’m afraid of a foreign invasion. I don’t worry about it because I think there is going to be a coup by the military as has happened in some of other places. What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough, as they might do, for example, with another serious terrorist attack, as they might do with another financial meltdown, some one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’
“That is how the Roman republic fell. Augustus became emperor, not because he arrested the Roman Senate. He became emperor because he promised that he would solve problems that were not being solved.
“If we know who is responsible, I have enough faith in the American people to demand performance from those responsible. If we don’t know, we will stay away from the polls. We will not demand it. And the day will come when somebody will come forward and we and the government will in effect say, ‘Take the ball and run with it. Do what you have to do.’
“That is the way democracy dies. And if something is not done to improve the level of civic knowledge, that is what you should worry about at night.”
What said building up to the part you quoted about the decline of Civic understanding as taught in the schools, made me question something though.
He put the change in how we were teaching Civics around 1970. Now, I'm assuming he meant plain old High School Civics that everyone was taught in Public Schools and most Parochial Schools. I went to High School well before 1970, admittedly not a terribly sophisticated one. I was a good student, enjoyed learning more than most of my peers seemed to, got good grades, and I really liked Civics as a subject.
Hard to recall precisely what was taught and not taught, but after High School, at a very fortunate job I attained to work my through college, I had to work with reporting of goings on and events at all stages of our government. This was pretty much entry level stuff, nothing requiring any advanced education. I remember feeling so ignorant about the mechanism of government and having to struggle very hard to keep up, crash course myself on this aspect of government and that over and over, and sort of figure things out on the fly.
So I'm left with the feeling that even before the Vietnam War after WWII that the Civic education most of the ordinary people across the country received wasn't really very thorough even then.
If that has any significance, I guess I'm saying that probably the level of ignorance on this particular subject is actually greater than Justice Souter referred to.
And of course he's absolutely right about the danger of such ignorance to our democracy and our republic, and yes, you are right on the money about it being a foreshadowing of those who get sucked in to Trump's con so easily.
Frightening with the only good news being the number of Americans coming forth (mostly at the last minute) to denounce his bid. And the dark cloud in the center of that silver lining is I don't think a lot of them have actually learned anything, really, but just want to now be on the side that's winning. Maybe that's just my own skepticism, though, and maybe they really get it.