I honestly think that one of the big problems with a "civics education" as we understand it is that it's premised on the idea that the system as currently constituted is a good system and we have a duty to try to maintain it Based on basically no evidence
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We train kids on how to work within the system -- How do you win an election? How do you pass a bill? Even maybe how do you "realign" politics around a new party? -- but nothing more "extreme" than that Even though this country was *founded* on a damn revolution
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By deifying the Founding Fathers we both overlook all the flaws in what they did do and make doing it again seem impossible *They* tore up the papers their whole system was based on and just wrote a new one Why the hell can't we? Are they that much better than us?
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There are bigger questions than "How do you win an election" and "How do you pass a bill" "How do you dissolve a government and declare a new one? How do you write a constitution? How do you win a revolution with minimal bloodshed? How do you pull off a coup, if you have to?"
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The bizarre thing is that if you think this is an awful, monstrous thing to do, WE ALREADY DID IT The Brits at least have a more coherent reason to be kneejerk reactionaries -- their nonsense pageantry about the divine right of the monarch stretching back to damn medieval times
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If you think overthrowing an old regime for a new one is an evil thing to do, you should be bending the knee to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II And if you think a bunch of people writing new rules is absurd hubris, rip up that Constitution you worship because that's all it is
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Which is especially strange since other countries get new constitutions like every 30 years; and it's really unlikely we got it right the first (or second) time.
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No, but I find it really hard to imagine our current collection of political thought-leaders coming up with a BETTER one from scratch right now. I mean, about half of them could, but only if the other half were locked in a utility closet the whole time
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The great thing about throwing everything out and starting over is after you do it the first time it gets easier and easier to do it again I joke about the US "dissolving into chaos" as a worst-case scenario but there is no way out of this current mess long-term without chaos
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Is this where all the people who are dumbfounded in regard to how things other countries have done before are going to even work without calamity as if the US if the only place that exists come from?
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These people get baffled by the fact that *Canada*, the country that split off from the UK by asking politely, tossed the founding documents and replaced them completely in 1982 with the Constitution Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and it ended up going pretty well.
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Yes, it's flawed and wasn't nearly good enough for First Nations rights, but the new documents are a lot more relevant and have 100% less gabble about trapping rights and Hudson's Bay Company charters.
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