The Word of the Day

The word of the day for Monday, January 2, 2006 is "Civics". Civics is that class you took in 8th grade where you learned why the U.S. Constitution is so much better than the Articles of Confederation and took numerous tests regarding its contents.

Civics was intended to teach you about your own government in ways that would make you an educated and responsible citizen able to make intelligent choices inside the voting booth and thus perpetuate a well-honed, effective, and fair political machine.

Obviously, something went seriously wrong when they decided to teach this stuff to 8th graders once and then never ever again. I could not tell you off the top of my head how many years a senate term lasts (I think it's six), but I'm pretty sure that recent coups by the Executive Branch of our government substantially overstep that "system of checks and balances" thing we spent a full day discussing.

It's not that I feel the Constitution has faltered, but rather our adherence to it has fallen by the wayside. The only reliable method of returning to a tabula rasa government is to, and it kills me to say this, do what the French did. Thomas Jefferson understood this when he wrote that the American people should threaten revolt on a periodic basis to keep its government in check. The time has come before. It will come again.