Civics

Teach civics in high school as well as in junior high?

A state senator in Indiana has proposed a bill that would require students to pass a 100-question citizenship test in order to graduate from public high schools in the state.

Indiana State Senator Dennis Kruse (R) thinks it’s appropriate that high school graduates demonstrate that they know as much about our nation as we require immigrants to know as a prerequisite to gaining citizenship.

What a concept.  It should be a requirement in all States.

Negotiate on the Wall?

That’s what some Progressive-Democrats in the House claim they want to do.  After the partial government shutdown is ended.  Congressmen Eric Swalwell (D, CA) and John Garamendi (D, CA) have made such commitments.

However.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) has told President Donald Trump she will not negotiate on a border wall, demanding no funding whatsoever, even after the partial shutdown is ended.

Some questions arise.

Was Pelosi lying when she said that to Trump?

Was Pelosi lying to her caucus when they elected her Speaker on the basis of her promise to a significant fraction of her Party that she always and forever would oppose border wall funding?

Did Swalwell and Garamendi lie when they make their promise to negotiate after the partial shutdown ended?

How is it possible to negotiate with a Party whose members’ word cannot be believed?

A Tidbit

In addition to the Progressive-Democrats’ disdain for national borders and their desire to abolish ICE, there’s this from Jennifer Wexton (D, VA), with 60,000 civilian veterans and thousands more active duty vets in her district.  The Congresswoman

removed the POW/MIA flag in front of her office….

Apparently, only some of the Party’s constituents are to be represented.

Emergency Powers

President Donald Trump is giving very serious consideration to declaring a national emergency so he can reallocate certain funding toward building the border wall that’s so necessary in various places and that the Progressive-Democrats are so dead set against funding, even though they’ve voted, within the last decade, an order of magnitude more money for a wall than Trump is requesting.

Trump clearly has the legal authority to declare such an emergency and to carry out the funds reallocation.

Trump, though, has another way to force the Progressive-Democrats’ hand.  Here’s what Article II, Section 3 says, in pertinent part:

…he [the President] may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them….

The next time Congress takes a break of any sort—this just ending weekend, for instance—Trump should call both Houses back into active session and refuse to let them have any break, interruption, recess, or other departure from active presence on the House and Senate floors until demonstrably good faith negotiations over border wall funding are well in progress and initial (successful) votes conducted.

Religious Bigotry?

North Dakota wants to let its high schools teach a Bible studies class, and the ACLU (among others) has gotten its institutional panties in a twist over it. State Congressman Aaron McWilliams (R) has a bill moving through the State’s legislature that would achieve that.  He said

The intention of this bill is to provide an option to schools to teach a class on the bible from a historical perspective.  My position is that no religious text should be excluded from being taught as it relates to the historical or philosophical influences in our history or on our society today.

The class would be an elective amounting to 1/6 of the total social studies requirement for graduating from a North Dakota high school.

The ACLU thinks that teaching a religious document even from a historical or philosophical perspective, even when it’s not a required course, is somehow the State establishing or supporting a particular religion.  That plainly isn’t the case; even the august personages of the ACLU know that—or American history wasn’t a safe space for them and they were triggered to unconsciousness by their grade school lessons and their junior high civics lessons.

Heather Smith, Executive Director of the North Dakota chapter of the ACLU does have a point, though.  Sort of.

A school could teach comparative religious classes, or you could talk about the Bible’s relationship to literature, art, or music[.]

But not its relationship with our history or culture, or with western civilization’s history or culture generally?  Not its relationship with our national philosophy, such as it is, or with philosophy generally?  Apparently, Smith was triggered by her high school logic class, too.

On the other hand, the comparative religion concern has some validity.  Perhaps McWilliams’ bill could include an option to teach an additional elective course, also worth 1/6 of the total social studies requirement, that teaches the Torah and the Talmud “from a historical perspective.”  After all, we are a Judeo-Christian nation, with a staunch Judeo-Christian history and underpinning.

Such a broadened perspective on who we are, how we began, and how we came to be where we are now—including these incessant attacks on our Christianity and Judaism—would strengthen our American culture, and it might inform even the members of the ACLU.

Side tidbit: the first Georgian patriot to die in combat in our Revolutionary War was a Jew.