****** Note, I found this in a local paper***
Ronald Reagan once said liberty is never more than one generation away from extinction. Lincoln and Douglass understood that too. They knew a republic built on human equality and moral truth survives only when its citizens understand the meaning of those words. That understanding has grown thin. Anger now replaces argument, and political disagreement too often hardens into disdain. The decline in civic knowledge isn’t a matter of trivia; it’s the slow unraveling of a shared moral vocabulary and disintegration of public memory.
Some blame the polarization on new interpretations of history, projects that recast America’s founding as irredeemably corrupt. But these narratives didn’t create our civic amnesia; they filled the void it left. When a nation stops teaching its own story, it shouldn’t be surprised when others re-write it.
This civic silence mirrors a broader cultural habit: ignoring problems until they become crises. We see it in the decision not to prosecute “minor” thefts, which drives businesses out of communities, and in bail reforms that release repeat offenders who soon re-offend. The pattern is familiar: avoid small confrontations now, face large consequences later. Politicians are good at doing that. Whether in crime, economics, or civic education, our country has grown accustomed to the high cost of doing nothing.
The loss of civic understanding is not abstract. It shows up in the way people talk past each other, in the suspicion that democracy itself no longer works. Real civic literacy: knowing our rights, our responsibilities, and the principles behind them, once served as the glue that held this diverse nation together. It began in families and deepened in schools, where students learned how freedom actually operates. Too many schools have quietly abandoned that role and many teachers have abided. Granted, being under the thumb of a particular teachers’ union may be part of the problem for some.
History has shown what happens when citizens forget their civic duties. In the last century, totalitarian regimes rose not only through force but through the apathy of ordinary people. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler - each took advantage of populations that had lost confidence in their own civic traditions. Even in the West, ignorance and wishful thinking led to appeasement, until the price of inaction became unspeakable: a world war and tens of millions dead.
We don’t face a dictator, or a king for that matter but we do face disconnection from each other, and from the ideas that once bound us. Surveys show growing numbers of young Americans expressing faith in socialism or other radical ideologies that are counter to the pillars of American Republicanism, often without understanding the freedoms they’d be trading away. This isn’t because they’re unpatriotic, it is because no one has taught them what their system is, or why it matters. Worse still, the number of children within the ranks of immigrants (both legal and illegal) are not learning either. This is going to have consequences in the future as there will be no cultural ties to the past
.
This is not nostalgia; it’s survival. The late and great David McCullough once warned that “something’s eating away at the national memory,” and he was right. Forgetfulness doesn’t make a country more just or more free, it only makes it easier to divide.
As the nation approaches its semi-quincentennial, the challenge is simple but urgent: to remember, and to teach. The principles of liberty don’t live on their own. They must be lived, argued, and renewed. We can continue pretending that forgetting has no cost, or that we can act while there’s still time.
The health of a Constitutional Republic depends, as republics always have, on what its citizens choose to know. Discourse and cheap shots regarding White House renovations are merely distractions pettifogging matters of more importance.
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Ronald Reagan once said liberty is never more than one generation away from extinction. Lincoln and Douglass understood that too. They knew a republic built on human equality and moral truth survives only when its citizens understand the meaning of those words. That understanding has grown thin. Anger now replaces argument, and political disagreement too often hardens into disdain. The decline in civic knowledge isn’t a matter of trivia; it’s the slow unraveling of a shared moral vocabulary and disintegration of public memory.
Some blame the polarization on new interpretations of history, projects that recast America’s founding as irredeemably corrupt. But these narratives didn’t create our civic amnesia; they filled the void it left. When a nation stops teaching its own story, it shouldn’t be surprised when others re-write it.
This civic silence mirrors a broader cultural habit: ignoring problems until they become crises. We see it in the decision not to prosecute “minor” thefts, which drives businesses out of communities, and in bail reforms that release repeat offenders who soon re-offend. The pattern is familiar: avoid small confrontations now, face large consequences later. Politicians are good at doing that. Whether in crime, economics, or civic education, our country has grown accustomed to the high cost of doing nothing.
The loss of civic understanding is not abstract. It shows up in the way people talk past each other, in the suspicion that democracy itself no longer works. Real civic literacy: knowing our rights, our responsibilities, and the principles behind them, once served as the glue that held this diverse nation together. It began in families and deepened in schools, where students learned how freedom actually operates. Too many schools have quietly abandoned that role and many teachers have abided. Granted, being under the thumb of a particular teachers’ union may be part of the problem for some.
History has shown what happens when citizens forget their civic duties. In the last century, totalitarian regimes rose not only through force but through the apathy of ordinary people. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler - each took advantage of populations that had lost confidence in their own civic traditions. Even in the West, ignorance and wishful thinking led to appeasement, until the price of inaction became unspeakable: a world war and tens of millions dead.
We don’t face a dictator, or a king for that matter but we do face disconnection from each other, and from the ideas that once bound us. Surveys show growing numbers of young Americans expressing faith in socialism or other radical ideologies that are counter to the pillars of American Republicanism, often without understanding the freedoms they’d be trading away. This isn’t because they’re unpatriotic, it is because no one has taught them what their system is, or why it matters. Worse still, the number of children within the ranks of immigrants (both legal and illegal) are not learning either. This is going to have consequences in the future as there will be no cultural ties to the past
.
This is not nostalgia; it’s survival. The late and great David McCullough once warned that “something’s eating away at the national memory,” and he was right. Forgetfulness doesn’t make a country more just or more free, it only makes it easier to divide.
As the nation approaches its semi-quincentennial, the challenge is simple but urgent: to remember, and to teach. The principles of liberty don’t live on their own. They must be lived, argued, and renewed. We can continue pretending that forgetting has no cost, or that we can act while there’s still time.
The health of a Constitutional Republic depends, as republics always have, on what its citizens choose to know. Discourse and cheap shots regarding White House renovations are merely distractions pettifogging matters of more importance.
