The Political Page
President John Adams
Please Teach Civics!
“Knowledge of our system of governance and our rights and responsibilities as citizens is not passed along through the gene pool. Each generation of Americans must be taught these basics.” Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor
Margaret Thatcher once said, “European nations were made by history. The United States was made by philosophy. Unique among all nations, the United States knows precisely when and exactly why it was founded.”
Today, that may be changing. Survey after survey shows that Americans have a dismally poor understanding of the founding principles underpinning our nation.
Only one in four Americans can name all three branches of government. Seventy percent don’t know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Doug Ducey
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Ulysses S Grant
"If we are to have another contest (Civil War) in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason’s and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other."
Commander of Union Forces, and two term President of the United States.
Benjamin Franklin
* Following the Constitutional Convention, Mrs. Elizabeth Willing Powel, a prominent society figure and the wife of Philadelphia Mayor Samuel Powel asked Dr. Franklin "Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”
** Just after Washington had been elected the first president. Franklin stated; "The first man put at the helm will be a good one. Nobody knows what sort may come afterwards. The executive will be always increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a monarchy."
