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Bruen Transforms the Gun Debate
- Thread starter SFC13557
- Start date
Mesatchornug
NES Member
The worst is that this is a failure on all our parts. We can't say that civics is important enough to consider making it mandatory and also tell kids that STEM is the only way to get a job/that caring about STEM and humanities is mutually exclusive.
Parents failed. Neighbors failed. Everybody failed.
I agree. It’s been a long-term trend, though, that ostensibly began with the space program; I dunno. That’s before my time. There are probably many reasons.
I see the pro-STEM bias everywhere. But then, I would: I’m a humanities teacher.
Civics IS required, in many places, and it probably works. Just not at my school; I can only speak for that. But now that I’ve got a kid in HS in another town, I’ll soon know how they do it, too. I already know the parents are worse where I live than where I teach, and they’re bad enough where I teach.
I had a required civics class in HS in the nineties. It was mostly about consumer economics, voter registration, and things like that. And it was taught by an English teacher being forced to teach it. It was not a positive experience that made me cherish my country’s principles…
Mesatchornug
NES Member
Sadly, this is probably the biggest deficiency in my town's program, growing up. We had a lot of American (and world) history from great teachers who cared, so bits of foundational philosophy made its way into our classes. But actually trying to understand our system and how we got here has been a solo mission. (One of my classmates transferred in from a school that has civics, and I've remained somewhat jealous through the years.)
LT5
NES Member
‘74 here and we got social studies.
That’s great to hear.
I can understand not caring about algebra as it wasn’t my thing either but, not caring whether or not you live under a boot is beyond me.
I couldn’t agree more.
So many people and obviously our politicians think that the constitution tells US what WE can and can’t do.
When I was in, ah middle school, a civics course was a requirement. Fundamental concepts were also espoused in other classes, such as history. The Pledge of Allegiance was also a thing in grade school. Disappointed to hear that it has become something of an elective.
... midwest in the Land of Lincoln.
Fine, but that's you. That's not everyone.
Plenty of kids simply don't care. They're the horses you can lead to water, but you can't make them drink. I think a massive number of people in all walks of life don't care about civics until it starts to affect them in their lives, i.e. AFTER high school. And by then, they're not even aware of what they never learned.
Requiring it doesn't necessarily help. A "required course" is thought of as a course that can't stand on its own merits, fairly or unfairly, and unqualified teachers often end up teaching those. And the constitution already is required, as a part of 11th grade history (at my school, anyway).
Mesatchornug
NES Member
Once again, I'm the baby... '83
It's hard enough to describe that effectively to adults who have been in the world, without sounding like a crank. Getting it across to kids is even harder.
For every @Picton, who's "seen things," there's a couple comfortable, middle class kids who still think their version of authoritarianism would result in kittens for everybody.
Sadly, by the 90s, in my MA town, it just didn't happen. We said the Pledge every day. We covered the topics as history. We discussed the process as important.
But we never said "let's talk about all of this from the perspective of how being American affects you and you affect America."
SFC13557
NES Member
Is it go time yet? The country is seriously divided, one side has the lamestream media, corporate America and moral outrage
on their side and the other has the guns, ammo and the training and the will to fight along with The Constitution and the Bill of Rights. IMHO 2024 will be the tipping point, if Trump wins the Leftists will riot like the French and hopefully will be crushed. If Biden or a D replacement wins, they will accelerate their attacks on SCOTUS, the rule of law and us. The youngin's here scoff when go time is mentioned and tell us you first. I get it but I don't see an alternative now. The Leftist D's HATE this country and us and have no intention of compromising so what else is left? Confrontation!
VTski4x4
NES Member
You know that scene in the Patriot when they show up to the burned down church and they see the chains on the doors? Recreating that, but politicians homes rather than a church would send a really strong message.Is it go time yet? The country is seriously divided, one side has the lamestream media, corporate America and moral outrage
SFC13557
NES Member
The Supreme Court Declares Independence
The rulings on affirmative action, student loans and free speech herald a counterrevolution against the left’s domination of American institutions.
From Today's WSJ. The Left is wound up in a fever pitch over SCOTUS decisions and we will be the targets. Keep your powder dry."Fourth of July celebrations arrive with special resonance for conservatives this year. It is clear now that we are in the throes of a full-scale American cultural counterrevolution, propelled by rising popular opposition to the coercive orthodoxies of a hegemonic left and enforced by a string of impeccable decisions from a Supreme Court intent on reviving the spirit of 1776. Spectacular displays of pyrotechnics from an endangered establishment, increasingly hysterical at the dawning realization of its imminent overthrow, are as entertaining—and ultimately harmless—as any you will witness in the night skies this holiday.
The popular rebellion against the cultural left that has seized so many of the institutions of American life has enjoyed mixed success at the political level. But since that hegemony was established in large part through half a century of grotesque judicial overreach, it was likely to be truly overturned only by a judiciary that would finally move to substitute restraint for activism.
With last week’s timely, pre-Independence Day succession of decisions by the court we can see better than ever that the counterrevolution is advancing apace. In Biden v. Nebraska, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, and 303 Creative v. Elenis, a solid majority struck solid blows for the principles and values that helped create the U.S. in the first place.
In the three cases—respectively over the Biden administration’s student debt cancellation plan, racial preferences in college applications, and free-speech protections in commercial interactions—the judgments rescinded the usurpation by an expansive executive of the power of the purse, restored the principle of merit over group membership as a key determinant of individual opportunity, and reaffirmed a citizen’s right not to be compelled to endorse ideas with which she disagrees.
Note the common prefix in the principal verb in each of those subclauses, “re-.” One meaning is “back” or “backward.” But this is no reactionary backlash to the inevitable march of modernity, as most of the media, with predictable and prejudicial alarmism, calls it. These decisions, along with other critical rulings in this and the preceding court term, represent the necessary undoing of successive judicially authorized derogations of the most defining American principles—fairness, equality, freedom, the proper exercise and distribution of government powers.
The counterrevolution has been achieved through painstaking efforts by conservatives to recruit, develop and advance jurists of reliably originalist disposition, as well as through presidential nomination—by Donald Trump, especially—of well-qualified justices who wouldn’t, for a change, acquiesce to the left’s dominance.
But reading last week’s decisions, I would argue that the most important force working in this revolution’s favor—perhaps as it was in 1776—is the sheer intellectual weight of the argument.
Contrast the various majority opinions last week with the left’s dissents. The opinions of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority in the three cases, are characterized by taut writing, unimpeachable logic, close adherence to argument, legal principles, facts and evidence, and detailed interpretation of existing case and statutory law. The fulcrum of the legal argument is—curiously enough—on the law as it was written, as it must be applied, not on some larger political or social objective.
With the exception of Justice Elena Kagan, the court’s members from the left write and speak with the apparently unchallengeable conviction that their role is not to apply the law but rather to make it, in the pursuit of some desired higher outcome—one that happens to conform to their ideological priors rather than to any constitutionally mandated principle or process.
In the process they adduce not legal reasoning, but political rhetoric of the crudest character and most clichéd language.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissenting from the racial-preference ruling, tells us that “deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life,” and that race still matters to the “lived experiences” of Americans. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, misrepresenting the decision in 303 Creative—which was, remember, about whether a business can be required to engage in a form of speech that violates its owner’s conscience—by saying the “symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status.”
The left’s response to the reversal of its long success in making the court a second legislative branch of government is also telling. Instead of accepting, as limited-government, originalist conservatives did, the need for a long campaign to undo the hegemony of the rival philosophy, they want to short-circuit the process. This means protecting or restoring their authority by making radical institutional changes to the court or, failing that, by delegitimizing it, using a friendly media to impeach the reputation of justices they oppose with spurious allegations of impropriety.
Like almost all rebellions, the current American cultural counterrevolution is certain to face further and intensified resistance from the institutions and people whose dominance it threatens."
fencer
NES Member
I think as a group, we here on NES give our fellow Americans far to much credit. We are all firearms enthusiast. As such were are tend to inform ourselves a great deal more than your average American about the 2nd Amendment and the Constitution in general. You should also consider that, by definition, half of all people are of below average intelligence. Even among those who are reasonably intelligent, a great many are easily influenced.
I would venture a guess that fewer than 1 in 100 Americans have any idea what the Bruen decision is, or what it means.
The right in general, and pro 2A folks specifically, need to recognize the biggest advantage the left has and work to counter it. With minor exception, the left controls the media. And many Americans believe anything they see on the idiot box, facegram and instabook, especially those under 40. Since the inception of the 24 hour news cycle, and the spread of social media, many people just mimic whatever their favorite celebrities say in a tick tock video. Conservative representation in the media is better now than it was 10 years ago, but it should really be high on the agenda for conservative leaders.
Sure it's a good idea to teach kids more about the Constitution and we should continue to fight in the courts, but the truth is you can educate and litigate all you want, but kids are going to do whatever Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson tell them to do, because that is the world they know.
It is a marketing problem. He who controls the media controls the country. The left has made it socially desirable to be a radical liberal, and people embrace it even when it's principles fly in the face of common sense.
Organizations like the NRA and NSSF need to spend less on lobbyist, politicians and lawyers, and spend more on celebrities and social media. We have to stop thinking that most people are smart enough to see and understand the facts. Sadly, most people are not.
I would venture a guess that fewer than 1 in 100 Americans have any idea what the Bruen decision is, or what it means.
The right in general, and pro 2A folks specifically, need to recognize the biggest advantage the left has and work to counter it. With minor exception, the left controls the media. And many Americans believe anything they see on the idiot box, facegram and instabook, especially those under 40. Since the inception of the 24 hour news cycle, and the spread of social media, many people just mimic whatever their favorite celebrities say in a tick tock video. Conservative representation in the media is better now than it was 10 years ago, but it should really be high on the agenda for conservative leaders.
Sure it's a good idea to teach kids more about the Constitution and we should continue to fight in the courts, but the truth is you can educate and litigate all you want, but kids are going to do whatever Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson tell them to do, because that is the world they know.
It is a marketing problem. He who controls the media controls the country. The left has made it socially desirable to be a radical liberal, and people embrace it even when it's principles fly in the face of common sense.
Organizations like the NRA and NSSF need to spend less on lobbyist, politicians and lawyers, and spend more on celebrities and social media. We have to stop thinking that most people are smart enough to see and understand the facts. Sadly, most people are not.
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HARRYM
NES Member
Ya, that is the problem with parents........they have parental rights...........
What teachers want and what parents want are often at odds. At that point, the parents "win," since they're the taxpayers and they get to determine what the community values are.
But sometimes (often, in EMass) those values involve grades and college acceptances, not truly educated students. It is what it is. I'm free to seek a job in a community that values education more, if I choose to.
HARRYM
NES Member
Well, we simply have to take different roads here and leave it at that. Humanities is "teaching" things that don't belong in public education. The topics of humanities belong in each parental household. I know some will differ but this is my opinion.
No problem. I suspect many, many parents in your community (if you live in Mass, which is all I'm really talking about) disagree with you; the state requires the schools to teach humanities.
But we're largely discussing whether or not it's desirable to require civics instruction in schools. Out of curiosity, is that "humanities" to you? MANY NESers like the idea of requiring civics instruction in public schools; it's a common refrain here.
SteelShooter
NES Member
My daughter teaches second grade, I would bet there is not a single teacher or administrator in that school that have ever read the the COTUS, let alone knowing the difference between it and the Declaration of Independence and what the Bill of Rights are, much like the commander in chief.
You should move to a different community. Both my kids knew what the BoR was before fourth grade, and not just because of me.
Refer to pages 32-71. If you're dissatisfied with what kids are being taught, inform yourself and take it up with the teacher. If you get no satisfaction, take it up with the principal. Then the superintendent. Then the school committee.
Complaining about it here is not useful.
VetteGirlMA
NES Member
Is it go time yet? The country is seriously divided, one side has the lamestream media, corporate America and moral outrage
Go time or just screw the law? I don't advocate violence but civil disobedience should be the course of action.
HARRYM
NES Member
Indeed, I would suspect that I am not in the majority here in MA. Humanities is the "teaching" human culture, behavior and society, including art, language, and history.
In too many cases the teaching becomes someones opinion and someones agenda.
These are topics better left to the parents.
This is why I personally believe it's time for parents to have greater control over their childs education as well as allowing school choice for all Americans.
For now. Schools in my family's experience seem to be trending away from class rank, especially for the kids not at the very top (for example 1st or 2nd).
Garys
NES Member
Nothing that is not tested by MCAS will be required. My wife taught an elective class and she had to be sure to cover material that was tested by MCAS.
SteelShooter
NES Member
Not complaining , just informing. My kids know the difference and have been out of school for 12 years. And I spoke to all of 'educators' from kindergarten on and was a regular at the school board meetings and city council meetings. I know how it works, thanks.
SFC13557
NES Member
But they Left has immunity for violence against us, how many Antifa thugs were prosecuted after the Summer of Love? How many vandals have been arrested for defacing or firebombing Christian churches or Right to Life clinics? How many leftist thugs were arrested for harassing SCOTUS justices or Conservative Pols? Remember when Rand Paul and his wife were attacked in the streets of DC or when Larry Elder was assaulted in LA? Zero! WE are under attack both physically and verbally and we're supposed to run and hide
Yes, I'm 67 yrs old and retired and NOT TAKING SHIT from some Leftist puke.That is All!
Happy Independance Day!
Sir, You are a Statist! How dare you pass a law that mandates my PDO must take a Civics class. It goes against our beliefs! /sarc
See how easy it is to want a law when your side wants it? Yet if the other side proposes it, someone is being a statist. We need to be careful for what we wish for.
For now, Comrade, for now. Until you are blacklisted or gulagged until re-educated.
SFC13557
NES Member
And you will rot in jail in this State.
Sir, You are a Statist! How dare you pass a law that mandates my PDO must take a Civics class. It goes against our beliefs! /sarc
See how easy it is to want a law when your side wants it? Yet if the other side proposes it, someone is being a statist. We need to be careful for what we wish for.
For now, Comrade, for now. Until you are blacklisted or gulagged until re-educated.
It's not that they have a problem with civics, per se. It's that they have a problem with their PDO being "held back" (as they see it) in a class that doesn't get them into MIT.
They bitch and moan all the time, for example, about PE classes. Frankly, I do too: it's ludicrous to me that all students, even varsity athletes, need to waste their time in an unleveled PE class for a few years. But it's a state mandate, and it keeps PE teachers employed, so it's unlikely to go anywhere. Parents routinely seek waivers for high-achieving students to get out of their PE requirement. They would do the same for a mandatory civics class: not because it's civics, but because it's not AP Calculus or whatever.
Personally, the state has too many educational mandates as it is. But for civics, all there is are a middle school project, a high school project, and whatever they get during three years of HS history. Good teachers obviously weave civics into everything, but not every teacher cares any more about civics than some of the students do.
To drag this back on topic? The state mandates that we teach the BoR and Marbury v Madison/judicial review. A teacher who cares about 2A can use RKBA to teach those concepts very effectively, I would think (and I've done it). But just because it's taught effectively doesn't mean every student learns it fully.
VetteGirlMA
NES Member
That's why democratic governments can snub their nose at the courts and you as the individual cannot snub your nose at the democratic government. But.....if this were a republican state the democrats will snub their nose at the republican government. They got you just where they want you. Hiding in a basement with a loaded gun. So who really are the cowards here? The unarmed democrats or the heavily armed republicans?
