(Editor’s note: This is the 4th of 10 articles serializing Executive Editor Michael Ryan’s ebook YouRule!: How Saving America Depends Entirely on You And What You Can Do About It.)
So you’re in charge. Not just of your own life, but of a whole country. In this case, the most powerful on Earth. You’re like the prince or princess who is suddenly handed the reins of power through the abrupt passing of the monarch—except in this case, the line of succession is determined not by your bloodline as a royal but by your birthright as an American. Our Founders put you in charge. You rule. No pressure, right?
Our system of government has long been admired as “The American Experiment” because it’s a test of humankind’s ability to live as freely and responsibly as possible. In that sense, we’re both lab rat and scientist. It’s a prickly experiment thanks to human nature, human history and the rotten, loathsome, selfish, shortsighted leadership most of our fellow travelers have suffered under throughout the millennia. Thus, the American Experiment in total self-governance has always been a blindfolded, one-foot balancing act on the edge of a cliff while juggling flaming porcupines.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to keep those porcupines flying.
The first challenge for anyone in charge is to be up to the challenge. How are we doing on that count? Shockingly and frighteningly poorly, I’m sad to report. Our failings are on three primary fronts:
- As illustrated by the former president, we’re failing to grasp the unique and precious nature of America.
- As shown by tests, surveys and person-on-the-street interviews, we don’t understand how our system even works.
- And as demonstrated by the increasingly vocal support for socialism, particularly among the young, a large portion of the American electorate hasn’t bought into our system of government. Perhaps because it hasn’t been sold to them.
Ask yourself: If those in charge of either a company or country don’t know how it works, and don’t even necessarily buy into its mission, how can it possibly survive? What is the future of a self-governed people if they don’t know how to govern themselves?
Flaming porcupines or no, we’ve simply got to get our act together. One big reason: The American Paradox: While this country is the most powerful on Earth, it is also one of the most fragile. Other nations are held together by their DNA, their common ethnic heritage. The English can’t stop being English, Germans are Germans and surely the French would never deign to be anything but French. But the glue that binds America is our shared ideas and ideals, and our bond is only as strong as they are. It isn’t our ethnicity, but our ethic, that tethers us.
In short, America’s survival depends entirely on you.
An American Selfie: You’re Going to Want to Delete This One
As America’s chief protector and porcupine juggler, you’ve got your work cut out for you. When you merely glance at the state of citizenship today, the picture of America that emerges is more frightening than those internet selfies with tongues hanging out, which absolutely nobody needs to see.
Consider this small snapshot:
- According to the Nation’s Report Card, only 20-25% of high school students test proficient in U.S. history and civics.
- When asked by Pew Research Center whether they’d done any of 11 civic acts in the prior year, only 13% had done five or more.
- Participation in civic clubs plummeted 58% from 1975-2000.
- In a Harvard University survey, 51% of young adults say they don’t support the free market system that undergirds our most basic freedoms.
- 33% in the Harvard poll said they support socialism.
- As the 2020 presidential election neared, 76% of Democrats in a Gallup Poll said they’d vote for a socialist.
- In a 2017 survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, 37% couldn’t name even one of the five rights enshrined in the First Amendment: speech, press, religion, assembly and petitioning the government.
- In the same survey, 33% couldn’t come up with any of the three branches of government – which you, as the veteran porcupine juggler you no doubt are, recall as the Executive, Legislative and Judicial.
There’s much more where that came from to make you want to delete this picture, including anecdotal evidence—such as person-on-the-street interviews showing the fat, naked ignorance of the passerby. In my own research, I ran across an “Online Database Of Free College Essays” that offered to write me a custom essay on—get this—“Ignorance of America’s Youth.” For just $13.90 a page, I could conceal my ignorance from my professor and perpetuate it well beyond my college degree.
A great deal for me, not so much for the country.
Such a nation would have trouble even defending itself, were it not for the fact that our all-volunteer military is the best in history. Yet, as clear-thinking columnist Walter Williams once warned, “in 2009, the Pentagon estimated that 65% of 17-to-24-year-olds in the U.S. were unqualified for military service because of weak educational skills, poor physical fitness, illegal drug usage, medical conditions or criminal records.”
Rest assured, all this isn’t just a problem with our youth. Not by a longshot. The erosion of our civic infrastructure has happened over time and on the neglectful watch of several generations.
Next: How our civic infrastructure is decaying before our eyes, and when the erosion really started.
About the Author
Michael F. Ryan is executive editor of The Heartlander, as well as a longtime newspaper journalist and editorial writer, frequent speaker, and author of the international novel The Last Freedom on Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.
His award-winning work has appeared in newspapers and magazines since the 1980s, as he has made a decades-long study of civic engagement and its decline.
The full YouRule! ebook is available for 99 cents at either BookBaby or Amazon.
