Reynolds Consent of Governed- A Teacher's Perspective

In today's Washington Examiner Glenn Reynolds wrote in his article: Consent of the governed - and the lack thereof:

"Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." This is boilerplate American history, and something that Americans -- and, in particular, America's political class -- have long taken for granted.

But now things are looking a bit dicey. According to a recent Rasmussen Poll , only 21 percent of American voters believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed. On the other hand, Rasmussen notes, a full 63 percent of the "political class" believe that the government enjoys the consent of the governed.

Even among the rulers, only 63 percent -- triple the fraction of the general populace but still less than two-thirds of the political class -- regard the federal government as legitimate by the standards of America's founding document. The remainder, presumably, are comfortable being tyrants.

These numbers should raise deep worries about the future of our republic. A nation whose government does not rest on the consent of the governed is a nation whose government holds sway only by inertia, or by force.

Reynolds theory for this is that bit by bit, American democracy has been watered down, much like the classic beer Schlitz was. This might be the case, but I propose an alternative theory- that bit by bit the next generation of American citizens have been brainwashed into accepting tyranny by their teachers.

In my post Students Accept Majority Tyranny I wrote:

Last week I was asked by a testing group out west to help grade some essays that students wrote. Thousands of students from the area took this test, which was designed to evaluate how well students understood how government worked in our society. These students all took either a semester or year-long course in government prior to taking this class, and all the students who took the test were either seniors or juniors in high school (17 or 18 years of age). I personally graded over a thousand of these essays over several days of work. In doing so, I was able to read first hand what the students in our classrooms thought and believed, and what I read chilled me.

According to most of the students (about 2/3rds), the advantage of being the majority party in Congress, like the Democrats are today, is that they can pass laws that favor themselves, they can vote to transfer money from the minority party's districts and supports to the majority party's districts and supporters, that being in the majority means they can pay themselves more money and the minority party less, that being in the majority means that they can tax anybody they want, and can do 'whatever they want.' The phrase 'the majority party can do whatever they want' was written on over half of the essays that were written.

The overwhelming thought that I left with was that students in our nation, the youth and future of our country, are totally okay and fine with majority tyranny. In their minds, there is nothing wrong with one party, just because it has more, putting in place laws and policies that favor their supporters over others. In my class, I pound majority rule with minority rights, and I talk about the problems of democracy and why we went with a republic, but most teachers, in fact almost all teachers, seem to be giving students the impression that minorities do not have rights and that our nation is a democracy.

Our next generation is being bred to accept tyranny- it is being taught that it is okay for a government to rule through force, as long as they are in the majority. How are they taught this? In Liberal Teachers To Students- Play God I detail a typical lesson plan for teachers:

A frequent activity that teachers have students engage in is to have students from social studies to elementary school to high school pretend that they are a government entity or official and give them control over the world to do anything that they want, without any consequences at all.

In Watching a Liberal Teacher Indoctrinate Youth I talk about my experience watching another teacher, and end with this:

To this teacher, and to thousands of teachers around the nation, their job is not to teach math, science, reading, writing, or history. Their job, as they believe it to be, is to indoctrinate the youth of our nation into accepting and fighting for tyranny. Their jobs are to teach students to disobey their parents and throw down man so that he can be raised up again as a new man, more progressive and communist.

Reynolds might think that the American brew of democracy is being watered down, but I think it is more that the drinkers of that brew are being taught to spit it out and instead do some shots from the hard liquor of tyranny by their drunk-on-liberalism teachers.