Friday, May 8, 2020
Federalist Papers, Too Important For Monopoly?
Federalist Papers, Too Important For Monopoly?The Federalist Papers, many say, would be better suited to a board game than to the classroom. And perhaps this is a good way to teach people how the Bill of Rights came to be.Most of us were brought up in a public school that taught students about government. We learned about the three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial. But we were never given a very detailed understanding of how those three different branches worked together to create a unified government.No, when you went to college, you learned to obey the rules, so that you could get a degree that would make you more employable in the future, so that you could move on to teach. The idea of the history of government did not exist when you went to school. It just didn't matter.But now that you are on your own, in the workforce, you want to understand how those different parts of government got there, and why we have them in the first place, but your own perso nal opinions about each one of them have no relevance to the question at hand. So your training is not only failing you, it is also failing you because you don't understand them.One thing that you have to know about each branch of government is how it is organized, or what kind of work they do on issues such as public health, national security issues, energy issues, or what tax levels apply. What their powers are, and what powers they don't have. These are the types of questions that our system of government was designed to avoid, and that is exactly what the Federalist Papers attempted to address.But the problem is that we don't live in a time where the Constitution is enforced with some of its intended term limits. You see, the Founders wanted the government to be smaller than it is today and to work more cooperatively. They wanted representatives to represent you, not people with a constant stream of campaign contributions to buy off every member of Congress.As long as the Founde rs have been in existence, the current system has been getting larger. Each generation seems to think it can get away with ignoring the limitations set forth by the past. Unfortunately, if your opinions don't jive with the current political system, then the system won't work for you.Perhaps you will still enjoy playing Monopoly, and your friends will have all the term limits. But if your government is not working for you, and you are having difficulty living with it, you might want to reconsider playing. Most of us do have more important things to worry about.
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