| Response sheet #18, for class, Thursday | |
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Read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Super, super carefully. As a citizen of a country dependent for its survival and security on an informed citizenry, you should know these documents inside and out — especially as both of these foundational documents have been, and continue to be, under unprecedented and tremendous threat in American life. If each of us does not take on the responsibility of knowing and protecting these documents, then all of us are at terrible risk. 1. This generation of the so-called “Founders” tried to invent a new kind of balanced government as the basis for a free and durable nation. How would this government be different from, yet similar to, the English system of government, which blended monarchy (Crown), aristocracy (House of Lords), and democracy (House of Commons) as its guarantee of freedom? 2. The Bill of Rights was drafted as a compromise to assuage those Americans who felt that the Constitution granted too many powers to the federal government, without at the same time protecting the civil liberties of ordinary people, which seemed a step back toward the British mode of government, deemed tyrannical. (Ironically, the Bill of Rights was quite derivative of British political culture and its own investment in what it considered to be “liberty.”) What kinds of rights were considered especially at risk? Individual rights, or social rights? |