Looking at the United States at the present time and considering trends and decisions over the past four years, our times “seem out of joint”.
Executive orders in Washington, a Minnesota House of Representatives that cannot convene.
What was once in place for good civics to happen out of their own sense of right and fair seems to have gone missing.
It has been said these past few years, though more on the right than on the left, that politics is downstream of culture. So, if politics is of concern, we should look first to culture. Civics is shaped by culture, so maybe the pundits have it backwards – culture is downstream from politics. Bad politics can make for bad civics.
Where then is the fulcrum on which the lever of good civics can rest to balance our needs and wants, our agreements and our disagreements, our gender agendas and our racial discontents, our communication of our truths and our use of law to overcome our insecurities?
Or rather, is it a fulcrum of civics – no longer taught much at all – that we need on which to rest the lever of politics, as it seeks to check extremes and balance passions with interests, ideologies with compromises?
A public statement of wise advice is needed to share with our politicians and educators. Will you help us draft one?
Please join us for an in-person round table over lunch at noon on Tuesday, February 25, at Landmark Center, room 430, in St. Paul. The topic on the table will be “is our politics at odds with our civics?”
Registration will begin at 11:30 am.
Cost to attend is $20, which you can pay at the door.
To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.
The event will last between an hour and hour and a half.