Time to study civics again
By Kimball Shinkoskey
Our people need to wake all the way up before we can claim to be woke.
Being woke to national socialism that tries to impose an end to racism and sexism, or being woke to fascism that wants to enforce the same parental rights for everyone isn’t very politically enlightened at all.
America today is like America during the pandemic, only just a little less rattled. Then, education was put on hold, criminal justice was put on hold, social life was put on hold. Today we are back to “normal,” but that normal is our pre-pandemic habit of backsliding into ignorance, lawlessness and social isolation.
A few generations ago, kids actually learned something in school, society prevented and punished crime, and young people got married and had kids. Not so much anymore.
Given our lack of real wokeness, our recent public health crisis was just the first of others to come. Our educational pandemic is only in its early stages.
Our justice pandemic is digging deeper roots yet. Our social pandemic is looking more and more like China’s. Our overall political pandemic is just heating up. The framers of our Constitution had the key. We need to study the history of our own laws before we can be truly woke. We need civics in a big way.
Kimball Shinkoskey is a North Bay native, author and longtime state government worker who frequently speaks to the need for citizen participation, a renewed democracy and constitutional limits on absolute power.
