Civics and Civility in Thought and Action

Abstract

While some insist emphatically on the importance of “American exceptionalism”—that the United States serve as a beacon of democracy and self-government to the world—many Americans continue alarmingly unaware of the very principles on which their nation was founded. This is having consequences. The adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 marked a fundamental change in that country’s legal system, making communities more important than individuals. In “Canadian Crackdown” (National Review, June 11, 2012), Canadian television host and columnist Michael Coren notes that various groups up north are seizing new powers to assert their interests over the personal freedom of others. Although America has not entirely lost its focus on individual rights, Roger Clegg and John S. Rosenberg point out in this issue of AQ that we too have moved quite a distance toward group rights—even without passing anything resembling the Canadian charter. Defending affirmative action from the charge that it discriminates against whites, for example, its supporters will blandly cite statistics that show whites still a majority in the area under discussion, as if that should settle the matter. Indeed, the uproar over the Department of Health and Human Services mandate that all health insurance plans must include free contraception coverage revealed the startling extent to which many are fully prepared to hold the purported interests of women as a supposed group superior to religious freedom and freedom of conscience. Renewed attention to civics education is thus certainly due, and became especially urgent with the publication earlier this year of A Crucible Moment: Acad. Quest. (2012) 25:319–322 DOI 10.1007/s12129-012-9316-5