by Andrea Widburg
This illiteracy about the legal framework of the American nation is a devastating indictment of our education system and a danger to our liberties.
The United States Constitution is an extraordinary document. In minimalist terms, it creates a limited, tripartite republican government, ensuring as much individual liberty as possible within a functioning system. Significantly, citizens’ rights exist irrespective of government. The government does not give them and (theoretically) may not limit them. No other constitution is like that, especially the Russian constitution. But our uniquely de-educated American students don’t know that. They can’t tell one document from the other.
Just The News interviewed Nick Giordano, a political science professor at Suffolk Community College, and he said that 90% of his students failed a basic civics literacy test asking them to distinguish between the Russian and United States constitutions. Admittedly, his survey is only of the students at that college but, as the quoted article points out, if you look at what’s happening on college campuses across America, you’ll have no difficulty believing that the results would be replicated elsewhere:
“So for the last decade, I assign my students a constitutional exercise,” Giordano said on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “It’s to see if they could identify the Constitution, and 90% of my students can’t differentiate between the American from the Russian constitution. It really is startling.”
Literacy regarding the U.S. Constitution has been on the decline for a while, according to other studies.
According to a survey conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenburg Public Policy Center, only one in six U.S. adults could name any of the branches of government.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, a congressionally mandated program within the U.S. Department of Education reported that 31% of eighth-graders performed below the NAEP Basic level in civics in 2022.
Read the Russian constitution, and you’ll see it’s like any non-American nation’s constitution: A micromanaging wall of words.
The American Constitution is exquisitely brief. The main body describes a three-part limited government. Each branch of government has narrow, defined duties—making laws, executing laws, and deciding disputes that cannot be tried in state courts. The branches are set up to be able to police each other so no one branch becomes too powerful, which could pave the way to tyranny. The Bill of Rights, uniquely, makes clear that our rights do not come from the government. They are, instead, inherent in the people, and the government limits them at its peril.
The Russian constitution is very different. It immediately establishes the government’s vast powers and responsibilities:
In the Russian Federation the labour and health of people shall be protected, a guaranteed minimum wages and salaries shall be established, state support ensured to the family, maternity, paternity and childhood, to disabled persons and the elderly, the system of social services developed, state pensions, allowances and other social security guarantees shall be established. (Art. 7, sec. 2.)
Promises of liberty come from the government. Thus, Art. 13 promises that “ideological diversity shall be recognized.” Compare that with our First Amendment, which acknowledges that the government cannot infringe on people’s beliefs. In the same way, Art. 14 of the Russian constitution says that the state cannot establish a religion. Again, though, that’s a promise, not an inherent right to religious liberty. What the government giveth, it can taketh away, and the Russian government graciously gives these privileges; it doesn’t acknowledge these rights.
Indeed, in Art. 17, when the Russian constitution does get down to the business of rights, once again, they’re not inherent. They’re just recognized under international law:
1. In the Russian Federation recognition and guarantees shall be provided for the rights and freedoms of man and citizen according to the universally recognized principles and norms of international law and according to the present Constitution.
2. Fundamental human rights and freedoms are inalienable and shall be enjoyed by everyone since the day of birth.
That American students cannot tell the difference between that hedging gobbledy-gook and the clarity and universality of our Bill of Rights is horrifying.
But ultimately, of course, it’s all just words. The Democrats don’t believe in the U.S. Constitution. We’re witnessing a Bizarro Land mirror image of Peter Pan, that part when children watching the old play were instructed to clap their hands to show that they believe in fairies to save Tinker Bell’s waning life. In our case, Democrats refuse to clap their hands. They don’t believe in the Constitution and want it to die. Long ago, Barack Obama explained why:
Generally, the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you. But it doesn’t say what the state or federal government must do on your behalf.
Obama meant that the Constitution is flawed because it ties the government’s hands, keeping true power in the individual. That is anathema to leftists, who agree fundamentally with Mussolini’s description of fascism: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
Image: United States and Russian constitutions by Andrea Widburg.
Andrea Widburg
Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/10/russian_constitution_us_constitution_for_us_college_students_its_all_the_same.html
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