"We Just Need More Civic Nationalism!"

"Partisan divisions don’t run neatly along the lines of particular policy issues: instead, we are split on the meaning of patriotism itself. For that reason, it’s likely that K-12 civics classrooms will be added to the list of flashpoints for cultural conflict." - Clare Basil

— The American Mind (@theammind) August 18, 2020

American Mind

By contrast, the Right often places greater emphasis on content civics, implying that a clear account of one’s history and an understanding of American institutions is sufficient for cultivating civic virtue.

Both approaches to civic education are inadequate because both are flip sides of the same coin. Each shares the aim of answering what it means to be a citizen, before answering the far more pressing and profound question, namely: what it means to be human. Answering this question is not a distraction from civics education. It is a necessary precondition for beginning to understand American citizenship.

What is Man?

This distinction between man qua man and man in his capacity as citizen is neatly delineated in theory in Aristotle’s Politics. But it is blurred by our regime’s own tendencies and political practice. Our civic order is centered not on the accidental qualities of the citizen body—important as they are in political practice—but on the essence of what it is to be human. As the Declaration of Independence states:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

It is because this document provides the cornerstone of our regime that the task of citizenship in the American republic is particularly demanding, for it presupposes an understanding and assent to what we hold man to be at his most basic level: created equal and endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights.

Yet, when K-12 reformers focus exclusively on civics—whether it be defined by activism or by content knowledge—they easily neglect exploring this more fundamental understanding embedded within out conception of citizenship: the understanding of what human begins are. Educating an American citizen demands first and foremost that one examine the truth of this statement from the Declaration and consider its implications for the political order.