Overanalyzed

Civic Literacy

December 11, 2008 at 1:03 pm | In Politics | No Comments
by Chris Davenport

I took an online civic literacy quiz not too long ago, it asked a lot of mainly trivia questions, but also some very interesting policy and mechanics of government questions.

Seems to me there should have been a few questions on that civic literacy quiz about why it’s good to be a citizen.

I would love to have seen a question “What is The American Dream?”

Because it seems to me that there’s been a shift. I spoke with a friend recently regarding Rights of Stewardship. Specifically, why we, as Americans, are allowed to be here and have the opportunities we do, and others aren’t. Immigration type stuff.

I’ve previously been lax on immigration; the US already accepts a huge influx, and obviously there’s interest in more. Most of the anti-immigration sentiment I see is regular bigotry and greed. Much of the real issue in my mind, has been the load on social services. Costs to provide public services, such as police, road maintenance, mail delivery, etc, increase with the population. Illegal immigration, which I’ve not specifically addressed, costs as much as legal immigration, but without the returns of tax collection.

That’s one reason the border states CA/TX/FL have higher sales taxes, to derive income from otherwise untapped people.

Which had left me in the position of being pro-immigration. Opposed to illegal immigration, of course, but in favor of general immigration provided the social services scale appropriately. Which just means that we accept whatever we can. Maybe that’s already true, I don’t know.

Recently, however, I’ve been thinking. Thinking about what entitles we citizens to be here and voting and not others. Strong in my mind is the reminder that we too have not been here very long. Colin made the point that other countries could certainly have followed the path that we did over the last 300 years. Had the policies we had, the culture, people, and resources, they could be where we are too. While much is debatable there, the single most important thing is the people, because they determine much of the rest.

I’ve read “People have exactly the government they want”. And it seems to me there’s some truth to that, once you get past the initial problem of knowing what they want, and knowing what their actions will give them, they continue to perpetuate the ideals that make their country what it is today.

What sets early America aside from other developing countries, at the time it was developing, and continually today, was the ability and desire for people to make something of themselves. That is “The American Dream”. Though if you read the wikipedia article or other references, you’ll find that it’s grown to mean you can make your life anything you want it to be through work and choice.

Seems like a lot of Americans today want independence. The ability to do whatever they want with nothing required of them. Ironically, yet predictably, they don’t want to work to achieve that.

So part of every American’s civic literacy is that dream. What entitles us to this country is that difference. That desire to work to better our lot, the ability to do so. I rather suspect many would rather win the lottery.

I suspect my Immigration policy has changed along those lines. As has my social program policy.