Two things we need in America, three actually.
First on my agenda would be a national compulsory voting law. The second and third would involve compulsory course requirements in K-12 public education, being compulsory and neutral civics lessons beginning around the sixth grade and continuing annually. In grades 8 through 12, I would want to see classes that teach critical thinking. The details are always debatable and mutable according to need and to design, but the essence is there.
Governments that are structured as representative democracies rise and fall according to the quality of their electorate. While democracies may be more inclined to thrive in terms of equality, human rights, and liberty… they are also the most vulnerable… and, as we have seen in recent years, susceptible to a profane level of inequity through corruption and control by an organized oligarchic entity.
This is by no means a quick fix, but is a long term and necessary solution to much of what is wrong about our political structure in America today, something in which we need to invest as soon as practicable.
I don’t hear anyone talking about this in political leadership and the only way they ever will would be if the American people demand it. It would be cynical to suggest that the leadership in both parties would not be willing to champion the idea of this particular threefold approach to reform, but I think there’s an element of truth in that kind of cynicism today.
I’m not an academic, nor am I a political leader by any stretch of the imagination, but if someone with a validating resume were to put this forward, give it a name, and make of it a movement and an issue, they would likely be remembered kindly in the history books henceforth and in a gradually more progressive America.
If you are that person… this is your cause and maybe your destiny. Seize it.