Why do you have to take this class? Part 1.
Because the state of Texas requires you do in order to get a diploma or degree from a publicly funded educational institution.- Texas Declaration of Independence.
- Texas Constitution: Article 7.
- Texas Education Code.
- Texas Administrative Code, Title 19.
- - Core Curriculum.
- TAC: Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
- TAC: Texas Education Agency.
- From the Texas Education Agency: Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for K - 12. Government.
Why do you have to take this class? Part 2.
Because you are a citizen in a governmental system based on mass participation. You may choose to exercise that right.
Attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”
Alexander Hamilton: For my part, I am not much attached to the majesty of the multitude, and therefore waive all pretensions (founded on such conduct), to their countenance. I consider them in general as very ill qualified to judge for themselves what government will best suit their peculiar situations; nor is this to be wondered at. The science of government is not easily understood. . . . men of good education and deep reflection, only, are judges of the form of a government; whether it is constituted on such principles as will restrain arbitrary power, on the one hand, and equal to the exclusion of corruption and the destruction of licentiousness on the other; whether the New Constitution, it adopted, will prove adequate to such desirable ends, time, the mother of events, will show.
John Jay: “Those who own the country ought to govern it.”
Thomas Jefferson: Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.
Thomas Jefferson: The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.
Thomas Jefferson: I know of no safe repository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. - Thomas Jefferson
