Lecturer: R. Stanton Scott
Email: rstantonscott@foggybottomline.com
Class Meeting Time and Location: Asynchronous
In January, I’ll begin a Topics in American Government and Politics lecture series.
Over the course of 8 online lectures, I will discuss the historical roots of the US Government, how it operates today, and what other institutions, organizations, and norms govern that operation.
The intended audience for this course included adult learners and parents who wish to include a college freshman level US government course that does not avoid difficult topics (e.g., ethnic cleansing of indigenous Americans, slavery, and post-Civil War efforts to use the law to continue the oppression of former slaves) in their homeschool curriculum.
Upon completing the series students will have a fundamental understanding of our political institutions and the analytical tools needed to examine and evaluate government and media reports, track sources of influence, form their own opinions and viewpoints, and become an active participant in American politics. Students will be able to explain the policy making process, as well as why some Americans participate in this process, and some do not.
I also plan to help students develop the skills needed to succeed in this and other social science course work.
Homeschool parents looking for an online government course for high school juniors and seniors should contact me to discuss a specific program and evaluation standard, including assigned books and readings.
This is a college-level survey course taught at the freshman level; I will expect student work to meet this standard.
Lecture Format
More to come on this.
Course Materials
The base textbook is American Government 4e. This is a free, open-source textbook I use for the foundational lectures on the structure and power of the US government. It is available at this link: https://openstax.org/books/american-government-4e/, where you can read it book online, download a free PDF, or buy a physical copy through the OpenStax bookstore.
I also use the following resources to prepare the lectures and teach the class. This is a rather extensive list, and it is not necessary to purchase and read all of them in their entirety, though I highly recommend them all if you have an interest in the specific subject.
For most casual students (e.g., adult learners who want to know more about the US government and how it works), simply watching the lectures will meet their needs.
Homeschool parents looking for an online government course for high school juniors and seniors should contact me to discuss a specific program and evaluation standard, including assigned readings, papers, and exams.
The Framer’s Coup, Michael J. Klarman.
Ratification, Pauline Maier
America’s Constitution, Akhil Reed Amar
Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, James Madison (Ohio University Press, 1985)
Debate on the Constitution, Library of America
The Federalist Papers, Library of America
The Constitution and the States, Patrick Conley and John Kaminski
Original Meanings, Jack Rakove
What the Anti-Federalists Were For, Herbert Storing
Slavery’s Constitution, David Walstreicher
Class Conflict, Slavery, and the United States Constitution, Staughton Lynd
The Second Amendment – a Biography, Michael Waldman
How Democratic is the American Constitution? Robert Dahl
The Myth of the Lost Cause, Edward Bonekemper III
Disunion: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859, Elizabeth Varon
The Second Founding – How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, Eric Foner
The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic – Reconstruction 1860-1920, Manisha Sinha
The Nation That Never Was – Reconstructing America’s Story, Kermit Roosevelt III
The Rise of Southern Republicans, Earl and Merle Black
Racial Realignment, Eric Schickler
Fault Lines – A History of America since 1974, Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer
On Fascism: 12 Lessons from American History, by Matthew MacWilliams
The Social Construction of Reality, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman
The Logic of Collective Action, Mancur Olson
Because we can study politics and political institutions by watching contemporary politics, I may from time to time take resources as needed from news and political journals, magazine articles, scholarly journals, and documentaries.
Grading and Evaluation
Students who wish to have course work assigned for evaluation (e.g., homeschoolers) should contact me separately for assignments and evaluation standards.
Lecture Subjects
Lecture 1: The Constitution, Federalism, and the First American Republic
In the first lecture I set the state with a discussion of why the Articles of Confederation failed and the writing and ratification of the US Constitution placed within the historical context surrounding the debates. This lecture includes my thoughts on the specific ways that slavery, the failure of the Articles of Confederation, continued tensions between the US and Britain, France, and the Native Tribes, as well as social issues and institutions of the time influenced the construction of the US government and its specific terms. I’ll use Dahl for a discussion of the anti-democratic components (e.g., the Senate and Electoral College) and how the need for ratification forced specific provisions and post-ratification Amendments.
Lecture 2: Institutions of Government – Congress, the Presidency, and the Courts
With a Constitutional foundation established, I discuss the organization, rules, and powers of Congress, the Presidency and associated bureaucracy, and the judiciary using the Constitution as a starting point. I use an historical narrative to describe how these institutions have changed over time with expansion of the US, technological and social change, and the need to engage with the world community in a leadership role. This includes a discussion of the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, as a potential super legislature. In Lecture 3, I shift from the institutional organization of the US Government to social and political changes that in turn drove changes to those institutions.
Lecture 3: Disunion – Civil War and the Second American Republic
Almost immediately after ratification, divisions over economic growth and government finance, industrialization, taxation, and slavery threatened to break up the new Republic. In this lecture I touch on rising opposition to slavery, forced migration of indigenous Americans with US expansion, and continued tension between State power and federalism. I close by outlining the Constitutional changes that came with the end of the Civil War and why scholars frame this as a new Constitution and a second Founding.
Lecture 4: Reconstruction, the Myth of the Lost Cause, and the Fall of the Second Republic
After the war ended, Freedmen filled the power vacuum in the South left by disenfranchisement of Southern elites who had committed treason in defense of slavery. Soon, however, Northern States grew weary of managing reconstruction and as former southern elites began to reenter national politics, they reached a grand bargain to end Reconstruction and rehabilitate the traitors. After retaking political power, Southern leaders began to recreate slavery in all but name through laws that restricted the liberty, behavior, and political power of Freedmen and through Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. They also reset secession and Civil War as a noble but ultimately lost cause effort to protect an honorable narrative of chattel slavery to help justify segregationist race relations. In the end they succeeded in halting the integration of newly freed slaves into the American polity until World War II.
Lecture 5: Wealth Disparity, Depression, World War, and the Third American Republic
The sixty years between 1870 and 1930 brought rapid technological change that exponentially increased the ability of Americans to move around and communicate. Railroads, telegraphs, and later radio expanded trade and opened new markets. Early industrial capitalism created massive wealth disparities as small numbers of people captured control of nascent manufacturing, transportation modes, and extraction industries. American capitalism suffered more than one depression, and the massive disruption caused by the 1929 stock market crash and the Second World War led to a New Deal for Americans. National government suddenly began to regulate capital in new ways and used taxation powers granted during the War to redistribute wealth for the first time. Courts began to apply the rights found in the Constitution to restrict State and local power as they previously restricted only the National Government. Service by minorities in World War Two, along with worries about appearing less democratic than the Soviet Union during the Cold War, drove support for desegregation and expansion of civil and voting rights to African Americans.
Lecture 6: Nixon, Realignment, and the Reversal of the New Deal
Rapidly changing social conditions caused by the Civil Rights movement, desegregation, the Viet Nam War, and growing acceptance of alternate sexuality created a backlash and energized a reactionary right-wing social movement to block social change and arrest development of American society in the 1950s. A coalition of evangelical Christians, neocon and anti-tax conservatives, and white supremacists pushed back against desegregation using sudden opposition to abortion, growing budget deficits and national debt, and concern about the expansion of communism as rallying issues. Nixon and Reagan used clever rhetoric to realign segregationists into the Republican Party is a “Southern Strategy” that allowed them to capture the White House and Congress for most of the forty years between 1968 and 2008. This allowed them to implement a Federalist Society plan to capture the Federal judiciary and in turn let them enable a rollback of civil rights protections and protect legislative changes.
Lecture 7: Tea Parties, the Alt-Right, and Christian Nationalism as a Social Movement
The 2007 housing crisis created conditions for a change election, and Americans got a big one when we elected the first African American President in history, Barack Obama. This triggered formation of the Alt-right movement in the form of local Tea Party and paramilitary groups like the Proud Boys and Three-percenters. These groups expressed concern over perceived anti-white discrimination and the possibility that immigrants and minority groups might replace them as the masters of American society. Open neo-fascism and racism became more socially acceptable, and right-wing groups united to march in Charlottesville, VA to protest the removal of Confederate monuments, most of which had been placed in the 1950s and 1960s in a renewal of the Lost Cause narrative and to protest desegregation. This would lead directly, if unexpectedly, to Trump.
Lecture 8: The Age of Trump and American Fascism – a Rising Fourth Republic?
The American right wing became less alt-right and more obviously fascist, with all the racist, bigoted, and nationalistic views that suggests, during the 2016 Presidential campaign. Democrats failed to read the room and recognize the growing disgust with capitalism among young Democrats and nominated Hilary Clinton, on paper qualified in every way, but attached at the hip to corporate and government elites in a way that made her part of the problem to young Americans. With effective use of social media and a corporate mainstream media, Trump managed to create a coalition of disaffected Americans by making it OK to openly express racism and bigotry against any group with little political power while claiming victimhood for being white. I share my thoughts on how and whether this will take the US down the road to fascism.
I’m looking forward to providing this resource and hopefully creating an audience of people interested in learning more about American government and politics. I’m especially curious to know whether homeschool parents are looking for a government class that does not pull punches when it comes to our problematic history and government.
If you have questions, please contact me by sending an email to rstantonscott@foggybottomline.com. I will respond as soon as possible, but response times on weekends may be longer.