OPINION

We need a big, bipartisan Teach About America project to counteract civics education failures and President Donald Trump's attacks on the rule of law.

Alan Charles Raul | Opinion contributor

Americans aren't sufficiently concerned about sticking up for the rule of law in our country right now. This is scary. We ought to be really worried about President Donald Trump’s nonstop attacks against judges, prosecutors, journalists and other groups he says are not nice to him. We cannot afford to tolerate disrespect for fundamental legal norms such as universal accountability under the law, impartial enforcement of justice, and the system of checks and balances designed by the Framers.

The president’s evident disdain for the rule of law cries out for a teachable moment. We need to make fundamental constitutional principles great again. It is simply not good enough to appoint judges who know the Constitution, we need citizens who do.

The future of our democracy depends on a large majority of the population valuing it. While Trump is not necessarily the cause of a generalized decline in respect for the rule of law, he certainly is a symptom. Indeed, some polls suggest that faith in democracy is dropping precipitously. Other polls report a growing sense that the country is failing to live up to our foundational ideals. Especially ominous is a poll by the Democracy Project revealing that the youngest Americans — millennials and Generation Z — do not seem to value democracy that highly. According to the Democracy Project, just 39 percent of these young people think it is “absolutely important” to live in a democracy.

Read more commentary:

Clearly, there is remedial work to do on “America 101.” Americans should know better than to acquiesce in assaults on basic constitutional principles. It ought to be widely understood that declaring the press the enemy of the people, politicizing criminal prosecutions, or vilifying the race or religious background of judges and immigrants is un-American. Civics education has plainly fallen down on the job if citizens don’t know enough to protest attacks on the rule of law from on high.

Here is a concrete idea to promote investment in the Constitution: Provide the country’s philanthropists — Bill and Melinda Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Charles and David Koch, George Soros, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, David Rubenstein, the Walton family and hopefully many others — with a way to funnel their charitable resources into a noncontroversial vehicle to help Americans understand America better. As soon as the new Congress takes office, Republicans and Democrats should charter a nongovernmental body to receive private, no-strings contributions from civic-minded Americans to fund a significant new Teach About America project.

A bipartisan Teach About America project

Congress could establish a new “American Endowment for Democracy” modeled on the international version it enacted following President Ronald Reagan’s famous speech to the British Parliament in June 1982. In his Westminster Address, Reagan proposed an initiative “to foster the infrastructure of democracy.” As part of his quest to win the Cold War, he said, “it is time that we committed ourselves as a nation — in both the public and private sectors — to assisting democratic development.” He decried “the shyness of some of us in the West” about standing up around the world for the rule of law and other high American ideals.

A new Teach About America project must be scrupulously bipartisan in management and nonpartisan in mission. It should provide grants to grade schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges and civic organizations to teach and debate the Spirit of ’76, our republican form of government, the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, the Civil War amendments and any judicial decision, congressional statute or executive order that significantly discusses any aspect of the Constitution. This initiative would have to be something both Colin Kaepernick and Colin Powell could agree on.

Teach democracy at home as well as abroad

Like the existing international Endowment for Democracy, the new American version should foster understanding and appreciation for freedoms of expression, belief and association, free and competitive elections, respect for the inalienable rights of individuals and minorities, free communications media, and the rule of law. Harking back to Reagan, if teaching democracy is important enough for us to do for the rest of the world, we should not be shy about teaching it at home.

The president’s nominee for attorney general, William Barr, will soon have a confirmation opportunity to reaffirm the fundamental value of the rule of law and constitutional checks and balances. Maybe Barr, a notably serious and tough lawyer, could even get the president to take account of the Constitution when tweeting. And if the president signed an American Endowment for Democracy law, that would be quite a MAGA legacy.

Benjamin Franklin, as he departed Independence Hall in September 1787, was asked what the newly adopted Constitution would bring forth. “A Republic, if you can keep it,” he reportedly replied. Two hundred and thirty-one years later, it is worth the effort to make sure we do.