...and here I sit, staring at the computer. Will we be seen as the generation that sat back and watched YouTube as everything eroded around us? This is going to be a difficult year and a half.

I'll admit I had to look it up:

ATAVISM:
1 a : recurrence in an organism of a trait or character typical of an ancestral form and usually due to genetic recombination b : recurrence of or reversion to a past style, manner, outlook, approach, or activity
2 : one that manifests atavism : THROWBACK

As one who works closely with lawyers and aspires to be one someday soon, I'll say that plenty of lawyers are jackasses. WolfDaddy's is Exhibit A. If you look at the Constitution as written in 1787, yes "atavistic" is appropriate (slavery permitted, slaves count as 3/5 a person for census purposes); but if discussing the Constitution as it is understood today, emphatically NO.

Stuff like this worries the hell out of me. So many of our fellow countrypersons have no idea what the Constitution even really says. Sadly, ranked among them seem to be many of our Representatives and Senators, and a certain Chief Executive.

When I was in high school, we had to take one brief "Government" class. Why the hell isn't Civics required to be taken every year?

"This is going to be a difficult year and a half."

I think the swing to the right in terms of rights and freeedoms in the US is going to continue for another 20 years or so.

I work with a young woman (early 20s) who is about to head off to a top-tier law school in the fall. Recently, a few of us were chatting over lunch about the recent federal court decision regarding habeas corpus, and how it's, like, you know, a good thing to preserve.

First jaw-dropping moment: she asks "what's habeas corpus?" Keep in mind she's already done her LSATs and gotten accepted into a top tier law school, and she doesn't know what habeas corpus is.

Second jaw-dropping moment: when it's explained to her what it is, and how it's fundamental in terms of safegaurding indvidual freedom against the state, she shrugs and says dismissively, "oh. That sounds sort of stupid."

And she's a sweet girl and all, but in that instant, all I could think was "oh my god, this country really is fucked."

Well scody, one could HOPE that she will have some decent professors who can teach her the importance of it.

Sure, but it strikes me as odd that it's not something she knows to begin with -- I mean, how do you pass your LSATs in the first place without knowing what it is?

But more that that, what's scary to me is that when the issue of preserving individual freedom from the excesses of state power was brought up, her first instinct was to blithely/sneeringly dismiss the very concept as "sort of stupid." It shouldn't require a law professor to convince a law student that protecting individual freedoms is a good thing. I mean, it's not exactly an obscure, complex issue; it's the basis of the U.S. constitution. Someone going to law school should already know (or at least not consider "stupid") one of the most the fundamental rights guaranteed by that document.

scody: LSATs require no knowledge of law or even basic civics. As I recall them, they were entirely logic puzzles and other things you'd find in the Verbal section of the SATs. Plus an essay on how to make a decision based on some facts your given (mine was "Should Company X offer on-site day care?" and it gave statistics about absenteeism stemming from family responsibilities, commute times and costs to create the day care).

American law schools should not admit about 85% of the students they do (partly because fewer than 85% of people who go to law school have any aptitude for, or derive any pleasure from, practicing),, but it makes lots of money for the schools and the student loan people. Most practicing lawyers, fortunately, never ever deal with the Constitution. It just has very little bearing on most of what you do when you work for business clients or insurance companies or banks or even doing wills, estates and divorces.

Well, you don't have to study any legal concepts to pass your LSATs. Nonetheless, the concept of habeas corpus is clearly the sort of thing an aspiring law student SHOULD already know on her own from history/government/civics. "Sort of stupid" is sort of scary.

The Constitution of the United States of America is atavistic?

Well, then, I must be atavistic too.

*grabs club and bearskin*

*emits Tarzan yell*