Let’s talk about perspective, because unless we clearly see and accurately perceive what is being lived through, we’re not in good touch with reality. Start with the simple children’s game of red rover, which has few rules. If one line sends its biggest kid charging at the other line’s smallest kid, everybody clearly witnesses a lack of caring for that small kid’s wellbeing. Some won’t approve; others won’t care because they value “winning” over risk of harm to that little kid.

Monopoly is far more complex than red rover, so it comes with a fulsome instruction sheet detailing the many rules of the game. I’ve seen people bend, break and rewrite those rules so drastically that the game is no longer Monopoly—it’s a charade they’ve created to guarantee their own winning at the cost of all other players’ impoverishment. That game has done more to legitimize capitalistic hanky-panky than a hundred politicians and economists locked in a room.

Religion is somewhat like Monopoly. It has rules, lots of them—but if you break too many in this game you may be tossed out and have to go find yourself another religion. However, if you break them on the sly, no one knows and you’ll not likely be inconvenienced. This widespread practice only means that people inclined to break rules can do so openly or covertly, the choice depending on opportunity and that very personal trait called virtue. Some have it, some don’t.

Then there’s constitutionalism, that biggest game of all, in which the stakes can be very high indeed—even unto life and death. Amazingly, the rules of this greatest game are not particularly well known, so that’s why I mentioned perspective in the first sentence above. It so happens that in our constitutional republic the popular perspective concerning rules is merely to stay “legal”—you either don’t break the law, or (lacking virtue) you do and see if you can get away with it. Such laws might require driving under 30 mph on residential streets, or might forbid selling deliberately under-secured junk mortgage derivatives. But this focus on merely obeying detailed laws falls way short of the Big-Rule Perspective we all need in a true constitutional republic.

Constitutional republicanism is among the most important games we mortals can ever play. It has rules, but they’re broader than those little everyday laws. Broadest of all are the seven Articles of our Constitution. But you can choose to honor, ignore or trash these too. At this moment several malcontented citizens are ignoring them while a few others actively seek to trash them and install some undefined replacement doubtless as tyrannical as the methods these people clearly favor.

Self evidently, they never learned the few big rules about living, respectfully, in a democratic constitutional republic—a dire educational system failure we must address as soon as this mess is past. Our choice is between two perspectives. First is seeing ourselves as a community wherein we care for each other, and cooperatively build mutual support for everyone’s wellbeing. Second is a selfish, competitive, me-first individualism that cares for little beyond power and wealth, not even valuing the rules of the great nation that enables their freedom of choice in the first place.

I look forward to the positive debates that will soon consider instituting new educational curricula, from first grade on up, to teach the few big rules that are foundational to our freedom. Those rules concern the protective and initiative purposes of government (read the constitution’s Preamble); how our rule-based federal system of government works (read its seven Articles); and the neighborly values we must all hold dear if The Great American Idea is to survive this onslaught of selfishness.  Self governing requires educated, responsible citizens who don’t admire, become—or elect—tyrants who failed to learn civic values, civil conduct and virtue in first grade.