Feb 24, 2017 4 min read

Editorial voices from newspapers around the United States:

Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter was something of a recluse even during his years on the court, and he’s been even more reclusive since he retired from the bench nine years ago. In 2012, however, he emerged from his cabin in the New Hampshire woods and offered observations about the woeful state of civic knowledge in this nation. Five years later those words seem prescient as we plunge forward into the Trump era. They also serve as a warning – and as motivation for pursuing efforts to restore robust, informed and engaged self-governance.

“I don’t worry about our losing our republican government in the United States because I’m afraid of a foreign invasion,” the former jurist said. “I don’t worry about it because I think there is going to be a coup by the military, as has happened in some other places. What I worry about is when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough, as they might do, for example, with another serious terrorist attack, as they might do with another financial meltdown, some one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power, and I will solve this problem.'”

Souter’s words serve as a portent for Candidate Trump’s chilling statement in his nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in July: “I alone can fix it.”

A populace unaware of this nation’s civic traditions as embodied in the Constitution, ignorant of the basic mechanics of governing and intolerant of tedious and mundane democratic processes leaves itself susceptible to a figure with little regard for democratic norms. We saw intimations of that in November.

Our over-burdened public schools are the arena for civic education. In fact, civic education is a core founding mission, as our Founding Fathers were acutely aware.

A nation that skimps on teaching the skills, habits and traditions of civic life endangers itself. In Souter’s words, “That is the way democracy dies.”

Several presidents have treated their vice presidents badly. Harry Truman knew all about that. When he took office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, he had to be told about the atomic bomb. Roosevelt had kept him in the dark.

Vice President Mike Pence should not be subjected to such treatment. His boss, President Donald Trump, allegedly failed to tip Pence off that former national security adviser Gen. Mike Flynn lied to him in a way that embarrassed the vice president publicly.

Coming just weeks into the Trump presidency, the Pence episode is disquieting. A substantial number of voters last fall set aside concerns about Trump’s temperament and voted for him in large measure because they respected Pence.

Trump is going to need all the friends and political allies he can get in Washington. For his own good – as well as that of the nation – let us hope he turns over a new leaf in his relationship with Pence.

Yale University has seen the light and decided to change the name of John C. Calhoun College to Grace Murray Hopper College. This is the first time in its 316-year history that Yale has renamed a building because of the legacy of its namesake.

Calhoun was an 1804 graduate of Yale, a representative and then a senator from South Carolina, and later a vice president of the United States. He not only accepted as normal, but passionately promoted the institution of black slavery in the South as “a positive good.”

Hopper was a computer scientist, an engineer, and a Navy rear admiral who received both master’s and doctoral degrees from Yale in the 1930s, long before the university accepted female undergraduates. She posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.

It is surprising that it took Yale so long to realize that artifacts from the days of Calhoun could be maintained and could be used as educational material, while the university could at the same time move on and rename the college after someone more worthy of the honor.

Yale has done the right thing.