Civicwiki:Mission

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The government of the United States of America has been stable and continuous for almost 230 years. That alone makes America exceptional. No other modern government has existed that long or produced such dramatic success for its citizens, and for that matter, for the world.
The longevity of our government removes today’s youth 8 or 9 generations from its origins. Not surprisingly, few of us today understand or have a sense of our political heritage or the source or our success. Like a fish unaware of salt water, our long-running success is an uninteresting condition of life. If American success is to be refreshed, the ideas on which that success was built must be refreshed, for it is ideas that built it.

The original motivation for Civicwiki was the current state of political discourse. CW was (and still is) to be a reaction to the political process as it has evolved into what it has become today - a process filled with unsupported assertion, fact presented out of context, one-sided half-truths, fabrication presented as fact, and rhetoric calculated to elicit an emotional reaction, all to serve political agendas. (Please read about Civicwiki.) If we are to navigate through the fog of political marketing, we must have a reliable compass. To help with that and support discussion of the issues, CW's mission is also to refresh and explain the ideas behind American success. These are agendas that we hope are acceptable to all. Perhaps a few of the ideas presented on this site are original, but only a few. In all cases, we have relied heavily on history and the writings of other, more insightful minds.

America’s longevity was the result of many factors, but chief among them was a group of very smart people who were genuinely interested in solving the problem of government. They had no self-serving political agendas. They believed in a basic set of unalienable rights afforded to every person. They understood the need for a social and political society whose rights and security were guaranteed by a fair and just government. They understood that society would contain people of diverse interests that would have to live peaceably together. They were remarkable in their understanding of the problems to be solved if that society were to be stable. And they were well educated in the history of previous efforts and in the philosophy of rights and politics. From these understandings, they developed a constitution that defined the legitimate functions of such a government and sought to foresee the ways in which government could become corrupted. The Constitution of the United States is a document of eternal truths expressed in new government constructs. It is remarkable in its wisdom and foresight.

Civicwiki seeks to preserve that understanding and the ideas behind America's durable nation by telling the stories of both early and modern Americans, the events and philosophies that shaped our society, our civic structure, and what about those things that have made us successful as a nation.

Civicwiki also pursues its goal of political clarity, free from demagoguery, through fact based analysis of the issues that are of most concern to us today. (See about Civicwiki.) To support and provide fact for that analysis, and to refresh and explain the ideas that have been the source of American success, we (and our contributors) write to a group of main topics that explain America’s stability and success. Each of the main topics is explained on its own home page. These pages are worth reading in that they describe how each relates to America’s success and our mission. Here are the topics and links to their home pages: