American National Government | Podcast on RSS.com

American National Government

American National Government

by Jennifer Miller

Season 1

Intro to Our Course and Canvas

Hello everyone and welcome to our podcast on American National Government! In this first episode, we will get an introduction to this course and in particular to the course Canvas site. Some of the most critical tools you will need to navigate this class are the Weekly Roadmap Pages which are discussed early on. We will spend about 15-20 minutes on that as well as the other parts of the Canvas site such as the Syllabus, Assignments, Grades, and Announcements. This episode wraps with a few tips to (hopefully) make working through this course a big more manageable. I'm very happy to have you joining this course and look forward to 'speaking' with you for the next several weeks!

What is "Democracy"? And what's going on with American Civic Engagement?

Hey everyone, and welcome to our second podcast episode on American National Government! In this episode, we finally get into the real meat and potatoes of this course, and we begin with democracy. In particular, we define it (and learn about different methods of defining) and then this episode covers features of American political culture such as our party divisions and individualism. The final approximately 10 minutes of this episode covers the data on how the public views government and democracy in terms of levels of trust and overall support for the current politics we have today. Our final activity: what is the level of civic engagement in the U.S. today? Let me know if you have any questions or concerns upon listening to this episode and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

The "Original" Constitutional Crisis

Hiya everyone! Welcome to our first really in-depth week of material on the Constitution and federalism! Today's episode is going to hone in on the Constitutional development process, with discussion of a few major historical events (such as the Boston Massacre and the Constitutional Conventions) as well as the major negotiations that went down between the large and small states (regarding representation compromises as well as Federalists and anti-Federalists. Our conversation ends with an overview of the different articles of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the 17 other amendments we have now. It's a lot to cover but hey, it was the original constitutional crisis... and that deserves some real discussion!

Sharing Isn't Something We're Great At...

Howdy all, welcome to our fourth episode on American National Government! In this episode, we are going to spend all of our time talking about federalism, or the way we balance power between the national government and state governments. We'll briefly touch upon separation of powers and checks and balances, but federalism is our primary concern. The slides this week talk about how our Constitution and our federalist balance have evolved, the different eras of federalism (e.g. state-centered, cooperative, etc.), and finally how the national government has pushed for what it wants (through grants or mandates for instance) while states have pushed back using lawsuits and sanctuary declarations and policies. To say we're not good at sharing doesn't quite cover it, but our conversation sure will!

The Bill of Rights in Reality, Part 1

Welcome back everyone to episode 5 in our series on American National Government! Episodes 5 and 6 are all about our civil liberties, aka our fundamental individual rights. This podcast is all about the first portions of our Bill of Rights as well as the rights we find in the Constitution itself (habeas corpus, ex post facto protections, and limitations on bills of attainder). In this conversation, I'm going to walk us through the present-day limitations on religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition. And we'll quickly also get into the Second Amendment and our limits on the right to keep and bear arms. Truthfully, the limits we find are often established in extreme cases... so buckle up because the ride we're about to jump can be pretty shocking with the ways we've tested the limits of these rights!

The Bill of Rights in Reality, Part 2

Hi folks, and welcome to episode 6, the continuation of our discussion about civil liberties and the Bill of Rights! In this episode, we'll continue our rather crazy journey looking at the status of our rights today by working through the remaining amendments (Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth) as well as the limitations we experience in terms of those rights in times of conflict or crisis. These rights discussions are never dull (in my opinion) whether we are dealing with what is reasonable, definitions of probable cause, trial rights, or exactly what types of punishment we would consider cruel and unusual. As with episode 5, know that we'll be getting into some boundary discussions that certainly can be uncomfortable... and take a breather from the episode when you need it!

Real Talk About Discrimination

Hey everybody, and welcome to Week 4 and our discussion of civil rights! This is one huge topic and given that we're going to focus on key concepts: civil rights, public discrimination, private discrimination, equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, and state action. It's important to understand what types of discrimination are and are not allowed under existing law... and that's often going to depend on which groups we define as not covered by the law (e.g. do we base it on age, sex, race, etc.). Our civil rights amendments (the 13th, 14th, and 15th along with the 19th, 24th, and 26th) will outline what limits we have on discrimination but the reality is that many times discrimination is allowed in our political realities when it should not be according to the words of those amendments. To wrap this discussion, I will ask you to complete a timeline on a group of your choosing... covering the history of all groups is simply impossible, but it's important to allow you and others to investigate civil rights more in-depth than we could ever go in class!

So you know that they know what you know, you know?

Hello students of American National Government, and welcome to our Week 5 podcast episode on public opinion! In this marathon episode (yep, it's just under an hour), we cover all things public opinion-related: concepts like polling (and how to do it well), polling resources like Pew and Gallup, the factors that affect and influence public opinion (particularly socialization, generational effects, and psychological factors like morality pillars and negativity bias), the issue of framing, and then we break down political ideology by demographic subgroups. There is a lot of divide we see in public opinion (known as polarization) but on a lot we are united... so keep that in mind as you wrap up the episode with discussion of our political knowledge, trust, and the debate we'll have during our final week of class!

The 5 W's (Who, Where, When, What, and Why) of Voting

Hello again all, and welcome to episode 9 which includes our discussion on voting! In this episode, we're going to focus on two key topics: voter turnout, aka who shows up to vote (and who doesn't), and voting rules and procedures, or the processes we are required to follow to vote. Our review of turnout data is interesting to say the least... we can see some big differences in turnout based on age, education level, and household income--but why do these things make such a difference in figuring out if we're a voter or a non-voter? What are our rules for voting? Do you need to register? Can you complete early in-person voting or can you vote by mail? What other factors affect our voting behavior? These are all questions I'd like you to consider as you listen to this podcast and as we move forward next time to our conversation about elections!

Rules of the Game: Elections Version

Howdy all, and welcome to our second episode on voting and elections! In this episode, it's all about the elections baby: the primaries, the generals, and the special elections (as well as that whole invisible primary process). The rules for Congressional elections are quite different than what we do for the presidency--with that office, we run through primaries and caucuses, the national conventions, and of course the Electoral College as part of our selection process. At the end of the day, what we have is mostly a series of first-past-the-post elections that use direct democracy. But there are alternatives out there, in states like Alaska which use majority systems like ranked-choice voting. Our conversations ends on the issue of electoral integrity and fraud. While many think we have widespread election fraud, the evidence we will investigate does not support this. That said, we should be on the lookout in the future... so take your time to do that research if that issue reemerges as a key talking point post-2024!

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