Unpatriotic Civics: An Exploration of Founding Texts That Fulfills the Requirements of Ohio’s Collegiate Civics Law

Unpatriotic Civics satisfies Ohio’s statutory collegiate civics requirements—including sustained engagement with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, Adam Smith, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. But it does so without endorsing the patriotic narrative that legislators assumed would accompany them.Instead, the book treats those documents as historical artifacts of conflict, not sacred texts:the Declaration as a product of slavery and imperial panicthe Constitution as a counter-revolutionary settlementratification as class struggleemancipation as reluctant state violencecivil rights as unfinished insurgencyexcerpts from Adam Smith's major works and a chapter demystifying his place in economic theory.Pedagogically, the book is built for faculty autonomy. It provides:critical historical framing rather than moral instructionoriginal documents embedded in analytical contexta narrative that makes the mandated readings cohere as a single story rather than a grab-bag of iconsa tone that invites debate rather than compliance Read more