WHITEHALL — Common Ground Community of White Lake hosted its latest conversation-style event Tuesday at the White Lake Community Library, in which Ferris State University political science professor David Takitaki condensed his six-week Civics 101 course into two hours.
Takitaki provided a general review on the branches of the U.S. government, their roles, and the operations of governmental units on a federal, state, county, and municipal level. Besides that, Takitaki explained how, despite much of our government hinging on the original founding document almost 250 years ago, the operation of government has evolved in subtle ways over the centuries, with some changes happening as recently as a year ago.
Speaking of the original founding documents, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, Takitaki explained the rather small amount of guidelines the government has to go off of.
“It’s something you can read on a particularly long trip to the bathroom, if necessary,” he said of the Constitution.
He added that much of it is left vague and up for debate. This led to dissection of various political science “theories” on matters such as the role of a representative and the executive power of the president.
Takitaki rounded off the lecture by explaining the governmental units we are more familiar with interacting in our day-to-day lives, our local governments. In comparison to these state, county, and municipal officials, the 537 elected officials of the federal government pale in comparison.
Said Takitaki, “There’s a lot more government than what’s going on at the federal level… [there are] over 90,000 different types of [government] structures across the country.”
One of the discussion points Takitaki was asked to highlight for Common Ground was that of public service, and what the average citizen can contribute. As he explained, there are plenty of elected positions in the state of Michigan - about 18,000-22,000 – from the state to township level. To consider what these positions look like across the country, that’s half a million citizens who are “conducting some part of service. Most of that service is not partisan, most of that service is boring, a lot of it is administrative, but all of it is required for the function of government to deliver on anything.”
Widening that scope to non-elected governmental employees across the United States, that’s over 20 million of our friends and neighbors. Takitaki’s closing statement on the true breadth of civics and how average people can contribute is that “the vast majority of government is human beings in your neighborhoods, with jobs and families who are working boring, simple, but incredibly important jobs, delivering services, guaranteeing that our people are protected, making sure our children are educated, making sure that your water is clean and your roads are clear… we cannot let the big, shiny, controversial elements of government blind us to all of the different realities that exist within this system.”
