The Foundations of America
The Foundations of America
What do you learn in a class about U.S. federal government?
See the Spring 2024 overview, with all class summaries, here.
Content
Application overview
What you will know how to do, and have done, by the end of the class
General class structure and information
Class expectations and etiquette
About your instructor
Class syllabus
Application Overview
Applications are open from January 3 until January 26 (5pm EST); they will be accepted on a rolling basis, and sooner is definitely better. Popular classes will be repeated in April and May, and those applications will open in early March.
I’ll inform all applicants of their status, successful or not, by January 26 or sooner. I aim to answer each application within a week of its submission. If you have not heard back from me by then, feel free to shoot me an email: daniel@maximumnewyork.com.
Time: 6:30-8:30pm, Wednesday, February 7—March 27 (8 weeks)
Location: near Madison Square Park
Prerequisites: None
Completion reqs: final sit-down exam, all homework, no more than two absences
Tuition: $0-2,000. The price is $2k, give yourself whatever discount you need.
What you will know how to do, and have done, by the end of the class
You will have conceptual clarity about words like politics, civics, citizen, government, and more.
You will read and annotate a copy of the U.S. Constitution.
Draw a basic timeline of major constitutional paradigm shifts in the United States, beginning with 1789.
You will know what political capital is, how to get it, and how to use it. You will graduate with more than you started. You will feel like you “know how to do government things” on a basic level, in part because some of your homework requires it.
Draw a robust map of the United States federal political system; this will include dependencies at the state and international level, as well as local government relations. You will be able to describe every individual component on the map, how they relate to each other, and how soft and hard power change the government as described on paper.
Answer the question “What is the law?” for the United States. You will know the answer to this question for every locality, state, and the federal government in general terms as well.
Write a basic research brief about federal law. This requires knowing how to look up laws, interpret them, and contextualize them.
Describe the process by which laws are made in the U.S. federal government.
Label a map of all fifty states, including principal geographic features like major rivers and mountain ranges.
From memory, recite one short poem or political speech from United States history. I will have a menu for you to select from, but feel free to pull from our vast cultural catalog yourself.
General Class Structure and Information
Meeting Time & Place
Class will meet for two hours (6:30-8:30pm) on Wednesday, beginning February 7 and ending March 27. Our classroom is near Madison Square Park.
Class Structure:
Classes will be structured as seminars, not lectures. In the first meeting of each “Foundations” class, I will draw a map of the government on the whiteboard, and students will be the peanut gallery (it’s open season on questions and comments). We will repeat this exercise in various forms, including competitive ones, in each meeting.
There will be breaks about every 30 minutes. Eat snacks and do what you need to do then. And since class will be in the winter, and people will be coming in from the cold: please make sure to blow your nose and clear out sniffles before class, and as needed.
Attendance:
You cannot miss more than two of the eight class sessions. But if something comes up, just let me know and we can improvise.
If you are going to be late to class, you will need to text or email me with your approximate ETA. Don’t feel embarrassed or squirrely about being late, just let me know so I can conduct class accordingly.
Class Preparation & Homework:
There will be readings for each class, small class projects, and a final exam that is graded pass/fail. Plan to allocate at least 2-4 hours a week for this work. Final exams will be taken during your last class. If you fail the exam, you fail the class—but you can retake it once.
You will have to create a Substack blog for all classes (reasonable substitutions can be accommodated). Each week’s homework will include one Substack post that will be reviewed by me and class TAs. While I encourage students to keep their blogs public and share their progress, you can make your blog private too. You must complete all of these assignments to pass the class.
For the three Foundations courses, you must complete two “witnessing government” assignments. You will attend government meetings and respond to a variety of prompts based on what you witness. There will be evening, weekend, remote, and pre-recorded options. You must complete these two assignments to pass the class.
Join the Maximum New York Discord. Class participants will be added to a Maximum New York Discord server, which will be our primary mode of communication for coursework, office hours, and general discussion. There will be a code of conduct you need to accept to join the Discord, similar to the class expectations and etiquette outlined in the next section.
And after the course, the real fun of government and politics begins. It’s an open world.
Class Expectations & Etiquette
Classes are open to anyone who wants to improve the capacity of America’s government, with an end toward making America (and New York!) larger, more wealthy (both absolutely and per capita), more opportunity-rich, and more enjoyable for everyone. Maybe you want to get deeply involved in politics. Maybe you’re just intellectually curious. Maybe you’re somewhere in between. You’re welcome in any case.
The classroom environment I encourage is one of exploration, curiosity, playfulness, and charity/tolerance; if you have dug-in political ideas, you need to let those go, at least for the duration of the class. We are here to learn how things work first and foremost, although larger questions of political philosophy absolutely come into play at various points. You should think about politics as a systems problem with no perfect solutions, but still plenty of good ones.
This class has four formal rules of etiquette that you must follow:
Politics is a good word, and a potentially beautiful thing. We are here to learn how to do government as friends, in a chill fashion, even while dealing with weighty issues.
No bullshitting, aka be concrete. We’re all here to learn together, but we’re doing it in a rigorous fashion. You must always strive to deeply understand the reality of governance that underpins your political thought.
Extend grace to everyone. We’re here to learn together. Government and politics are complicated fields, and no one knows everything. We will be better, together.
Anger is the rare exception, and a friendly “what the hell” is the norm. Taking things seriously does not mean being mad about them. The wider world can pressure people to get mad to prove that they take political ideas seriously. I do not equate anger with either sophistication or dedication, so I relieve you of that burden. Make jokes, be serious, push back, learn a lot. But give yourself (and others) a break while you’re in class.
About Your Instructor
Hello, my name is Daniel Golliher (goll- as in the gall, the nerve, and the audacity; iher- as in how they say “your” where I come from: Gol-yer). I’ve lived in New York City for five years. Besides my writing on this website, you can learn more about me on Twitter, and my personal blog. I’ve written a few books, play the piano and sax, enjoy all manner of physical fitness, and can’t wait to meet you.
I graduated from Harvard College in 2014 with a degree in Government1, and since then I’ve worked in the legal industry, a coffee shop, higher ed, the legal industry again, and now I dedicate my time to Maximum New York.
Class Syllabus
The following is a general outline of subjects that we will cover in class. Additions and subtractions will be made according to student interest and competency.
The Foundations of America will focus on three broad domains: history, political theory, and political practice. They’ll all be addressed in an integrated fashion, rather than in sequence or isolation.
History is vital, because it reveals why America is the way it is. The nation is the product of path dependency and lock-in effects, and you shouldn’t govern if you don’t take these into account, because you’ll be producing them no matter what you do.
Political theory is necessary to inspire and motivate. It examines how government has been formed and revised in the past, and gives us the knowledge about how we might do it again now and in the future.
Political practice, otherwise called political strategy, is the study of how to connect political means to political ends. How to do things, not vaguely bullshit with your friends about what someone should do. Politics is as sophisticated as any science, and we will treat it that way. Some vital components of this field are knowledge of the governing structures of the city themselves, and the political players within them.
History:
We will create a sketch of American history in all its kaleidoscopic detail through an examination of its constitution and population over time.
The United States through its constitutions:
The colonial era, the convention of 1787, 1789, and the systems building that occurred from 1789 through ~1800
The Civil War and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments
FDR and the commerce clause
The 14th amendment, incorporation of the Bill of Rights
The Warren Court and President Lyndon Johnson: launching the modern system
The states by population over time
Assorted vignettes: the Reapportionment Act of 1929, the resignation of President Nixon, the ERA, the McGovern–Fraser Commission, and the Republican Revolution in the 1994 midterms
Political theory:
Case studies of creation and revision: deep dives into “The United States through its constitutions.” We will not merely discuss what was, but how it was done.
Maximum New York’s political philosophy
The means: social technology to develop and knowledge to acquire
The ends: actualizing higher expectations for America and New York, why and how (more wealth, population, and well-being)
Outcompeting the anti-politics meme
What does it look like to “get involved in politics”? Beyond the stereotypically narrow, often incorrect view
Political practice:
The federal government
Constitutional, Statutory, Administrative, and Case law
Components: President, Vice President, and the executive office; House of Representatives; Senate; federal court system headed by SCOTUS; independent, executive, and administrative agencies; and various others.
Public Corporations & Corporate Forms
The federal budget
Taxes!
Federalism, and the role of the states in the federal government
Elections
Various topics in federal politics:
The players and their stage
Pressure groups and lobbying: unions, good government groups, trade groups, and more. The business of lobbying.
Other topics that surface during the course