Billenkoek

When it comes to politics, we frequently talk twice as much as we should and listen half as much as is deserved. With our mouths open so much of the time, we fail to get the facts. And this often leads us to paint things in hyperbolic black or white.

One area where we seem to do this regularly is with the Founding Fathers. Depending on our side, we label the Founders as devils or demigods and the constitution as a wicked document or holy writ.

Is it possible both sides are distorting the truth?

Joseph Ellis, one of the nation’s foremost scholars of American history, suggests that we are. He has written an excellent article for the online Encyclopedia Britannica called “Founding Fathers” that points out both the amazing things the Founders achieved with the birth of this nation and some of their most egregious failures.

I don’t know about you, but I find clarity a good thing. I think it helps us have more productive conversations. If you agree with me, I think you’ll enjoy the clarity Ellis brings to the Founders and the nation they set up. Read his article here.

For my part, I think the Founders set up an awesome system. Not because it was perfect at birth, but because it was a system that got enough right to allow us to get where we are today. Look at how far we’ve come on so many fronts! And it got enough right to allow us as a nation to get even better in the future.

Just consider what the Founders implemented that was in no government at that time. The ideals of individual liberty, the separation of powers, the ability for a huge swath of citizens to elect their leaders, the ability to change the constitution itself, the separation of church and state, and the engine of democratic capitalism that has lifted more people out of poverty than anything else the world has seen.

The Framers didn’t create the Constitution in a vacuum, but nowhere in the world had anyone set anything up that went so far. There was nothing like it, no real examples to follow. And many thought it would fail, just as France’s attempt in their revolution failed just a few years later.

As for things they got wrong. Well, they themselves soon recognized the way we elect the president and vice president didn’t work and adjusted it. Their idea that political parties wouldn’t form was wrong. Their idea of a militia for common defense didn’t work (see my writeup here). Their compromise on slavery was a festering sore that came to a head before the Union was 100 years old. Their treatment of the Indians was awful. Their reasons for excluding women and those not owning land was bone-headed.

So, yes, they got some things wrong. Some of them held some beliefs that we find appalling today. And the nation has not implemented their stated ideals as well as we might have hoped. However, the Founders got so many things right. And what’s more, they did it as men living in the times they lived, having grown up with the beliefs and values of that time, not those of 2019!

While we as a nation have progressed from some of their failures (thank heavens), in other ways the Founders may be are our betters. There are a great many lessons to learn from them, both from their successes and failures. One is their humility—they knew what they’d created wasn’t perfect. Let’s not imagine that we or our ideas are perfect either.

If you’re at all interested in politics, I recommend Ellis’s article and its view of the Founders. Read it article here.

There’s nothing quite like the laughter and fun a good family or party game creates. And we discovered two games this summer that have brought hours of pleasure.

The first is Just One. It’s for 3 to 7 players and takes about 20 minutes to finish.

Now, I was skeptical of this game at first because it’s a cooperative party game.

I mean, come on. Cooperation?

No teams?

No competition?

What were we going to do—hold hands and sing Kumbaya?

I was fully expecting to be bored out of my mind. Boy, was I wrong. There was suspense, laughter, and loads of fun.

There are 13 rounds in each game. In each round, one player blindly selects the number of a word on one of the game cards. The other players each write a one word clue to help that player guess the word. However, if two or more players write down the same word, they have to remove that clue.

So you’re trying to come up with one-word clues the others won’t that still help the guessing player. Some clues lead the guessing player off onto funny tangents. Others are just funny. And then there’s the suspense of whether someone else wrote your word and whether the player will be able to guess it from the clues that are left.

Your goal is to guess all 13 words selected. And there’s a little score card that ranks what it means if you get 13, 12, 11, etc.

As an aside, it’s crazy to me that the score card provided motivation. But it did. It was a delightful little brain hack.

One Word is a quick, fun game. We’ve played it with a few as 3 and as many 8 players and had a ball each time. We are so happy to have it in the family game closet.

The next is Fish Bowl. It’s for 4+ players. What this game does is take favorites like Taboo, One Word, and charades and mixes them together in a competitive game between two teams.

Here’s how you play it. Each person writes up 5 to 7 different words or phrases on separate slips of paper, folds the papers, and puts them in a bowl. Then you do 3 rounds.

Round 1 is like Taboo, where you can describe, but can’t say or act out the word or phrase on the paper. You select a team to go first. One person on the team selects the papers from the bowl and then tries to describe the word or phrase. The team has 30-45 seconds (you decide) to guess as many of the words as possible. When the time is up, it’s the other team’s turn. Back and forth you go, selecting a new team member each turn to give the clues, until there are no more slips of paper in the bowl. Then you count the number of slips each team got and move to round 2.

In round two, you put all of the slips of paper back into the bowl. The team that went second in the first round starts this one. This time the person giving clues gets to share one word. That’s it. And the team has to guess it. Again, the team has 30-45 seconds to guess as many as they can.  Then it goes to the next team. And you switch back and forth just like you did in round 1, and when the slips of paper are gone, each team counts up their score.

In round 3, you put all of the slips of paper back into the bowl. The time the person giving the clues has to act them out. No words allowed. You run this round just like you did the first two with  30-45  second turns, switching back and forth between the teams until all the papers are gone. At that point, the teams  total their scores for this round and then for all 3 rounds together to see which team won.

If you don’t want to use paper, you can play a version online.

Either way, it’s another fast, fun game. In fact, we played it last night. And laughed and laughed when one daughter was trying to get the other to guess “sling” and nailed her teammate in the head trying to act out a rock hitting Goliath.   Movies are great. But sometimes what you need is some delightful game fun. And I’m betting you’ll love these.