I never took a civics course, so I never learned a lot of things I should have. And now I feel like they are so obvious that I shouldn’t admit that I never learned them. But as a public service to anyone else who may be equally ignorant and too ashamed to admit it in public I will ask anyway (rather than just spend an hour figuring it out via Wikipedia).

What is the difference between the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader of the House, and the Majority Whip? I mean, I know that they are different, and I’ve got some general suspicions, but I don’t really have a strong idea of how it all works. And will the answer to that query explain to me what the Minority Leader and Minority Whip do? And are there other positions that I should be asking about also?

And how embarrassed should I be that I don’t already know these things?