Report: Americans Know Pop Culture Better Than History
Samuel Adams
My reaction when I saw the headline “More Americans Can Identify the Gosselins than the ‘Father of the Constitution’” was, “Who the heck are the Gosselins?”
Sorry, I guess I spend too much of my time reading and learning useful information and just don’t have enough time left over to learn useless drool from our pop culture.
Have you (as a patriotic, freedom-loving American) ever wondered how Americans could elect corrupt leaders who make it fairly obvious even in their campaigns and through their records that they don’t understand or don’t care about the U.S. Constitution?
Have you (as an American who understands our rich heritage of freedom) ever wondered how other Americans could elect representatives who obviously don’t have a clue about how our government is designed to work, and who ignore the multiple lessons of history which teach us that certain political and economic systems never work?
Well, there’s an answer to your questions, and you probably already had it: the people who elect these contemptuous officials are themselves as dumb as a box of rocks when it comes to knowing anything useful about our country.
CNS News reports on a study done by the Libertarian Lexington Institute which documented some appalling findings about American’s knowledge of our own country:
– Asked to place the Declaration of Independence in a basic chronology of major events in U.S. history, fewer than half were able to do it.
– Just 49 percent knew that the founding of Jamestown, Va., widely considered the first permanent English settlement on these shores, actually predated the Declaration of Independence.
– Only 7 percent admitted they did not know which choice came before the Declaration, while the other 44 percent wrongly thought The Civil War, The Emancipation Proclamation or the War of 1812 came first.
– More than half of Americans — 55 percent –attributed a famous Karl Marx quote, one of the philosophical cornerstones of Communism, to Barack Obama, George Washington or Thomas Paine.
Marx said, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” While 19 percent knew it was Marx who said it, another 19 percent thought it was George Washington, 15 percent thought it was Obama, and 21 percent identified Paine as the source.
Well, picking Obama as the source of this Marxist quote isn’t that bad of a mistake, since he espouses Marxist doctrine in most of what he does and in most of his policies.
But to attribute this anti-American poison to the likes of George Washington? Pathetic!
My fellow Americans, it’s time we insisted our schools quit wasting time teaching children how to put a condom on a banana and taught them something useful. It’s time we insisted our education system quit teaching children that immoral behaviors are legitimate and wonderful, and taught them basics of reading, mathematics and the rich history of their own nation.
Let me leave you with the wisdom (and prophecy) of two of our country’s founders (about whom most people probably know far too little, and have never even heard these quotes):
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. – Thomas Jefferson
No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders. – Samuel Adams
Sadly, we are watching the warnings of these two great men coming true in our lifetime.
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