It took a whole lot of Americans five years to get President George W. Bush’s number, and decide Republicans in Congress are also bad news. This, despite the fact poll after poll going back to 2000 has shown a clear majority were not with Bush or the GOP on most substantive issues.
A new survey taken by a museum provides insight into what’s likely responsible for this self-abusing disconnect.
Most Americans have an easier time naming members of the cartoon Simpson family than listing the five freedoms granted by the nation’s founders, a survey by a museum released on Wednesday said.. . .Half of 1,000 Americans randomly surveyed by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum could name at least two of the five members of Fox Television’s Simpson family, the stars of the network’s long-running show.
But just 28 percent of respondents could name more than one of the five freedoms listed in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment — about the same proportion that could name all five Simpson family members or could recall the three judges on Fox TV’s top-rated “American Idol.”
Just 8 percent could recall three First Amendment freedoms.
Two-thirds of respondents did remember freedom of speech as one of five rights in the First Amendment, but just one person accurately named all five.
Only one person could name all five. The mind boggles.
We’ve sacrificed the lives of nearly 3,000 of our military people in Iraq, purportedly (since the WMD thing didn’t work out) to graft democracy onto a Mideast society with one foot planted firmly in a medieval blend of tribalism and spirituality.
Yet here at home, people don’t know the most fundamental aspect of their own democracy, won at much greater cost over more than two centuries: their own constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Is this a failure of education? Yes. But it’s also a failure of parents and of individual Americans.
Too many, out of ignorance and inattention, take for granted that the elected officials they regularly disparage will do the mostly decent job people expect. Citizens take that for granted because most of the time, that’s how it’s been.
But of course there’s no guarantee. Thus, we have lengthy periods in which our leaders vary from exceptional, such as Franklin Roosevelt, to barely acceptable for four years, such as George H.W. Bush. But these are punctuated from time to time by the criminally bad, such as Richard Nixon, and the intolerably incompetent and ideologically bent, such as the current occupant of the White House.
How can this keep happening? Further indication, from the same story:
Some participants displayed comical ignorance such as the 38 percent who believed the right not to incriminate yourself — “taking the 5th” in lawyer lingo — was granted by the First Amendment rather than the Fifth.
Or maybe they were thinking fifth, as in a fifth of Jim Beam or something. Unbelievable.
Eye-opener assignment: Next time you’ve got some time to kill with a couple of patriotic good ol’ boys (or girls), hand them sheets of paper and challenge your companions to write down the names of the 50 states.
Would you have the slightest inkling at all to suggest…a test…before one can vote?
In a way, what we have now are campaigns as class instruction, and the election is the test. I gather you think we are getting the wrong answer. More money is needed.
NB: “More money is needed” is RSF putting words in liberals’ mouths. In fact, this liberal thinks that dinstinctly less money is needed, and I’m almost on board the bandwagon for cheap, publically financed elections as a potential remedy against the illness brought on by corporations buying politicians.
It may be worth a look at the British system: a 3 week campaign limit, almost no political advertising on television, strict limits on spending.
Even some British think their system is wasteful: most voters have made up their minds before the election.
RSF, your Friday comment strikes me as knee-jerk nonsense. Nowhere and in no way did I suggest anything about money or a qualifying test for voters.
It’s important to remind people, especially the ones with so much to say about how lousy government and politicians are, that in our democracy, much of the responsibility for quality of leadership rests with voters, nonvoters and even chronic scoffers and complainers.
Badmouthing politics and government all the time is a sure way to discourage the best and brightest from going into politics and government. Is that really a good idea?
I think it’s only good if you’re foolish enough to want an easy target for scorn, rather than good government and a sound, well-functioning democracy.
Some especially half-assed politicians have learned they can make political hay by running down government and politicians. We got a bumper crop in 1994  neocon Republicans who, among other things, promised they were going to vote in term limits, or at least limit their own terms.
To no one’s surprise, term limits were never seriously pursued in legislation. And all but a handful forgot, with breathtaking suddenness, their lofty pledges about limiting their own terms.
Many of those Gingrich-spawned hucksters are still in Congress, holding on for dear life and scared to death George W. Bush’s excesses and incompetence are going to cost them their jobs.
Rush Limbaugh doesn’t deal honestly in news and commentary. He’s into twisting, shading, distortion and demagoguery, when he’s not just making stuff up. Most of it is mean-spirited, sarcastic sliming. The last I heard, his net worth was about $180 million, so there’s obviously a huge market for unreliable scorn and drivel.
Is that a good and healthy thing for our country and our system? Does that encourage people to do their homework as voters and citizens, learning about candidates and issues, for their own benefit and the benefit of their children and grandchildren? Somehow, I don’t think so.
As we’ve seen of late, we’ve got serious business to tend to as a nation and society. Are we really well served by a Homeland Security chief who seems more concerned about the sanctity of free trade principles than secure seaports? Is having an anti-labor activist as labor secretary a good idea? How about mine safety officials who are more concerned about not getting in mine owners’ way than they are about miners’ safety?
And on top of it all, we’ve got an anti-government ideologue who’s only notable success in life has been winning and holding onto high political offices.
If this isn’t solid evidence of serious dysfunction, widespread ignorance, inattention and a bad attitude, I don’t know what is.
Maybe being stuck for a couple more years with what most Americans have come to realize is lousy leadership will prompt at least some Americans to rethink their attitude and approach. I certainly hope so.
A three-week campaign limit is never going to work here because the media, a major industry, depend on regular infusions of hundreds of millions of campaign dollars. Aside from considerable lobbying clout, they obviously have the power to tilt public and political opinion.
It’s just possible that if enough people were to get behind it, we might be able to limit campaigns to three months. But that would be hard to enforce, wouldn’t it?
Publicly financed campaigns with all media obliged to provide some workable minimum of free time and space to all credible candidates is the best option.
“RSF, your Friday comment strikes me as knee-jerk nonsense. Nowhere and in no way did I suggest anything about money or a qualifying test for voters.”
My response was in a jocular vein. But there is a logical progression: if you are going to complain about the ignorant and inattentive going to the ballot box, it seems you would be in favor of measures to encourage improvement. Improvement in the public sector usually means clamoring for more funds.
It was a joke to suggest testing for the polls, fraught as it would be with historical and legal baggage. The Democrat’s demographic include a large segment of urban intellectuals, who like to tell us all how to live our lives and don’t like any flak for doing so, and the shuffling brainstems at the other end of the IQ spectrum who are easily confused when Glenn Beck announces “Republicans vote on Tuesday, Democrats vote on Wednesday.” A test for the first group is pointless, since they know everything, and a test would weed out the second group, thus diluting Democrat voting power.
“It’s important to remind people, especially the ones with so much to say about how lousy government and politicians are, that in our democracy, much of the responsibility for quality of leadership rests with voters, nonvoters and even chronic scoffers and complainers.”
J’accuse. I find you to be one of the biggest scoffers and complainers.
“Badmouthing politics and government all the time is a sure way to discourage the best and brightest from going into politics and government. Is that really a good idea?”
This coming from you, someone who writes off the current Republicans in government as corrupt, greedy, political infidels. Again, and again, and again.
As for the rest of your response, it reminds me of the mobsters complaining of all the violence in society as they slam the trunk on a body. Your blog is largely a caterwaul against current elected/appointed officials. You decry the influence of Rush Limbaugh, but your own side has its cabal of Ivins, Franken, Moore waging an equally slanted political Jihad. For that matter, the Democrats have always fostered an “us against them” mentality, which now has come around to not serve them well.
Our government is as good now as it has ever been. Some people have an idealized vision of what government should be, and believe it was in the past or can be again if we all hold hands and sing Kum Bay Yah and vote Democrat.
Our government is as good now as it has ever been. –RSF
I’ve been thinking lately that the only explanation I can find for why The People don’t get more upset about any of the current administration’s inept, inappropriate, and illegal machinations is that: 1) they don’t think it would make any difference; or 2) they can’t tell the difference. As is typical with me, I wonder which is worse.
As has been said, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.
In the best Bush & Co. fashion, RSF conveniently seeks to mislead by equating condemnation of those currently in control of the federal government and what they’ve done with condemning government as an institution. It’s the functional equivalent of saying anyone critical of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest for their deadly, costly Iraq mess hates America and doesn’t support our troops.
That never worked very well and now it doesn’t work at all.
Jeff, you sound disappointed, like society has failed you in its duty to deliver good government.
Don’t worry. Shia is on its way. All will be better.
I was thinking about circa 30 AD: the government was corrupt and self serving, probably about the average for what passed for government throughout history. Comes now Jesus of Nazareth, promising a better way. Many thought he would take the reins of State and bring peace, prosperity, and a better dental plan, and there was some disappointment when he went down the road of “love thy neighbor” and “turn the other cheek”.
You are not on the mark, SW. Your tactical argument (my facts are wrong, I’m a member of Bush and Co. and thus have to carry their baggage, I attributed an anti-gov’t argument to you) doesn’t square with the strategy you laid out in your initial post and later response.
Your initial post decried the lack of political knowledge among the general population, which is true, but hasn’t it always been thus?
Your later response lambasted the political critics (critical entertainers? entertaining critics?) and demagogers (sp?). I pointed out that you are cut from the same cloth.
Modern information technology has made it easier to criticize public figures: I don’t think Cordell Hull or Henry Stimpson would have done better under modern scrutiny than Rice or Rumsfeld.
No, Fred, I think I’m disappointed that society allowed itself to be duped into accepting such a bad government as the one we currently have; disappointed that so many people seem to feel that there is now, and was in 2004 and 2000 particularly, no real difference between the candidates; disappointed that even after a disastrous war of choice, uncounted assaults on civil liberties, and the rape of the American economy, so many people apparently feel that there would have been no distinction between the candidates in the earlier elections.
Jeff, as kind of a sidenote to this, I have been dwelling lately on the isomorphism between religions of all types and our modern, liberal, secular, science (to some extent anyway) driven society. They all seem to share a belief in the perfectability of humans, either in this world or the next, and some deference to a higher power, either a God or the inherent “greaterness” of collective action.
Do you think it is fair to do a kind of point-to-point mapping of mainstream religious belief onto a secular, agnostic belief system?
Fred, it’s a deep question that needs more thought than I’ve given it, but obviously that won’t keep me from commenting?
I don’t see any reason not to make the mapping if there’s interesting ideas to be had from expanding the thesis, and there could probably be a book in it. I take your point about the belief in the perfectability of humans provided one includes the hereafter in the scope, but as a secular humanist athiest scientist type I tend to restrict myself to the demonstrably evident here and now. Materialistic, I know, but there you go.
That leaves me with usually viewing the two systems of thought as disjoint and not necessarily in conflict, but it also leaves me seeing human-kind as essentially good to neutral, but thinking that religions (which I don’t much care for) seem to think humans essentially evil or, at least, prone to evil, which leads to lots of control issues where I disagree with the religions.
However, both systems of thought are big enough and robust enough to stand the comparison if you find it worth making. So, I don’t think it’s a priori fair or unfair to say you can or can’t make the comparison; rather, the comparison is likely to be judged on the dish you cook up from combining these ingredients.
Thanks for your thoughts.