"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
[This will be of little interest to most folks, but it’s interesting to me, mainly because of the historical subliteracy it revealed in the article that spurred these brief thoughts.]
I read in passing a silly little aside about MArtin Luther’s anti-semitism being a “deal breaker” in someone’s church-shopping. Stop here, if this bores you.
🙂
Going By The Numbers
by Nancy Matthis
Understanding the impact of illegal immigration does not depend on accepting partisan opinions. It is just the result of doing some simple math.
In a previous article, Illegals Deadlier Than War On Terror [sic], we compared the numbers of United States citizens killed by illegal aliens to the tally of our troops killed in the war on terror [sic]. In response to that article, one of our readers wrote asking whether we had seen the video produced by NumbersUSA titled Immigration by the Numbers. He asked, “I wonder how accurate it is?â€
This widely distributed video uses gumballs in a jar to visually demonstrate the impact of numbers that increase exponentially rather than linearly. These are mathematical concepts that are immediately meaningful to folk with a technical background, but may be harder to understand for others. The answer to our reader’s question is that the video IS accurate. It is not based on partisan opinion. It is just a very graphic illustration of an algebraic equation.
You can view a clip from the video here. Roy Beck of NumbersUSA is not depending on any esoteric data. He’s just doing the math, based on the US Census numbers, which actually grossly UNDERESTIMATE the number of illegals in the United States.
Muslims are outraged. Again. Yada-yada-yada.
But what, pray tell, are Muslims outraged about, now?
Oh, this time it’s something meaningful: the rights of Muslim men to rape women with impunity.
Seriously. Seems that after long and tortured negotiations with Muslim religious leaders, Pakistan had finally gotten around to passing some limp-wristed laws that put a slight crimp in Muslim men’s “rights” to rape women, a storm of protest has risen.
Par for the course. Trying to bring a sixth century barbaric culture into a sixteenth century civilized status is bound to fail, as long as that sixth century barbaric culture is Islamic. Heck, the “most advanced” “progressive” Islamic nation, Turkey, still hasn’t managed it.
No news here: as long as the followers of Islam revere and emulate the brutal savagry of the mass-murderer, lying, treacherous slaver and pedophile, the Butcher of Medina, they cannot become truly civilized.
Trackposted to Blue Star Chronicles, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Earlier today, I referred to a recent survey that indicates that our colleges and universities (let alone our high schools) are turning out potential voters who are woefully illiterate in basic literacy in fundamental civics.
Here are a few of the fruits of such illiteracy:
Granted, it’s Heathrow, but with multitides of similar incidents in U.S. airports as Thousands Standing Around runs amok over culturally sub/illiterate American citizens subjects sheeple, can the U.S. be far behind>
The War on Terror claims doughnuts. Who can doubt that American sheeple, illiterate in matters of basic civics, would for the most part cave in and surrender their Krispy Kremes to airport security theater goonishness?
Bereft of even common sense and unmoored from an historical understanding of the responsibilities of individuals, is it any wonder we get headlines like this?
4 -year-old Accused of Improperly Touching Teacher
A four-year-old hugged his teachers aide and was put into in-school suspension…
Some hyper-sensitive moron interpreted that as “innapropriate sexual contact” and reported the 4-year-old for discipline. In the republic the Founders left us, the adult would be subject to ridicule and censure. In today’s America, a 4-year-old is punished.
If that’s not enough for you, just survey today’s headlines:
Airport Christmas trees removed. Airport authorities in need of civics lesson.
McKinney Introduces Bill to Impeach Bush. Cites NONE of the right reasons.
Border webcams rack up millions of hits in a month. And still no “Tea Parties” or introductions for congresscritters and the Bush administration to Dr. Tarr and Mr. Fether by the electorate as a result of political elites conspiring with a foreign government (Mexico) to aid the invasion of the U.S. they are sworn to protect and serve.
You can go on and on. Any day, every day, headlines scream: “The U.S. is peopled by an increasingly dumber and more irresponsible electorate,” because irresponsible government, harrassment of citizens and the growth of anarcho-tyranny abounds without massive public outcry.
A little civic literacy would (well, could) go a long way toward averting some of this idiocy.
Trackposted to Pirate’s Cove, Perri Nelson’s Website, Permanent Floating Ping Festival, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Random Yak, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, and bRight & Early, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
This is an open trackback post. Just link to this post and track back. If you have a linkfest/open trackback post to promote OR if you simply want to promote a post via the linkfests/open trackback posts others are offering, GO TO LINKFEST HAVEN DELUXE! Just CLICK the link above or the graphic immediately below.
All-new, thanks to The Conservative Cat.
If you want to host your own linkfests, check out the FAQ at Open Trackbacks Alliance.
Yes, I meant the title the way I phrased it. Not “Citizens Without Brains” but “Citizens wWithout A Brain (Among the Lot of ‘Em)” *sigh*.
The United States of America is a putative representative democracy which depends upon the collective wisdom of its citizens to elect representatives to look out for the common good. That being the case, it stands to reason that a people well-versed in the nation’s history, its founding documents and the forms, purposes, responsibilities and limits of its governmental bodies would be a very good thing and that the opposite would be a very bad thing.
In late September, just as the present academic year was getting underway, The American Civic Literacy Program at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute released its report The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education’s Failure to Teach America’s History and Institutions. Its findings are based on extensive survey research, conducted on fifty American campuses, from large state schools to elite private universities to liberal arts colleges. Over 14,000 freshmen and seniors across the country completed a questionnaire comprised of sixty questions covering a wide range of topics in America’s history, founding ideas, political institutions, economic system, and place in the world.
What did the survey determine? Well, beside the fact that incoming freshmen, high school graduates, knew damn all about the subjects, outgoing seniors knew little—if any—more. In some schools, the phenomenon of “negative learning”—outgoing seniors leaving knowing less than incoming freshmen—was observed (and not because incoming freshmen were well-versed).
*Seniors scored just 1.5 percent higher on average than freshmen.
*If the survey were administered as an exam in a college course, seniors would fail with an overall average score of 53.2 percent, or F on a traditional grading scale.
*Though a university education can cost upwards of $200,000, and college students on average leave campus $19,300 in debt, they are no better off than when they arrived in terms of acquiring the knowledge necessary for informed engagement in a democratic republic and global economy.
Read the linked article. Read the full report linked there. Then find out if your local public schools are turning out cultural illiterates who aren’t fit to be voters, and if they are, find out why and raise holy hell about it.
Then find out what the situation is at the colleges or universities your children are attending or intend to attend. follow the above provedure, etc.
Otherwise, the dead and illegal alien vote captured by pols on the left will not be necessary to lead the U.S. into the ash heap of history, because enstupiated, incompetent citizens will have long since done the deed themselves.
Oh, and go ahead and take the quiz formed from a very small (five questions) representative sample of the survey questions. I had to pause and think about one question (to0 resolve a time differential between American history and British history), but nevertheless had this result:
You answered 5 out of 5 correctly — 100.00 %
Average score for this quiz during December: 90.7%
But then, I always “test” well. Not necessarily indicative of my breadth and depth of knowledge–especially with a simple 5-question sample quiz.