A Few Questions

I think there were originally 33 from some unknown asker, but my archive of an archive of an archive only lists 14.

1. Were the American Indians really environmentalists?
2. Is the U.S. government too stingy with foreign aid – or not stingy enough?
3. Was the U.S. Constitution meant to be a “living, breathing” document that changes with the times?
4. What really happened in the Whiskey Rebellion, and why will neither your textbook nor George Washington tell you?
5. What made American wages rise? (Hint: it wasn’t unions or the government.)
6. Did the Iroquois Indians influence the United States Constitution?
7. Did school desegregation narrow the black-white achievement gap?
8. Did the Founding Fathers support immigration? If so, what forms of immigration did they support?
9. What was “the biggest unknown scandal of the Clinton years”?
10. The three constitutional clauses that have caused the most mischief – what are they, and what did the Founders and Framers say they were supposed to mean?
11. Did capitalism cause the Great Depression? If not, what did?
12. Does the Constitution really contain an “elastic clause”?
13. Did the Founding Fathers believe in jury nullification – that juries could refuse to enforce unjust laws?
14. Was George Washington Carver (who supposedly developed 300 products out of the peanut) really one of America’s greatest scientific geniuses, as Henry Ford claimed?

Anyone with the grasp of American history and civics my eighth grade American History teacher expected of us would be able to discuss all but two of these, supporting all discussion with clear and unequivocal historical facts, and the two that we would not have been expected to be able to discuss meaningfully at the time depend on history that’s occurred since that time.

Once again, may I commend to your attention the ISI’s Civics Literacy Quiz? The link’s to one of the “Findings” pages on the site, but the quiz itself, as well as a wealth of other information, is available from there. The quiz doesn’t require as muc or as detailed an American History knowledge base as the 14 questions above, but is, IMO, a fairly decent gauge of someone’s basic civics literacy.