Crappy voters. Seriously. Perri Nelson referred recently to an online civics quiz that’s simply an online form of the quiz given to a random sampling of Americans last Spring. Here’s the report card:
Now, folks, having taken the quiz myself and having scored considerably better than the average, I’m prepared to say that the ONLY reasons for any citizens of these (dis)United States to fail this lil quiz are laziness, wilfull stupidity or both. Seriously. And the fact that,
Among the 2,508 respondents, 164 say they have been elected to a government office at least once. This sub-sample of officeholders yields a startling result: elected officials score lower than the general public. Those who have held elective office earn an average score of 44% on the civic literacy test, which is five percentage points lower than the average score of 49% for those who have never been elected... 1[emphasis added]
…leads me to assert that holders of political office who can’t do better than that should be put out of our misery forever. But that can only be accomplished by voters who know which end of a boot to pour piss out of… and even then they’d probably have to buy a clue to know they’d wet themselves, given the performance on this lil survey, and given the economy nowadays, I doubt any of ’em would spend the money on a cluebat to hit themselves over the head with.
(Am I livid? Absolutely. NO ONE who fails such a simple exam ought to be let within a mile of a voting booth, let alone be allowed to “serve” as an elected [addendum: or even UNelected] official in ANY capacity.)
Look, people, it’s just a silly little multiple choice quiz that’s not even as detailed as a citizenship exam for someone from another country seeking citizenship in this country, and yet 71% of the survey participants couldn’t pass the thing even with an extremely lenient 60% passing grade!
*feh* If that’s all Americans know about their own country then we deserve to be tossed in the ash heap of history. “It was a noble experiment, but The People proved they didn’t deserve the liberties generations of their forefathers bled and died to give them. Tough. Next?”
Lazy-assed bums. Don’t tell me the education system failed them. The “education system” sucks dead bunnies through a straw, slowly, laboriously and poorly, but only lazy-assed bums would be satisfied to KNOW NOTHING about their country’s history and forms of civil government, or worse, be satisfied with the horse manure illiterate boobs who “teach” civics and history in our schools dump in the black holes that are their vacuous heads.
And historical literacy in more than just American history and government is critical for voters nowadays given the outright lies of Mass Media Podpeople and politicians on issues of importance. One of the most serious issues facing our society today is the attempt to wreck (even further) our economy and way of life via the lie of anthropogenic global warming/climate change. One of the central arguments of the warmists/changists is made by Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph showing the latter 20th Century to be the warmest period in more than a thousand years. Heck, simple historical literacy is all it would take to have Mann and his ilk run out of town on a rail (after a good tarring and feathering)–no need for elaborate mathematical analyses proving Mann cooked the books (although that has been done). Why? Just ask Mann and his disciples why, if the latter part of the 20th Century was the hottest in 1,000 years, didn’t Greenland have as big a net export of dairy products then as it did during the Medieval Climate Optimum from 800-1300 AD, when temperatures were higher than at ANY time during the 20th Century? (Apparently, Mann just couldn’t be bothered to do his homework–or else his math skills are considerably worse than one might imagine. 20th Century-14th Century is 600 years, Mike, not 1,000.)
OK, maybe even if folks knew that Leif Erikson Erik the Red (that’s a persistent braine pharte of mine) didn’t scam folks into moving to a bitterly cold Greenland (because it really WAS warm and green–dairy exports, remember? From farms that are NOW under glacial ice… ) that wouldn’t have helped combat Mann’s lies. They’d have to be numerate enough to be able to do simple subtraction.
So, yes, either we begin telling the illiterate boobs that are our fellow voters that they ARE illiterate boobs (and then do everything in our power to convert them to minimal historical literacy) or we will fall as a nation.
Note well the quote in the header of this blog:
“In a democracy (”rule by mob”), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”-third world county’s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom
That’s just one of the reasons that, historically, democracies fail (and one of the reasons the Founders designed our federal government to NOT be a democracy!). As this country regresses ever more steadily into democratic rule, we begin to see the results of democraticization (mob rule): illiterate, lazy-assed boobs decide how the country will go.
Down the toilet.
Trackposted to Nuke’s, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Pink Flamingo, Woman Honor Thyself, Democrat=Socialist, Adam’s Blog, Right Voices, and DragonLady’s World, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
