Too Many Ignorant People In This Country

Have you ever wondered why so many people are gullible enough to believe the Republican lies? How they could keep voting against their own economic interests in election after election sending Republicans back to Congress (even though its obvious that Republican politicians care only for corporations and the rich)? Well, Newsweek may have found out. It seems that a significant part of our population is just dumb.

The folks at Newsweek gave over a thousand random Americans the test that immigrants must pass to be granted American citizenship. The results were disappointing to say the least. Around 38% (about four out of 10) failed the test (and if they had been immigrants wouldn't be granted citizenship). And yet even though they don't know enough about this country to be a citizen, we allow these people to vote in our elections. Here's some of what they found:

When NEWSWEEK recently asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test, 29 percent couldn’t name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. Forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6 percent couldn’t even circle Independence Day on a calendar.

And this is nothing new. In 2009, the European Journal of Communication asked the citizens of Great Britain, Finland, Denmark and the United States to answer some questions on international relations. It would be kind to say we got skunked. Take for example the question asking who the Taliban were. One would think that most Americans could answer that question since we invaded their country to topple them from power, but not so. Here's the percentage in each of those countries who got the question right:

Finland..........76%
Great Britain..........75%
Denmark..........68%
United States..........58%

That's pitiful. We've been at war with the Taliban in Afghanistan for about 10 years -- and more than 4 out of 10 Americans still don't know who they are. It gets worse. A 2010 World Public Opinion survey shows that Americans don't even have a clue to where the government is spending there tax money. Americans in the survey said they wanted to cut foreign aid from it's current 27% of the budget to around 13%. The problem with that is the government spends less than 1% of its budget on foreign aid.

Is it any wonder then that these same people actually believe the budget can be balanced by cutting programs that help ordinary Americans while giving the rich and corporations billions of dollars in tax cuts and subsidies? We are obviously not doing an adequate job of educating far too many people in this country.

And the Republicans seem to like it that way. The national right-wing Republicans want to eliminate the Department of Education altogether, and the state Republican politicians are cutting funds for education all over this nation. Here in Texas they have recommended cutting education funds by about $10 billion -- which would result in the lay-off of nearly 100,000 teachers and substantially increase class sizes. Other states are making cuts that are equally as devastating.

Have the Republicans figured out that their best chance to return to and keep power is to restrict the level of education in this country? It certainly looks like it. They don't seem to care that this puts the future of our country in jeopardy. They just look at it as providing corporations with a lot of low-educated and low-paid labor desperate for any kind of job.