(Of course the last one might have a good bit to do with the seeming universal bad habit of referring to Independence Day as just "the Fourth of July", or just "the Fourth"...which eliminates any noting of why the day is celebrated)
Newseek points out the danger of many of our citizens collective ignorance, especially when it comes to things like our own foreign policy.
In March 2009, the European Journal of Communication asked citizens of Britain, Denmark, Finland, and the U.S. to answer questions on international affairs. The Europeans clobbered us. Sixty-eight percent of Danes, 75 percent of Brits, and 76 percent of Finns could, for example, identify the Taliban, but only 58 percent of Americans managed to do the same...
But they go on to cut dense citizens way too much slack, pointing out that our system is "complicated". (Funny, the overwhelmingly rural, non-urbane group of people who set it up didn't seem to have a problem with it)...
Most experts agree that the relative complexity of the U.S. political system makes it hard for Americans to keep up. In many European countries, parliaments have proportional representation, and the majority party rules without having to “share power with a lot of subnational governments,” notes Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker, coauthor of Winner-Take-All Politics. In contrast, we’re saddled with a nonproportional Senate; a tangle of state, local, and federal bureaucracies; and near-constant elections for every imaginable office (judge, sheriff, school-board member, and so on). “Nobody is competent to understand it all, which you realize every time you vote,” says Michael Schudson, author of The Good Citizen. “You know you’re going to come up short, and that discourages you from learning more.”
Of course they fail to point out that our system was designed that way on purpose...specifically to separate power, not just between executive, legislative and judicial branches, but between the national and state governments. And that the diffusion of power in our country protects our liberties by making it more difficult (than it is in European countries for example) for one party to consolidate power and make radical changes that people may not want.
Then they go on to blame a high level of income inequality. Again, the poor people who created it didn't seem to have a problem comprehending it. Not to mention that those considered "poor" by today's government standards have a far easier life than the poor of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. So it's a little hard to use poverty as an explanation.
Then they blame our "decentralized" education system....
“When you have more centrally managed curricula, you have more common knowledge and a stronger civic culture.” Another hitch is our reliance on market-driven programming rather than public broadcasting, which, according to the EJC study, “devotes more attention to public affairs and international news, and fosters greater knowledge in these areas.”
Yes, THAT's the problem...not enough federal control of education. So how does this explain how the even MORE decentralized US education system of our past did a better job? In fact, it seems that the more "central" our system has become, (with more federal government control via federal funding), the worse the results that we have "achieved".
They do however point out that there is a great cost to our country as a result of this ignorance.
The current conflict over government spending illustrates the new dangers of ignorance. Every economist knows how to deal with the debt: cost-saving reforms to big-ticket entitlement programs; cuts to our bloated defense budget; and (if growth remains slow) tax reforms designed to refill our depleted revenue coffers. But poll after poll shows that voters have no clue what the budget actually looks like. A 2010 World Public Opinion survey found that Americans want to tackle deficits by cutting foreign aid from what they believe is the current level (27 percent of the budget) to a more prudent 13 percent. The real number is under 1 percent. A Jan. 25 CNN poll, meanwhile, discovered that even though 71 percent of voters want smaller government, vast majorities oppose cuts to Medicare (81 percent), Social Security (78 percent), and Medicaid (70 percent). Instead, they prefer to slash waste—a category that, in their fantasy world, seems to include 50 percent of spending, according to a 2009 Gallup poll.
Of course most people DID oppose the imposition of ObamaCare and its attendant increase in our future debt, so maybe there is some hope after all...
