Lists

Lists have magical properties. Take lists of the definitive type, like the seven continents. Learn the list, and you get a small, satisfying sense of completeness. Or take the open-ended type, like the so-called “bucket” list. You can never say for sure that it’s exhaustive, but it doesn’t matter. As you read the items together, you realize the list is more than the sum of its parts. It has a significance all its own.

Recently, I decided to build a list. I was motivated by last month’s government shutdown and the threat not to pay our government’s bills. The episode left me with the conviction that of all the people in all the industrialized nations of the world, Americans must be the most ignorant. So I decided to check this out by recording all the instances I could find of mind-numbing American ignorance.

I realized early on that the list could convey the scope of American ignorance only if I divided it into subject areas, the areas that form the bedrock knowledge of an educated adult. These are History, Geography, Civics, Economics, Math, and Science. Here is what I accumulated under each subject.

History

• More than 33% of Americans do not know the century in which the American Revolution took place. [source]

• 25% can’t identify the country from which America gained its independence. [source]

• 50% believe that either the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, or the War of 1812 occurred before the American Revolution. [source]

• When asked in what year 9/11 took place, 30% answer incorrectly. [source]

• 30% don’t know what the Holocaust was or what country was responsible for it. [source]

• More than 50% attribute the quote “From each according to his ability to each according to his needs” to either Thomas Paine, George Washington or President Obama, not to Karl Marx. [source]

Geography

From polling of 18- to 24-year-olds:

• Almost 30% can’t identify the Pacific Ocean on a map. [source]

• More than 50% can’t locate India. [source]

• 75% can’t locate Israel on a map of the Middle East. [source]

• 70% say it’s unimportant to know where countries in the news are located. [source]

Civics

• More than 50% of Americans misidentify the system of government established in the Constitution as a direct democracy rather than a republic. [source]

• 62% can’t name all three branches of the U.S. government. 33% can’t name even one. [source]

• A majority can’t name more than one of the protections guaranteed in the first Amendment of the Constitution. [source]

• 55% believe the Constitution established a Christian nation. [source]

• 74% believe the right to bear arms is an inherent right of citizenship. [source]

Economics

• Despite high unemployment and an anemic economy, 40% of Americans say they want Congress to balance the budget immediately (italics mine). [source]

•  33% believe that the distribution of wealth in the country is fair. (The top 1% own 40% of the the country’s wealth; the bottom 80% own 7% of it.) [source 1][source 2]

•  40% agree with the statement “Government is not the solution to our economic problems; government is the problem.” [source]

• 35% believe that the government should pursue tariffs, limit immigration, and rein in foreign investment. [source]

• More than 50% of Americans support cutting government spending on regulatory agencies and welfare programs. 43% specifically support cuts in food stamps. [source]

Math

• 65% of Americans can’t identify what would remain if you subtracted 25% from 8. [source]

• One in three respondents can’t identify what 1% of 50,000 is. [source]

• 47% of community college students answer incorrectly when asked “If A is a positive whole number, which is greater: A/5 or A/8?” [source]

• 20% of Americans have trouble managing a household budget. 19% struggle to figure out a sale discount at a store. 18% find it hard to calculate the waiter’s tip at a restaurant. [source]

Science

• 46% of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years. [source]

• 61% don’t believe in the theory of evolution. [source]

• 47% don’t know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun. [source]

• 20% believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth. (They must find the previous question confusing.) [source]

• 41% believe the earliest humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time. [source]

• 57% say global warming is not caused by humans. [source]

• 53% believe that electrons are larger than atoms. [source]

It’s discouraging to read statistics that show how miserably ignorant Americans are, but there’s a related statistic that’s a real hoot. Just last month, Congress got an approval rating of 12%, the lowest ever. Americans are just livid that they’ve put such blockheads in office. But how could it be otherwise? An electorate as uninformed as ours couldn’t possibly fill a deliberative body with capable people. Most Americans wouldn’t know a competent legislator if he, or she, spat in their eye.

You might think, oh God, we’re really in for it, given that We The People are clueless. Yes, we’re in for it; in fact, we’ve been living with the consequences of cluelessness for quite some time. In this new century, we’ve spent nearly every year engaged in war. For good measure, we lowered taxes on the rich, ensuring deep indebtedness. We scaled back regulatory oversight—big government stifles freedom!—and ignored our propensity for financial mischief. Economic chaos followed, so we embraced austerity and let millions go jobless and homeless. But we didn’t go far enough, so we elected a cabal of madmen to the House and gave them a scorched-earth mission.

Clearly, we’re on a tear, a kind of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride into the 21st Century. What adventures lie ahead? Our main work for the coming year, I believe, will be to take up the work that the House failed to finish; namely, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. That seemed impossible just last month, but now the bunglers in the Executive Branch have shown themselves to be liars and too inept to implement anything difficult. If we play our cards right, we should be able to staff the Senate with more crazy people and elect a jackass to the presidency in 2016.  Snuffing out the greatest legislative achievement in nearly 50 years will then be child’s play.