People are stupid
Over 70% of the Americans who took a civic literacy test failed. Elected officials actually did worse than private citizens. Sad to say, but that didn’t surprise me. Conservatives and liberals were found to be equally stupid. That is refreshing.
You can take the test for yourself here. I scored a respectable 90.91%.
Here is a Cal Thomas column lamenting how dumb we are.
Note: Don’t keep reading until you take the quiz, spoilers await below the fold.
After taking the quiz it is easy to see why so many failed. There were some hard questions. I don’t know what the one about Socrates has to do with American civic literacy (which is probably why I missed it). Some of the questions require a very careful reading , such as #9:
Under Our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government?
All of the possible answers are within the purview of the federal government. At least two are explicitly authorized in the Constitution. But only one power lies exclusively with the federal government.
I can hardly fault people for missing #22:
What part of the government has the power to declare war?
Given the whole “War on Terror” I can see where some people might think that the Executive branch can declare war.
#33 is another tricky one:
If taxes equal government spending, then:
The first of the multiple choice answers is “government debt is zero.” Sounds pretty good, right? But the correct answer is, of course, “government debt is zero.” This actually alludes to the topic of a forthcoming post about the federal debt. Government spending over the next year could equal taxes (it won’t, but stay with me) and at the end of the year the federal debt would still be around $10 trillion.
Question 13 – “Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas would concur that: certain permanent moral and political truths are accessible to human reason”. That’s a Western Civ question – foundation of society and all that…
Not enough coffee and almost fell for #33 (correct answer is: “tax per person equals government spending per person”).
You answered 33 out of 33 correctly — 100.00 %
WooHoo! Still don’t think I’ll be running for office…
Me thinks some of those questions would fall more in line with a history question instead of a civics question.
Also scored 90.91%. Missed the questions about Lincoln’s debate, FDR and the SCOTUS justices, and the explicit guarantee of the 1st Ammendment. I overthought the last question. I thought it was saying the 1st Ammendment guarantees you a religion, which confused me.
32/33. Missed the tax question Reactionary got right.