Resignation and rationality
There'll be tears in Georgetown. And rejoicing too. is a blow for Mrs Clinton and an opportunity - he is a good friend of course so his resignation and the rows surrounding it will be keenly felt - but his presence in her inner circle was little short of poisonous. Being charmless doesnβt matter when you are winning but when you are in the business of forging friendships or going down it does. He handicapped her. His resignation is an for a troubled senior team.
As for the that saw an end to the Penn dream: free trade is the underpinning of American prosperity. Dissing feels crazy to many Democrats. The gutsy approach would be for Clinton and Obama to campaign for it.
As for rationality in the race and in the United States more generally: in she begins with a quote from Thomas Jefferson: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free⦠It expects what never was and never will be."
Jefferson was not attacking religion or religious belief. But the founding fathers did not intend that respect for religious freedom dulled a nation's wits to the extent that it could no longer tell fact from fiction. The issue is not religious belief, it is scientific knowledge. The two can coincide quite happily and my point is that after this year's election that coincidence will be found in the White House. And that leadership matters. Friends of America have - it seems to me - a legitimate concern when hearing that, for instance, one in five American adults believes the sun revolves around the earth; or that more than a quarter of US college graduates(!!) think all living things have always existed in their present form.
Or indeed that fewer than half of Americans read any work of fiction in 2001, of all years one in which the glorious balm of literature, its capacity to transcend any horror, might have been useful. But too many Americans - Jacoby argues and I have some sympathy for her - have no use for knowledge or learning. That is not religious faith; it is ignorance.
I suppose you could argue that America is still pre-eminent among nations even with this level of intellectual failure. There are millions of fantastically well-educated Americans and I think I am right in saying that most Nobel Science Prize winners choose to live here. But Jefferson still has a point.
So does Tarek Tbaileh and others who wrote on the subject of Muslims (as opposed to Muslim nations) and evolution. Good for them! Sorry for misrepresenting you.
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As an American, I find your repetition of Jacoby's slanderous assertions both offensive and revealing of your own ignorance. To broadly paint one people - or in the case of the United States, a polyglot of peoples - as intellectual failures is reminiscent of the European pseudoscience of philology that was the rage in the nineteenth century.
Did I mention that all English food is bad and all Britons have bad teeth? These kind of sweeping generalizations are not only inaccurate, but academically irresponsible on your part. Shame.
Susan Jacoby with Bill Moyers, America's antidote to ignorance.
"Now, this was not always the case in our country. In the 19th century Robert Ingersoll, of whom we've talked, who is known as the great agnostic, had audiences full of people who didn't agree with him. But they wanted to hear what he had to say. And they wanted to see whether the devil really has horns. And now what we have is a situation in which people go to hear people they already agree with. What's going on is not so much education as reinforcement of the opinions you already have."
She's so right. What else could explain Fox?
It is my observation over a lifetime that so far has spanned nearly 60 years, that while it is true technology has brought us marvels and wonders at a far faster pace than we ever dreamt a few decades ago, on the whole as an average, the world is growing considerably stupider. Neither Europe nor North America are immune. Nor are political leaders. It has also grown colder, more callous, and more selfish, especially in the developed nations. Perhaps unchecked population growth and materialism, the value placed on quantity instead of quality of life are to blame. So is the supplanting of human to human contact by human to machine contact. In many ways, our civilization is a far poorer one than that of just a couple of generations ago. Much of what many people prize most highly in life, things and money are superficial and of no real value while those things of real value like friendship, accomplishment, and integrity are dismissed as worthless. The pop culture is a prime example.
Justin - you say, "free trade is the underpinning of American prosperity". It is true that free trade has played its part, but to describe it as the "underpinning" of US prosperity is so much of an exaggeration as to render your sentence factually incorrect.
Generally speaking, most nations have developed economically through a mixture of interventionism and laissez-faire, the former gradually giving way to the latter as individual sectors progress and gain the ability to compete. The US is no exception.
One should note, for example, the key role played by the state in funding the very areas of growth that have been crucial to America's wealth in the post-WWII era. High technology areas such as aeronautics and computing have benefitted from massive research and design subsidies, sometimes funnelled through the Pentagon as defence procurement, but coming out the other side as technology with civilian and profit-making uses.
The core dynamic here has been the socialisation of initial costs and the privitisation of profits in the latter stages. Flagship companies such as Boeing can attribute at least as much of their success to the nanny state as they can to the rigours of the free market.
A more fundamental cause of US prosperity, in the historical sense, is its sheer size, which affords it vast resources in terms of arable land and high value commodities such as oil. It can surely not pass without mention that the US enjoys possession of these resources as a direct result of its carrying out ethnic cleansing and genocide of biblical proportions during the 19th Century.
Admiration for the great many things that are good about the US should not blind us to what is wrong with it. Nor should the standard rhetoric about free trade be confused with a rounded assessment of US economic policy.
"Good for them!"
Still condescending. Would be MUCH better if you'd left this bit out.
And "Good for them!" who? Muslims, Muslim countries, or Tarek and we other readers who wrote to complain?
Perhaps this post didn't get through:
How is it we are so unaware of Islamic contributions, and the "Golden Age" of the Middle-East (Europe's "Dark Age").
Ask any doctor about Avicenna's contribution to medicine. Ibn al-Haytham, in the Book of Optics, is credited with introducing the scientific method, influencing Roger Bacon.
Islamic science was based on observation and repeatable experiments ... a break from the Greeks (e.g. Plato's ideal forms)and a precursor to early-modern Europeans.
How is it we are so unaware of Islamic contributions, and the "Golden Age" of the Middle-East (Europe's "Dark Age").
Ask any doctor about Avicenna's contribution to medicine. Ibn al-Haytham, in the Book of Optics, is credited with introducing the scientific method, influencing Roger Bacon.
Islamic science was based on observation and repeatable experiments ... a break from the Greeks (e.g. Plato's ideal forms) and a precursor to early-modern Europeans increasingly interested in more than angels fitting on the heads of pins.
You said it, Mr. Webb. Good for them ... and good for us, which I guess is the rest of the world except the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's North American Editor.
There is too much casualties in this campaign now... l think it's time for the democrats to put heads together in order to get behind one solid candidate... if not they will be risking thier chances with the general public... too many blows from and in both camps.. this is not a good image for real democrats.
As Obama pointed out in Iowa, Clinton has been a cheerleader for NAFTA for more than a decade and only came out against it during the campaign. Leadership and trustworthiness have always been important, more important than 'experience' as in the case of Lincoln.
Penn was inept. He failed to see Super Tuesday coming; he was completely unprepared in the States that followed. Even now, Obama is still out-organising Clinton on the ground level. The job of a strategist is not only to calculate a route to victory, but to anticipate all possible dangers and so prepare for them. He didn't: he let Clinton go into the campaign believing in her divine right, and she has paid the consequence for her hubris, and his incompetence.
Good to see a common sense article , hopefully the Republican's agree . Ultimately If I have an imaginary friend and I call it Roger , thats wierd , If I have an imaginary friend and call it God thats ok . Yet 2000 years or more of scientific discovery from a multitude of persons from a multitude of backgrounds , thus removing any particular groups having vested interests, have proven a great deal on evolution both of living creatures and of the planet. That someone such as Huckabee gets to the last round of a selection process for a major party in the most powerful nation in the world says a lot for ignorance dressed as faith. If you believe in anything , believe in people , they are real and can deliver on their promises and at least can be held to account if they don't
It is important to note that the ignorance claimed may well be distributed evenly among the left and right in America.
Dare I suggest that the left's influence on American education at all levels has been a disaster?
Doesn't it seem odd that Gordon Brown was reportedly intending to hire Mark Penn to lead him into a new election period?
Goodness knows how Blair managed to convince a population that he had the interests of the "people" at heart, while surrounded by spin management on a collosal and expensive scale.
And how he and Brown steam-rollered people to believe that the British economy has been in a good state for 10 years, while pension schemes have been decimated, the balance of trade has plunged to record lows and borrowing levels have made us exposed to such risk.
Justin, I think it is wrong for you to equate strong faith with ignorance. Is it coincidental that you make a note of the "coincidence" that our country religious background is some how related to the lack of people paying attention in science class? No, I think not.
If Thomas Jefferson said "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free⦠It expects what never was and never will be.", can't we switch the subject? If we are told a theory (evolution) cannot be challenged (by scientists which subsequently lose their jobs), then is education ignorant? Yes, I think so.
People draw conclusions different because of their assumptions and those are based on their experiences. To say ones assumption (that there is no God) is better over another (that there is) is absurd. Especially considering neither is provable, currently.
Most who disagree with evolution don't want it removed from school. But they do want criticism allowed and students given a freedom to choose what to believe. Believing "Goo-to-You" as some call it is completely unnecessary to know that Paris, Earth, the Sun, our Solar System, and Galaxy are none the centre of the universe.
As for Penn, unfortunate for him. Playing both sides, he ends up losing both. (read that his company got possibly fired by Columbian government)
What a great white elephant βfree tradeβ is.
The free trade treaty is being sought with the likes of Andean, Thailand and has agreements with those major power houses of industry Morocco, Oman, Panama!!!
Free trade just means, the US, will dump all βourβ unwanted and unsellable goods on you, because we cannot compete with the rest of the world because we have such strong protectionism laws that US companies cannot compete with the rest of the world. The recipient countries can then sell back to the US what..erβ¦umβ¦hmmmβ¦.rice, nope!
The major export of the US is defence hardware.
Carsβ¦nope. The rest of the world buys Japanese and European ones. Especially the low emissions and low fuel consumption. Protectionism in the US has prevented and now stagnated the car industry in the US; it has fallen behind.
Shipsβ¦er nopeβ¦Japanese, Korean and Chinese. The Jones act prevents any non-US company directly importing into the US. Some 80% of the final product/design etc must be made/sourced in the US. The shipyards know this and so do the unions. Consequently their prices are significantly higher than any non-US vessel, for the same as. So much for capitalistic consumerism!
The US Govt. even reacted to this recently by cancelling a 3rd vessel owing to major over runs by nearly 3 years and some $500m, just on 2 out of 3 vessel contract.
The US protects the steels mills from cheap imports from China, their prices are higher than the cheaper imports. Hence the final product made in the US is higher too, hence only for a US market, or some poor sap of a country that has signed a free trade agreement. Under the pretence of something much greaterβ¦
And on it goes in just about every manufacturing sector.β¦
Free trade is a very very desperate attempt by the US to increase exports and dump inferior quality and old technology onto countries that canβt afford to say noβ¦to the big hand outs by the US Govt. to helps health or its security! It helps to make the trade deficit look terrible and not disastrous.
America could use an increase of secularism but I don't think the dream that one day Leno won't find any stupid college students who don't know who the President is an attainable one.
Hear hear! I hadn't heard that so many Americans maintain a pre-Copernican view of the solar system but it doesn't surprise me. I know it must seem paradoxical that the most advanced country in the world can have such a poorly educated population. Frankly, when you feel no real threats to your existence or prosperity it dulls your senses. That was the case here for many years until globalization of labor suddenly threatened Amerucan wages. And that is exactly the reason why the candidates are now campaigning against free trade -- it is now easier, more tempting, more populist, and arguably more economically rational in the short term, for America to run away from the world than to re-educate and redirect itself for the long term.
"Dissing"? Is that a typo or an attempt at 1985-vintage hipness?
As a U.S. citizen, I fear this is very true.
As long as I can remember, intellectualism hasn't been something to be admired in the USofA. From the Fonz and Kotter's sweathogs in the 70s to Paris Hilton today, culture's heroes are never the best and the brightest. The person who can hit .323 will always be more culturally popular than the one who calculates where that .323 came from.
Ah, I do love a good factoid about the general knowledge of US College Grads. I don't think any country should be allowed to become a superpower unless they could collectively win a game of Trivial Pursuit.
I don't quite get the connection between American ignorance of the sciences and our failure to read works of fiction. What does fiction have to do with scientific knowledge? Perfectly intelligent and well-educated people manage to get through life without fiction. Some of us even manage to read the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ.
The majority of this ignorance seems to come from the Republican camp. And it is the prinicpal reason why I would describe myself as a Republican who votes Democrat.
I believe in the free market and free trade. I believe in the power of success, I believe in rewarding employers, however until the republicans can actually uphold the constitution, particularly the separation of church and state, I will never vote for them.
The religeous right, and ignorant populous are harming both the economy within the states and the attitudes of other people towards them.
This blog seems a bit defensive....but right. We have our good and our bad qualities. As an English Assistant in France and a past student of an English University, I have seen first hand the good and the bad of the systems in comparison with America.
I think our religion DOES hold us back when it oomes to education but it goes hand in hand with a general isolationist mindset that is rampant throughout the country. We are a large country that is separated from Europe by an ocean. As much as we forget at times, we are not european and therefore inherently different. Our foundations vary and it is evident in our current states but both europe and America can learn from each other.....a thought that needs to be rememberd on BOTH sides of the pond.
good piece..but is it true about the sun? no i understand the earth revolves around the sun ,but is it true some do not believe this. that amazes me even though i live here(oregon) and am rather cynical .now i am going to ask around see if i am lucky enough to live in an enlightened part of the states.
Justin,
You continue to provide excellent commentary. I would add just one critical, middle phrase omitted from the Jefferson quote: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, IN A STATE OF CIVILIZATION, it expects what never was and never will be." The statistics you cite resonate with my experience teaching biology, including evolution, to freshman university students for the past third of a century. However, the several thousand students that have taken my classes over the years have shown that, given the chance, they are eager to learn and a joy to teach. Also, it has been quite easy to reconcile the beliefs of religious students with the discoveries of modern evolutionary biology. Even the 20 to 25% of our population that hold to the outrageous views you mention could become better informed were it not for the continuous call to ignorance blaring from segments of the mass media. Hopefully at some point, the promoters of ignorance, whether directly or indirectly, will realize their irresponsibility and stop. After all, it is civilization itself that is in the balance.
P.S. Ironically relative to the subject of this posting, I always add the USA to my address, as does the state to our vehicle license plates, since many in the U.S. population remain ignorant of the fact that one of the 50 United States is called "New Mexico." By the way, New Mexico encompasses over 314 thousand square kilometers, slightly more than the total area of the British Isles.
Thanks for the heads up about Jacoby's book, it's a definite read, and since I'm here I'll give a shout out to Sam Harris' book, "The End of Faith." It's an alarming and logical look at the ambiguities and dangers of religious faith/belief.
p.s. I enjoy your blogs with all their insights and the links towards other POVs. Thanks.
I think Europe ought to relax about the whole Creationism thing. I was taught Creationism growing up (I was home schooled), but I don't feel theres a gaping hole in my education. I would suggest I know more about taxonomy, astronomy, meterology, microbiology, and even natural history than most business school graduates on either side of the pond can claim. While my position has since evolved into an acceptance of evolution as the only viable scientific theory, I do not look on my education as inadequate.
The idea that "too many" Americans have no use for knowledge or learning makes me wonder exactly where these Americans are or why I have never met them. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places. But I can tell you that the segment of population that believes the Earth is 6000 years old and the segment that doesn't finish high school and attend college are distinctly different.
How many ways are there of telling this tired story? You know, the one about how Americans are more ignorant and uneducated than others. It is usually backed up by "shocking" revelations about evolution-deniers or Bigfoot-believers. It is what people overseas want to hear and they want it wrapped in "convincing" numbers. But how about a little introspection? To extent are the British ignorant about this or that? Funny, but we never hear about that. But that would require doing something about things in Britain: better to deflect attention elsewhere.
Americans lack one thing that much of the rest of the world possesses in spades: a superficial knowledge of other societies that they somehow believe represents substantive knowledge.
The average American knows little about e.g. British geography, while the average Brit knows a bit more about American geography. What does this prove? That the UK and world media devote a lot of time and effort to covering the US, so that even the average man/woman "knows" things about the US.
Look at it this way: the average American, Brit OR other privileged Westerner all know VERY little about the world, about the geography of e.g. China or the politics of India. Yet somehow the perception is there that Brits who know about Obama are worldly while Americans who don't know about Cameron are ignorant.
It's just a consequence of media reporting like Mr. Webb's. Brits are told Americans are ignorant, Brits are told that they are better educated. That doesn't make it so, sir. The comments on this blog are ultimately proof of this. American commentators acknowledge that we need to work on things here, while non-Americans never engage in introspection. No wonder things are more dynamic on this side of the Pond.
Every time I read one of these statistics showing how retarded 1 in 5 Americans are, I am reminded that I never hear how retarded 1 in 5 citizens of other nations are.
I've never received the right answer from a Canadian when I ask how many provinces are in Canada, & most Canadians I asked said there were 52 US states.
I'd like know how stupid 1 in 5 Brits, French, or Chinese, for example, are.
I know it doesn't need saying, but I can't resist observing that obviously this penn was not mightier than the sword...
Jacoby's book is as discursive as this blog. She slips around subject after subject, name-dropping, and quick-quoting in abundance along the way, in a general lament about American anti-intellectualism. Which isn't to say it isn't true, it just doesn't lead anywhere; although it's still a little more broad-minded than Harold Bloom's, 'Closing of the American Mind' from a few years back which also sounded a similar theme from a more right-wing stance. It's undoubtedly true that America is a misologist society and always has been. It's held together by the cash nexus and anything that can't be denominated in dollars is viewed with great suspicion, if not disdain, in America. The Pilgrims, almost 400 years ago may have come here for ideas and beliefs, but just about everybody since then has come here to try and strike it rich. And the whole ethos of American society reflects that. "Show me the money!" That's America's philosophy and that's the theme of American politics. Campaigns aren't won on ideals or by appealing to the better instincts of the American public. Neither are so-called "free trade" agreements, it's a misnomer in the context of agreements like the one with Colombia or previous ones like NAFTA or WTO. The issue, of course, is not trade between nations which goes back to antiquity but how it's stuctured. The recent agreements, including the newest one with Colombia aren't about free trade per se but who wins and who loses. These types of agreements are obviously stacked in favor of large transnational corporations and are favored by economic elites at the expense of workers and the enviornment at home and abroad. It's interesting to note, that the latest deal with Colombia was supposed to also include Ecuador and Bolivia but the new populist governments there changed course and pulled out. Columbia, of course, is America's closest ally in the region because it's government follows extreme right-wing social and economic policies and is closely linked to paramilitary death squads. This latest trade deal would only further those interests and be a disaster for Columbia's long suffering campesinos, many of whom would be driven off their land as were their counterparts in Mexico after NAFTA was implemented. Nothing shows a "lack of respect" to underpriveleged Colombians as much this destructive agreement. The gutsy - and principled approach - would be for Clinton and Obama to vigorously oppose it and the entire Plan Columbia which has brought so much havoc and misery to Columbian peasants and workers for the past decade. Whether or not "the glorious balm of literature" has the capacity to "transcend these horrors" is doubtful, but a new political policy could if Clinton or Obama have the guts to stand up to the big money.
Wes J - Having recently come back from doing the grocery shopping in a UK based store which is owned by 'Wal-Mart' I think you may have a point about the '1 in 5' not simply being an American thing...
So Ms. Jacoby thinks, "the sky is falling, the sky is falling"? She needs some historical perspective. The sky has been falling in the U.S. for over 200 years. Political attacks in American newspapers in the early 19th century were far more viscous than anything the Swift Boat Veterans managed to get on television. I doubt that the percentage of the population reading educational or uplifting books or novels has changed much in the last 100 years. Does anyone reading this know what the "penny dreadfuls" were? And yes, there is a tremendous amount of trash on television, but in percentage terms, does anyone think it's worse than it was when there were only three major networks? Does anyone remember the "Wasteland Speech" given by FCC chairman Newton N. Minow in 1961? TV in the US has always been full of junk. It's just that there is so much more television available now that it feels like we're being swamped. But there is also the History Channel, PBS, and other good stuff available if you look for it.
"The Country is Going to the Dogs" is a theme among American intellectuals the way it was among Roman intellectuals. The Romans of the first century A.D. thought they were no match for the founders of the Roman Republic, and their successors said the same thing about the Romans of the Augustan Age (etc., etc., etc.). Yet there continued to be a flowering of literature, science, and the arts for another several centuries.
Yes, we need to reform our educational system and yes, it would be awfully nice to see the last reality TV program canceled for lack of viewers and yes, I really am tired of fundamentalists trying to insert religion in the public schools as science. But let's not kid ourselves that things have ever been much different. We just manage to muddle through in spite of it all.
I would just like to point out that I have seen two news stories recently indicating that 1 in 5 students in the UK think Winston Churchill was a myth and never existed, and a further 1 in 3 think he was the first man on the moon...
I am an American, and I am offended by your ignorance of the American people if you seriously believe those statistics you have just repeated. I have never met anyone who believes that the sun revolves around the earth. I am sure that the number of college graduates who believe that all things have existed in their current forms is far lower than the number you carelessly wrote. Why don't you learn more about us before you ask us to learn about you?
To consistently hear Christianity associated with ignorance, and particularly scientific or politcal ignorance is frustrating. I am a Christian, and one who resides in Europe, who has a deep passion for knowledge, for new and innovative scientific discovery, and a desire to try and understand as much as possible regarding global politics, as well as a host of other academic fields. I also have enjoyed the great privilege of a University education. Oh and I grew up in an educational system that taught only evolution.
And yet I have made a conscious and knowing decision to place a faith in Christianity, and would consider myself a creationist. Does this mean that I completely disagree with evolution? No. But it does mean that I am no longer as convinced that evolution is the definative answer that many hope or believe that it is.
I write this with trepidation that for daring to disagree with the norm I will be shouted down and labelled as ignorant, but am willing to be open so as to suggest that rather than labeling one group as ignorant, surely we should allow for debate on subjects such as evolution/creationism and give academics and others the freedom to discern for themselves.
Americans should be ever thankful for the Susan Jacobys and her fellow denizens of the Upper West Side. Without them, America would not have support for most of the world's great universities, buyers for the 172,000 books published last year, not to mention the scientific and technological advances that we read about daily.How they can accomplish all that and still find time to qvetch is one of life's unsolved mysteries.
I believe any statistic regarding the "Americans are idiots" presumption will, by its nature, be skewed toward the presumption.
The United States is a large and very populous country. I dare say that it would not be very challenging in *any* country, to find someone with a similar level of ignorance *if you specifically looked for it*.
My point is not that US citizens are either smarter or dumber than your gross generalizations suggest; my point is that statistics are almost always skewed, and "examining" a country this large it's rather easy (and perhaps even lazy, since you don't bother to cite sources) to back up this type of generalization with "informal" (read: biased) polls or so-called statistics.
I am always a little suspicious of 'evidence' of American ignorance. Partly because we Brits secretly want to believe it, whether it's true or not, because we like to think we're a bit smarter and more sophisticated than our Johnny-come-lately cousins. And partly because it just doesn't fit - America is the absolute world leader in most areas of research, with its best universities unbeatable. Lots of money and the influx of overseas talent help, but that's not the whole story.
I think there might be a problem somewhere, with some, but religion isn't the root of it. Maybe it's more bullish individualism: I'm my own person, in my own world, and reality is what I damned well want it to be. Who is a scientist to tell me about natural history?
An example of this, it seems to me, is seen on responses to the media (and blogs such as this). If you don't like the facts, or you disagree with a statement, to hell with engaging with it or entering a dialogue, just reject it as biased and carry on as you were. Crying 'bias' is a pretty smart way of removing any obstructions to believing whatever you want. But it's toxic for the rest of us.
Stephen Colbert's line, 'and reality has a well-known liberal bias', sums it up brilliantly.
Justin,
I just watched you on ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ America commenting on Hilary Clinton's recent assertion that President Bush should boycott the Olympics. Your view seems to be that it is good for the campaign trail.
Why must you always treat anything Hillary says or does with such cynicsm? Why are you and the rest of the media coverage of this campaign so biased? You are supposed to be impartial.
having read SJ's book I challenge her opponents to compare it with Mark A. Noll's "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" - try SJ's pp. 188-191 & 206,7 for starters, that is if you have the guts - Editor Webb, another fine column...many thanks
Do get out of DC a bit more, Justin. I am a 60+ year old Brit touring the US for the past 9 months and, while I recognise the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ slant on the US, would suggest you would get a better understanding of the issues that challenge the US today if you looked a little closer and didn't just focus on other 'commentators'. I am with the last contributor - Americans are a very generous and polite race as we used to be when I was growing up but are no more - and you should look at the attitudes and beliefs you claim to know something more closely. Meet the people and check out the stats for yourself - you will be surprised. I know I was.
Johnnie at no. 27. You make a good point about the reasons why a stereotype of American ignorance often exists outside of the USA: it probably is a question of perception rather than fact.
Then you go and spoil it by saying:
"American commentators acknowledge that we need to work on things here, while non-Americans never engage in introspection".
Perhaps we all need to work on changing our perceptions.
Justin, I wouldn't be so quick to judge the credulity of Americans. It's hardly surprising that a quarter of all college graduates believe living things were created roughly as they are now. You see, Americans are much more independent than us Brits.
Americans like to question, to inquire, to investigate - it's part of their enterprising spirit. The British often like to play it safe, accept the official, authoritative verdict, and cynically call every other option 'ignorant'.
Which is the most ignorant of these? Well, I'm a Cambridge Philosophy graduate, and I'm a creationist, for scientific reasons rather than religious ones - although I am a Christian as well. I also know a Computational Biologist at Cambridge who's a creationist, and cancer specialists, immunologists, lab researchers and doctors who all say the same thing. Of my fellow students, creationists were found among the physicists and biologists. The immunologist was headhunted for a position at Wolfson College, but he turned it down. Even Anthony Flew recently came to the conclusion that there must be a God, based, in part, on the evidence for Intelligent Design.
We hold these views because we're not afraid to question orthodoxy, and because we found that it makes a good deal more scientific sense than the more traditional interpretations - and the quarter of college grads in America that so disgust you probably feel the same way.
The fact is, there's a real debate going on in our educational institutions - and fobbing this off as mere ignorance says more about its detractors than it does about us.
As far as Mark Penn is concerned - his resignation should by rights have been a real blow for Clinton - but I get the feeling that Penn's arrogance means they're better off in the long run without him.
"one in five American adults believes the sun revolves around the earth; or that more than a quarter of US college graduates(!!) think all living things have always existed in their present form."
Is there any possibility we could see where these figures come from? It's hard to refute what seems like an impossibility, without knowing where to look for answers. I would very much appreciate a citation or link to an article or something.
In response to Miles Brady's post:
Mr Brady, just because you're "sure" Justin's numbers are wrong doesn't mean you're right does it? Just because you've never met anyone who thinks the Earth goes around the sun doesn't mean they don't exist, and potentially in great numbers. I've never met George Bush but I'm pretty sure he's real (unfortunately). Don't you see that it is YOU that needs to check your facts before "carelessly" responding? By doing what you have done you are just perpetuating the American sterotype; that of a reactionary force that bluntly swings back in response to any criticism/attack, without forethought (do you detect my subtle reference to the war here?)