Sometimes people joke about how little of their own history Americans know, but it’s really bad, folks. It’s worse than you think.
Just the other day, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said it was the job of the president and Congress to keep the Supreme Court in check.
And by that she means: if the Court overturns a popular decision with 50 years of tradition behind it, it needs to be kept in check — even though it’s just returning issues to the states that had always resided there and necessarily reside there in a federal system.
Bryan Caplan, in his provocatively titled book The Case Against Education (Princeton University Press, 2018), points out some truly horrifying results from a basic civics test given to American adults.
Below I’ll share with you a few of the questions that were asked, along with the possible answers (the correct answer will be in bold). Then I’ll share two figures: the percentage who got the correct answer, and the percentage who really knew the answer (in other words, correcting to account for people who got the question right simply by guessing).
(1) Which of the following is not protected by the Bill of Rights?
Freedom of speech
Trial by jury
The right to bear arms
The right to vote
39% got the correct answer; 21% really knew the answer
(2) Which of the following events came before the Declaration of Independence?
Foundation of Jamestown, Virginia
The Civil War
The Emancipation Proclamation
The War of 1812
49%, 26%
(3) The Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits
Prayer in public school
Discrimination based on race, sex, or religion
The ownership of guns by private individuals
Establishing an official religion for the United States
The president from vetoing a line item in a spending bill
26%, 8%
The questions continue, but you get the idea.
The vast majority of American adults are not even entitled to an opinion on major issues in American life.
Now imagine asking these same people — many of whom today fly Ukrainian flags — what happened to the Ukrainian people under communism in the 1930s.
If they think the Civil War happened before the Declaration of Independence, it’s a safe bet that they don’t know about the terror famine in Ukraine under Stalin.
The next course we’ll be adding to our collection of on-demand courses at Liberty Classroom, my dashboard university that teaches the history that was withheld from you, will be on the crimes of communism.
To say that fills a crucial gap would be the understatement of the year.
The whole site is about smashing p.c. and teaching the truth.
In honor of that upcoming course, I’m having a flash sale: for just the next 48 hours, take a full 50% off our master (lifetime) membership when you use coupon code communism:
