Guess What?

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You're an idiot.

Well, you are if you're an American -- and I can prove it.

See, this American girl named Kellie Pickler appeared on American Idol, got kicked off, and then went on another TV show and said she thought Europe was a country. Case closed. All Americans are idiots. Nobody could be found in any other country who would make a mistake like that.

The New York Times touts this finding in an article called "Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans hostile to knowledge?" It rapidly zipped to the top of their "most e-mailed articles" list and a forum responding to the question "why do you think Americans are perceived as being hostile to global knowledge" elicited 978 comments.

This whole idea is very convenient for the Times, because it explains their failure. See, Times readership and profits are way down because it is intelligent, and America is a land of morons. It's nothing to do with the paper's own faults.

There's no data whatsoever in the article to show that Americans know less about Europe than Europeans know about America. There's not a speck of data to indicate that people in the Middle East are more eager to understand American culture than Americans are to understand the Arabian variant. The article refers to our "a failing educational system," seeming to have forgotten about an article just a few days ago in which the Times itself reported the whole world was copying our education system.

So it seems that the fact that we have the oldest constitutional democracy on the face of the Earth is just dumb luck. The fact that Europe has repeatedly consumed itself with wars over the past century, that the Middle East is a conflagration of terroristic tumult, while our continent has remained at peace (except for that well-educated and world-aware fellow Mr. Bin Laden, of course), is merely a freak occurrence. The fact that our economy bestrides the world like a colossus, that we have received truckloads of Nobel prizes in science and literature (and peace), that we are the only ones to have walked on the moon, that we are an indispensable party in all international disputes, all just happenstance.

Isn't that amazing?

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damageddude says:

You state that "The fact that our economy bestrides the world like a colossus, that we have received truckloads of Nobel prizes in science and literature (and peace), that we are the only ones to have walked on the moon, that we are an indispensable party in all international disputes, all just happenstance."

All that is true. However, you neglect to point out that quite a bit of that is in the past. How much of all this greatness will not be in the future? While we're wasting time and energy taking all the creativity out of education with tests, seriously allowing school systems to teach the Bible's "theory of evolution" (can't explain it, so God did it - end of story) is akin to the "scientific theory of evolution" (points to tons of evidence to back up their theories, while admitting that better facts may change their theory) and keeping foreign students, who would spread our ideals and business contacts to their homes, out because of fear, our competitors are not.

We are idiots. We're living on the riches of yesterday instead of taking the proper steps to make sure we're strong tomorrow. I'm nt talking by force, I'm talking about the ideals that made America the greatest country in the 20th century. We concentrate on consumers buying goods and services from other countries, because it's cheaper, instead of investing in making those jobs more affordable here. We waste our resources trying to squeeze every ounce of oil from the land, instead of investing in true alternate, renewable energies that will allow us to put off the inevitable (sooner or later the world will run out of oil, maybe not in our lifetimes, but we should be getting ready for it now instead of letting it shock our economy in 50 years). We're not thinking about tomorrow and we're going to pay for that one day.

We should be investing in our education system instead of giving rebates to keep consumers buying imported goods. It's our future. 50 years ago, the City University of NY gave a free education to anybody who showed that they had brains. Today, while CUNY's tuition is low, it is still too expensive for some. The increasing costs of education are a barrier to some of our brightest. How does it benefit us if the next potential Einstein is forced to be WalMart employee because he couldn't afford college?

/knowledge is power
//we're having a power shortage

Artfldgr says:

All that is true. However, you neglect to point out that quite a bit of that is in the past.

VERY true.

I love America, and I have watched the decline all my life. I had a high reading level as a child, and so had a kind of early start on knowing where people were and I have watched it decline to the point of painful. I can even detail specific changes, like progressive educational methods (delivered to us by the soviets) compartmentalizing knowledge. I can show you the speeches where the teachers after being co-opted, started to ask then answer the question about indoctrinating.

How much of all this greatness will not be in the future?

Not much. People cant reason, ideology makes them not think, they have feelings, and opinions, and everyone knows something about everything, even if they really don�t know anything, and all ideas are equal.

The leftist socialists took over the schools long ago, and then went about redistributing wealthy by dumbing us down. No one designed the system to have any breaks.

Obama�s new bill just went in� now the world gets to tax the USA. (to the tune of 800+ billion dollars)

We are idiots. We're living on the riches of yesterday instead of taking the proper steps to make sure we're strong tomorrow.

Yup. I think the term is moral momentum. Bet you can give us the names of the people that helped do it too. Adorno, Lukaks, Gramsci, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Benjiman, Fromm, and others.

I'm not talking by force, I'm talking about the ideals that made America the greatest country in the 20th century.

Your right, because global communism means that you have to give up on yourself to accept the BBD. The ideals that made America great came from those god fearing white Europeans who gave us the renaissance, and the industrial revolution, and so on.

NOTE: This comment has been abridged by the Administrator for its excessive length. The commenter is requested to exercise more discipline and self restraint in the future so that the commenting process is not undermined for other readers, lest the entire comment be deleted next time.

Vova says:

I agree with the previous post and think that the point is well taken (albeit too long for an average reader's attention span). As for your claim that "we have received truckloads of Nobel prizes in science and literature (and peace)", yes, but many of these were foreign born, as is more than half of our PhD's, and as far as the peace prize is concerned, I'd give it back together with the recepient thereof.
Under Hussein Osama... oops, Obama, we'll all become smart commies and replace images of great presidents on our money with a picture of Hussein's idel--Che

La Russophobe says:

DAMAGEDDUDE:

You're actually mistaken. In 2007 the United States won more Nobel Prizes than any other country (in fact, more than all the others combined and more than half of all those handed out in the most recent year).

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/2007.html

USA - 6
Germany - 2
UK - 2
France - 1

But you reflect the true spirit of what makes us great, self-criticism for improvement. Unlike Russia, a country that hides from it faults and is destroyed by them, we always look to the future to be better yet.

The only thing is, at least we should tell the truth and be accurate, unlike the Times story, which seems to be motivated not by such ideas but rather by spite.

a young curmudgeon says:

Here we go again. How often during my life in Europe I had to listen to the "Americans are fat and stupid, and can't even find their own country on the map" stuff, all backed up by some idiot "study". Surely, Americans and Europeans are equally stupid, except that the American constitutional republic was founded upon enlightenment ideals and has a history to be proud of. Those beams of sunlight are occasionally still able to puncture the dark clouds of socialist indoctrination spread by public schools and public media.

If anything, European education is good at forcing people to do well on tests administered by leftists to determine who is "intelligent". Free college helps here, where Americans are smart enough to make their young ones pay if they would like to be exposed to left-wing nonsense for four more years. The market doesn't really care about "Stupidity", although lack of true knowledge does hasten the demise of a once strong republic into a third-world socialist "American Dream" of democratic majoritarianism.

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