Damn, we’re becoming a stupid people.

Pop quiz: Who was emperor when the United States declared independence from China?

Give up?

Perhaps you should ask one of the Americans who, when asked what country the U.S. separated from, named France, Japan, Mexico, Spain or, yes, China.

A new Marist poll shows that 26% of people in this country don’t know that the U.S. declared its independence from Great Britain. That includes 20% who aren’t sure — and another 6% who think it was another country.

Looking at the numbers more deeply, it appears the closer to 1776 you were born, the more likely you are to know the correct answer.




  1. ECA says:

    #34,
    not really a problem..
    as its NOT the dirt people..
    UNLESS you count the 1% of IDIOTS on top of the payroll.

  2. bobbo, words have a context says:

    #31–thanks fred==I think you may be using the wrong definition of republican. In context, its referring to “election of representatives” of the people rather than direct election. I don’t know what liberal meant in that context, but it could be as basic as “trying something new like not having hereditary kings.”

    So, in context, should not raise any hackles. There were no “Republicans” or “Liberals” by name at the founding our great country. Some say hardly any Republican today, and too few liberals?

  3. woody says:

    #34 never mind the fact that Michelle Obama stated that Kenya was Barry Sotero’s home country. That vid was distributed on various youtube posts. Never mind the evidence, let’s just pretend that the united states government is still legitimate governing authority.

    Think Progress is really in favor of the working man? That is why they would favor the progressive income tax system that taxes the f out off working class people, but would offer tax incentives and tax exemptions for multi national corporations that layoff American workers to offshore their operations in third world nations that don’t tax the fuck out of them.

    Bobo is just a simple dooshbag that should be ignored.

  4. Canucklehead says:

    never understood why the 13 colonies could leave Great Britain, but the southern states couldn’t leave the union.

    Canada has the same issue. some Quebeckers think Canada is divisible, but they don’t think Quebec is divisible.

    tell that to the First Nations’ in northern Quebec. (or the Anglos in the Gatineau, Eastern Townships, etc)

  5. ray says:

    26% is because 26% of the people were originally from foreign lands who immigrated to the US. id bet that stupid native born americans exist, but the numbers r quite lower.

  6. Benjamin says:

    #39 Ray, I bet foreigners know more about American history than native-born Americans. They have to take a history test to get US citizenship.

  7. Wretched Gnu says:

    You might want to refrain from talking about other people’s “stupidity,” Uncle Dave, given that the single sentence you had to write for this post doesn’t know the difference between a subject and object…


0

Bad Behavior has blocked 4328 access attempts in the last 7 days.