Americans Still Cling to Ignorance Critique

Victor Davis Hanson’s analysis, (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/30/americans_still_cling_to_ignorance_107366.html) is full of distortions half truths and inaccuracies.  It is astounding that in this day and age Mr. Hanson is celebrating and proud of the ignorance of the average American. Survey after survey has shown that American high school students score near the bottom in math and science compared to high school students of the top twenty industrialized nations.

He rips into President Carter’s failings, with barely a mention of his many successes, such as the Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel which still holds today. Carter was right to pursue a policy of energy conservation and independence. One of the major reasons that the US maintains a bloated defense budget is to maintain its dominance of the Persian Gulf to keep the only flowing freely.

Mr. Hanson next turns his sights on Senator Kerry. Kerry is absolutely right to bemoan the electorate’s tendency to fall for "a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what's happening." A stark reminder of this is the health care reform debate. At one of the many public rallies organized by the Tea Party this summer, one of the angry participants was heard to say that he didn’t want a government takeover of health care and that the Democrats should “keep their hands off his Medicare plan.” By many measure of health care spending and outcomes, the US places near the bottom among the industrialized countries.

About Kerry’s remark to students to study well in school lest they end up stuck in Iraq. Hanson once again takes a cheap shot at Kerry, by stating: "He apparently had forgotten that soldiers volunteer for military service, and are overwhelmingly high school graduates.” It is quite obvious, that Mr. Hanson has not done his homework on the subject. It is well known that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being fought disproportionally by minorities, and the less well educated. In addition, due to short of qualified recruits the US military lowered its standards to accept convicted felons.

In the final analysis it appears that Hanson is blinded by his ideology in trying to justify his opposition to a host of issues, such as health care reform, the need to close Guantanamo and immigration reform. His extolling of the Tea Party’s positions and Republican obstructionism is deplorable. He would do well to read “Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free” by Charles P. Pierce.   With his sharp wit and sound reasoning, Pierce delivers a gut-wrenching and humorous lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States, and how a nation founded on intellectual curiosity has somehow degenerated into a nation of simpletons more likely to vote for an American Idol contestant than a presidential candidate.