February 8, 2025

The Seed of Destruction

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 15 November 2024
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column Founded 1932
              The seed of destruction
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift         
 
WASHINGTON – Adlai Stevenson running for president in the 1950’s was told by an admiring voter after hearing him speak, “Every thinking person in America will be voting for you.”
Stevenson replied, “I’m afraid that won’t do – I need a majority.”
An informed citizenry is the cornerstone of democracy, and in the age of “alternate facts” and “fake news,” slogans coined during the first Trump term, information is elusive. Voters are bombarded by partisan ads and do not know whom to believe and what media to trust.
What we used to call civics classes or social studies are no longer widely taught. Too many students graduate from high school without knowing the country’s history, how the government operates, or having enough comprehension of political philosophy to clearly describe the differences between a republic, democracy, communism, or totalitarianism.
This explains why so many people are stunned by the House of Clowns President-elect Donald Trump is creating.
He won a mandate, but it is not what many of those who voted for him actually mandated. His Cabinet nominees for Attorney General (considered the worst in history), Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Homeland Security, and Director of National Intelligence are particularly egregious for what they lack in competence and foretell in intent.
Apparently, our ill-informed electorate knew not what they wrought.
However, some of our fellow citizens are tested on their knowledge before they can become citizens. These are the legal immigrants who must study The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services History and Government questions known as the Naturalization Test. This consists of 100 questions and answers from which 10 are administered verbally. The potential citizens are given two and only two attempts to pass.
What follow is a sampling of 20 of the 100 questions: 
1.      What is the supreme law of the land?
2.      The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constitution. What are these words?
3.      What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
4.      What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?
5.      How many amendments does the Constitution have?
6.      What are two rights in the Declaration of Independence?
7.      What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?
8.      Name your U.S. Representative.
9.      If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?
10. Who is the Chief Justice of the United States now?
11. What is the name of the Speaker of the House of Representatives now?
12. What do we show loyalty to when we say the Pledge of Allegiance?
13. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
14. When was the Constitution written?
15. The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.
16. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803?
17. What did Susan B. Anthony do?
18. Who was President during World War I?
19. Before he was President, Eisenhower was a general. What war was he in?
20. Name one U.S. territory.
        
         Take heart if you come up short with your answers. You are in the company of most Americans not because they are lacking in intelligence but in information that should have been taught in elementary school, or at least in high school.
Democracy contains the seed for its own destruction. Some emerging democracies fell prey to the unintended fate of one-man-one-vote-one-time. And the first half of the 20th Century even witnessed sophisticated European societies unintentionally voting their democracies out of existence.
An uninformed electorate is democracy’s seed of destruction.
 
See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
          Twitter:  @douglas_cohn
          © 2024 U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
          Distributed by U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND

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