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LOL...
99.07 % of Americans do not know what form of government they have been guaranteed, nor could they accurately define it in legal terms.
(No, it's not a constitutionally limited indirect democracy.)
I think Maher is confusing ignorance with stupidity.
Americans are probably not stupid. But maybe more stupid than the Asians, who are better at math and science. Being bad at math and science is a better indicator of stupidity, IMO, vs "book learning" of factoids, which is Maher is talking about.
Americans are probably pretty ignorant about the things that dont affect them on a day-to-day basis, or that dont interest them. Which is fine. You really dont need to know where Latvia is on the map to get through the week.
For me, personally, I am actually trying to be more ignorant of poltics and current affairs and am already pretty ignorant of pop culture (TV, movies, etc). They say ignorance is bliss and i am a lot happier now that I dont follow politics and get all ate-up about stuff like that.
Americans’ “practical” bent does, I think, result in comparative disregard for subjects that don’t affect people personally and which are viewed as esoteric or dry. This applies to many of the traditional school subjects of history, geography, literature, and to some extent math and the sciences.
I remain persuaded that if we take a random sample of middle-class adults from any industrialized nation, offer them incentives to learn a battery of academic subjects in a concentrated setting, teach them these subjects, and then give them a formal exam – well then, the results will be essentially identical amongst the various nations. Class, within any nation, probably causes more variability than national distinctions.
It’s also likely that adults in all nations tend to forget school-learning of minimal relevance to their jobs and daily lives. The likely difference between America and other industrialized nations, however, is that perhaps Americans are more likely to behold this forgetting of school-learning as something about which to not worry, or maybe even something to embrace; whereas in other cultures there is regret for having forgotten such learning, and maybe a wistful longing to recover it in a perfect world where memory is acute and no competing demands on one’s time preclude extensive personal study.
So difference between America and say Western Europe is not in the actual level of knowledge, but in how people behold their lack of knowledge.
By the way… were such Maher-type questions asked on the street in London, or Tel Aviv, or Sydney? Has anyone done side-by-side comparisons with similar battery of questions, asked in similar circumstances, between different nations?
No, not stupid but ignorant. The ignorance is based on their laziness. That is how we ended up with President Obama being elected so thus, I am thinking, "stupid".
Lol! Bill O'Reilly? The same Bill O'Reilly who said earth is the only planet that has a moon?
Well, he is technically correct.
The Earth has a (natural) satellite which is called the moon. Other planets have satellites, but they have different names and not one of them is called "moon."
no. he is wrong. other planets have moons, ergo his statement was incorrect.
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