Americans have lamented their own "civic ignorance" for generations. But a Newsweek poll suggests the problem might be distinctly worse than imagined. The magazine gave 1,000 citizens the country's official citizenship test, and 38 percent failed. A third of them couldn't name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn't say what the Cold War was about. And 6 percent couldn't find Independence Day on a calendar. Who's to blame for this appalling lack of knowledge about basic history and civics? (Watch a discussion about the poll results)
Politicians are distorting facts: This one "cannot be blamed on the American people alone," says Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. America's "politicians, pundits, and interest groups regularly engage in disinformation and demagoguery," twisting the facts to suit their politics. With all the distortion, "it's nearly impossible for the casual observer of politics to know what the truth is."
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