Stephan: I have become increasingly concerned about the Willful Ignorance Trend, and you should be too. The ignorance of ordinary Americans about their government is stupefying. College students who can't identify a picture of Vice President Biden; students on another college campus who can't name the three branches of the Federal government. And now this: Adult Americans who can't name the capitol city of the United States nor the person for whom the city is named.
On September 17, 1787, the last day of the Constitutional Convention, having just signed the Constitution, the delegates rose and streamed out of the old State House, now known as Independence Hall. Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates, was standing near Benjamin Franklin as the two men exited, and he overheard the woman who stopped Franklin and asked, “Well, doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?”
To which Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
I'm not at all sure we can anymore. We may be too ignorant as a people to sustain the democratic republic the Founders designed.
Click through and watch the video.
As Forrest Gump says in the eponymous 1994 classic film, stupid is as stupid does.
In a YouTube video, media analyst, author and conspiracy theorist Mark Dice took to the beaches of San Diego to ask passersby who our nation’s capital is named after.
Spoiler: The capital is Washington, D.C., and it’s named after George Washington, the first president of the United States.
Several of those who appear in the video can’t name the capital city. Those who can are still stymied by the namesake.
“Our nation’s capital is Washington, D.C.,” one young man says with conviction, “and I don’t know who it’s named after!”
The icing on this deeply disappointing cake: An Italian tourist knew the answer immediately and was shocked that some Americans did not.
