New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A few weeks ago I was asked by Wolf Blitzer if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. It was amazing - in the minute or so between my calling America stupid and the end of the Cialis commercial, CNN was flooded with furious emails and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! It's how they get the blood circulating when the Cialis wears off. Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which A) proves my point, and B) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him.
Now, the hate mail all seemed to have a running theme: that I may live in a stupid country, but they lived in the greatest country on earth, and that perhaps I should move to another country, like Somalia. Well, the joke's on them because I happen to have a summer home in Somalia... and no I can't show you an original copy of my birth certificate because Woody Harrelson spilled bong water on it.
And before I go about demonstrating how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness dragging down our country, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, 69% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Four years later, 34% still did. Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.
I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.
Not here. Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.
Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen, and a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence because it contains the words "Bush" and "knowledge."
People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%. And don't even ask about cabinet members: seven in ten think Napolitano is a kind of three-flavored ice cream. And last election, a full one-third of voters forgot why they were in the booth, handed out their pants, and asked, "Do you have these in a relaxed-fit?"
And I haven't even brought up America's religious beliefs. But here's one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.
And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. There's a lot of populist anger directed towards Washington, but you know who concerned citizens should be most angry at? Their fellow citizens. "Inside the beltway" thinking may be wrong, but at least it's thinking, which is more than you can say for what's going on outside the beltway.
And if you want to call me an elitist for this, I say thank you. Yes, I want decisions made by an elite group of people who know what they're talking about. That means Obama budget director Peter Orszag, not Sarah Palin.
Which is the way our founding fathers wanted it. James Madison wrote that "pure democracy" doesn't work because "there is nothing to check... an obnoxious individual." Then, in the margins, he doodled a picture of Joe the Plumber.
Until we admit there are things we don't know, we can't even start asking the questions to find out. Until we admit that America can make a mistake, we can't stop the next one. A smart guy named Chesterton once said: "My country, right or wrong is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying... It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'" To which most Americans would respond: "Are you calling my mother a drunk?"
Bill Maher is the host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," and will be joined on the show tonight by Arianna Huffington. "Real Time" airs fridays on HBO at 10:00PM Eastern Time.
Follow Bill Maher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billmaher
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Can we throw in that over the years, its been proven that Republican
You mix those two together for awhile and you get a country eaten out from the inside.
(Which, I might add, is Sun Tzu's preferred form of warfare...
The American Government understand the power of ignorance in the majority of its populace the same way they encourage obesity. 'Let me have men about me who are fat' quoth Julius Caesar in Shakespear
Give every kid in America the chance to graduate from college and that will be the end to most of problems in the world.
Pipe-dream
THAT might make them care more about the environmen
One term because the Anti-Bush voters have maid their point and giving President Ad Hoc another term just might land us in Prolonged Detention.
Questions for the "Smart" Liberal.
1. Is our form of Government a Democracy? What did the Founding Father Thomas Paine suggest about Democracie
2. What President and Ruling party and it's constituen
Oh Bill, it's 25% is the total amount of waste most say about the Pentagon budget that just "vanishes" and now Obama can get 2/3rds of the 1 Trillion needed over the next 10 years for Health Care... I'm a nasty conservati
the republican majority are in general far less educated, when compared to liberals (i don't need facts to back that up- just look at the red states)
(Blimey, you can't read the sense because of the rotten style)
Wonkette snark-span
"Do you really, truly, seriously think it is OK for a president to use a forged birth certificat
After 8 years of a president sent by God to lead the American people and rescue us from the horrors of 911 and Islamo-fas
http://raw
__________
That's what we're up against.
Bill, keep it up. (And I'm not suggesting a double-dos
However, I can't, for the life of me, understand where in the world you got religion from someone who thinks the earth revolves around the sun. Were you just listening to Elisabeth Hasselbeck or something?
And my Dad used to say "it's better to keep your mouth closed and be thought an idiot than to open it and remove all doubt".
Waiting is Wrong and Govt Must Invest NOW.
The President'
The President and his team are aware of counter-in
Alas, what is in focus in the President'
Technology is prepared to end scarcity. Money is prepared to reduce debt to a constructi
Just asking.
Didn't she come of age in the "valley girl" era.?
When, like, you know, it was, like, so cool, you know, to not know (anything.
Talk about college girls and their iced-teas. Back then, all you needed was a real short haircut and a Reagan bumper sticker to get any, well, you know, valley girl stuff.
Seriously, i feel pity for the people that are going through the embarrassm
I'm a little nervous about the latest fad with the gun strappers, only because after one of them shoots themselves in the foot ( which will probably happened), I don't want a bullet ricochetin