what i'm reading now

Rick Shenkman is an associate professor of history at George Mason University. He is the editor and founder of George Mason University's History News Network, a website that features articles by historians on current events. In his book Just How Stupid Are
We - facing the truth about the American voter he states that
just as the American voter is wielding more power than ever the
voter is less informed and more easily manipulated than ever.

Here are some nuggets from the book:

• About 1 in 4 Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. But more than half of Americans can name at least two members of the cartoon family, the Simpsons.
• In January 2003, three months before our invasion of Iraq, a majority of Americans falsely believed that "Iraq played an important role in 9/11", according to a Program on International Policy Attitudes survey.
• The majority of American could not answer these question that were asked in polls over the last three decades: What happened in 1066? (the Norman Conquest). Who said the"world must be made safe for democracy? (Woodrow Wilson). Who was Plato? Just 34 percent knew. Which country dropped the nuclear bomb? Only 49 percent knew it was our own country.

"......How ignorant are we? Ask the political scientists and you will be told that there is damning, hard evidence pointing incontrovertibly to the conclusion that millions are embarrassingly ill-informed and that they do not care that they are. There is enough evidence that one could almost conclude--though admitted this is a stretch--that we are living in an Age of Ignorance.

Another quote from the book that struck me was: "If an idea cannot be expressed on a bumper sticker you can probably give up any hope that it will ever attract much support. It likely will be ridiculed to death before it ever has a chance to be seriously considered. At the moment of its introduction somebody will be sure to cast aspersions on the intellectuals who dreamed it up in their ivory towers, and that will pretty much be the end of it."