Fight Back Against Tide Of Ignorance

In 1492, when George Washington and a crew of hardy explorers stepped off the Mayflower and discovered the United States, who could have guessed that it would someday come to this?

I’m talking about a new poll indicating that many Americans know next to nothing about their own Constitution.

Out of a thousand citizens surveyed by the National Constitution Center in Washington, over half couldn’t say how many U.S. senators there are. Over a third believe the Constitution names English as the official language of the United States. One in six thought the Constitution establishes the United States as a Christian nation.

It was only the most recent addition to the mountain of evidence indicating that when it comes to American history and government, Americans know, well, diddly squat.

As Philadelphia Mayor Edward Rendell, the chairman of the center, pointed out, most native-born Americans would fail the citizenship test immigrants must pass to become naturalized citizens.

This situation is intolerable. Inexcusable. Really, really bad.

And it is time to make a change.

As President Coolidge said so memorably during the most hopeless days of the Civil War, “When in the course of human events we ask not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country, when we act with malice toward none and charity for all, that is one small step for a man, one giant leap for all mankind.”

Gives me the chills just thinking about it.

The question, my fellow Americans, is: Can we surrender to a tide of ignorance? Is that why Martin Luther King freed the slaves? Why Thomas Jefferson chopped down the cherry tree? Is it why Ronald Reagan stood on the floor of Congress and uttered those imperishable words, “Give me liberty, or give me debt!”

No, I think not.

But you know, it’s ironic that this study comes out right as the nation is suffering through yet another of its dreary cycles of anti-immigrant hysteria. It’s a strange malady, given that the American Colonies were founded by people who came from someplace else, brought disease with them, were a drain on resources, lacked salable skills and refused to learn the language. For some strange reason, the natives - at least initially - took them in anyway.

Yet we have, in our righteous xenophobia, come down hard on new arrivals in recent years. We’ve tightened rules, restricted rights, instituted English-only laws, done everything except sandblast the welcoming inscription off the Statue of Liberty. We have made ourselves as clear as language allows:

Go back to Mexico, Maria.

Go back to France, Francois.

Go back to China, Chang.

Go back.

It occurs to me, though, that maybe we ought to keep a few immigrants around. You never know when we’ll need someone to explain our history or interpret our Constitution. Lord knows most of those born here have no time for that, what with Steven Seagal movies to see and a new TV season getting under way.

It’s a shame, though, when you pause to consider all that we have lost. We won’t be able to tell our children heroic stories of Franklin Roosevelt’s Rough Riders charging up Bunker Hill or the Confederate soldiers standing their ground at Iwo Jima. Won’t be able to explain how the president’s Cabinet was made with wood from the three branches of the federal government. Won’t even be able to talk about how the Second Amendment gives us the precious right to bare arms. And legs.

We should not accept this sad state of affairs.

I’m reminded of what Abraham Lincoln so eloquently said during one of his famous fireside chats at the height of Great Depression: “Them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose. So keep hope alive because a mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

Frankly, I think that says it all.

xxxx