Do You Know More American Civics than Sarah Palin? (A Lesson in Conservative Hypocrisy)

Do you know more about American civics than the famously ignorant Sarah Palin?

Or more than the 71 percent of Americans who failed a basic civic literacy quiz?

According to a recent report called Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), “Of the 2,508 Americans taking ISI’s civic literacy test,” the report said, “71% fail. Nationwide, the average score on the test is only 49%. … The results reveal that Americans are alarmingly uninformed about our Constitution, the basic functions of our government, the key texts of our national history, and economic principles.”

The test consists of 33 questions on American history, the workings of the U.S. government and free market economics.

Some of the report’s findings:

• Less than half could name all three branches of the U.S. government.
• Only 21 percent knew the source of the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
• Less than one in five knew the origin of the phrase “a wall of separation” between church and state.

Civic ignorance was remarkably consistent across income, age, educational, racial, marital status, church attendance, ideological and party affiliation groups.  No group scored a passing grade, and no group knew more than 55 percent of the correct answers.

Elected official scored even worse than ordinary citizens, with only 33 percent scoring a passing grade. 

Based on these results, the ISI concludes that “America’s institutions of higher learning [have failed] to transmit to their students a basic understanding of the fundamental history, texts, and institutions of the American republic.”

The ISI then “calls upon administrators, trustees, faculty, donors, taxpayers, parents, and elected officials to reevaluate collegiate curricula and standards of accountability” and urges “leaders inside and outside of the academy with a stake in the future of American higher education to roll up their sleeves and get to work addressing the shortcomings documented in ISI’s civic literacy reports.”

From my own experience as a college professor, I have no doubt that the findings of the ISI regarding basic civic illiteracy are accurate. 

But I have questions about the ISI itself, and it’s own responsibility for the civic ignorance that it documents.

The ISI’s National Civics Literacy Board of Directors is comprised of conservative academics and policy advocates from the Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, the New Criterion, the Wall Street Journal, the National Center for Policy Analysis, Civic Enterprises, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Center for Creative Leadership and the Philip M. McKenna Foundation.

In other words, the people who run ISI are the very same people whose policies and favored candidates have destroyed the public education system on which our national civic literacy depends.

The ISI report focuses its attention and criticism on American colleges, but as anyone who has taught at the college level knows, what can be accomplished by colleges largely depends on the basic knowledge that students bring with them – that is, on what they’ve learned (or not learned) in grade school and high school. 

By advocating policies that slash funds to public education, increase class sizes, reduce teacher salaries and benefits, and eliminate early childhood and after-school educational programs, the board members of the ISI are themselves responsible for the civic illiteracy they now hypocritically bemoan.

Here’s a civics test for the board members of the ISI:

1. Tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy have resulted in:
a. Increased class sizes.
b. Elimination of educational programs.
c. Reductions in educational resources.
d. All of the above.

2. In practice, conservative (Republican) educational theory means:
a. Increased class sizes.
b. Elimination of educational programs.
c. Reductions in educational resources.
d. All of the above.

3. The members of the ISI board are in large part responsible for
a. The failed educational policies of the Bush administration.
b. The collapse of our nation’s grade schools, high schools, and community college systems.
c. The widespread civic illiteracy the ISI laments.
d. All of the above.

The correct answer for each of these questions is “d. All of the above.”

In my civics class, I’d give ISI — and the conservatives who run it – a failing grade.

Hillary Clinton Isn’t a Foreign Policy Issue — What We Should Really Care About

Does it matter whether Hillary Clinton is Barack Obama’s secretary of state?

Who is the secretary of state is far less important than the question of Obama’s foreign policy — and I’m not sure that I know what that is, even in general, at this point.

As far I as I can figure, Obama isn’t very far from Bush on most foreign policy issues (without, hopefully, the stupidity) and that concerns me far more than whether Hillary Clinton should be secretary of state.

During the course of the campaign, as the economy became the focus of debate, questions about foreign policy receded.  Even so, Obama seemed to me to move closer to Bush on a wide range of foreign policy issues, from the war in Afghanistan to support for the territorial claims of the current regime in Georgia. 

Overall, Obama maintained a fuzzy “feel good” foreign policy stand with vague bromides such as “secure loose nuclear materials from terrorists” (who is in favor of loose nukes?), “direct diplomacy without preconditions to end the threat from Iran” (who doesn’t want to end the threat from Iran?) “rebuild our alliances” (anyone against that?) and “renew American diplomacy” (okay, but how?).

Aside from the still unresolved question of what Obama will do to end the war in Iraq, these questions concern me:

Will Obama continue the Bush policy of deploying missiles in Eastern Europe despite the threat such missiles pose to the Russians?

Will Obama put teeth in the U.S. opposition to Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory?

How will Obama work with Mexico and other countries to reduce illegal immigration and reduce drug traffic into the U.S.?

How will Obama seek to change NAFTA and CAFTA?

What countries should be admitted in NATO?

What should the U.S. or the U.N. do about the ongoing genocide in Darfur?

What should the U.S. do about the many other disasters now taking place in Africa (Somalia, Congo, Zimbabwe)?

The list, of course, could (and should) be expanded.

The fact is that we don’t know the answers to these questions.

When we’re talking about Obama’s foreign policy, these are the questions we should be discussing, not whether Hillary Clinton (or anyone else) should get the corner office in the state department.

Prop 8 Backlash: Time for a New Mormon Revelation

It’s time for a new Mormon revelation.

The decision by the leadership of the Mormons (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or the LDS Church) to ask its members to fund California’s anti-same sex marriage Proposition 8 will prove to have been a very bad idea – for the Mormons – at least in the short run.

1851 Lithograph of Joseph Smith's body being mutilated.

No religious group has been more hated, persecuted, and subjected to mob violence in America than the Mormons.  Throughout the 19th and well into the 20th century, Mormons were beaten, burned, shot, and lynched because of their religious beliefs.

Even today, Mormons remain a target of intense religious prejudice, particularly among evangelical Christians.  A 2007 study by Vanderbilt University that researched possible public reaction to a presidential run by Mitt Romney (a Mormon) concluded that political bias against Mormons is significantly more intense than bias against either African Americans or women.

As Amy Sullivan pointed out in the Washington Monthly, “Evangelical Christians consider Mormonism a threat in a way that Catholicism and even Judaism are not. The LDS Church, they charge, has perverted Christian teachings to create a false religion. … Southern Baptists have been particularly vocal about labeling the LDS Church a ‘cult.’  [A] speaker at the denomination’s summit on Mormonism declared that Utah was ‘a stronghold of Satan’.”

The primary reasons that people gave (and still give) for hating Mormons are (1) that the Mormons practice group marriage and would therefore destroy the structure of the family, and (2) that the Mormons want to create a theocracy and would impose both their religious beliefs and their church leadership on everyone else.

Given this history, and continuing vilification, you might expect the Mormons to be accepting of the religious beliefs and practices of others, especially in regard to marriage and family issues.

But that isn’t the Mormon style.

The Mormon character was fashioned in a deeply hostile environment, and they have repeatedly shown that they have the courage of their convictions, even when these convictions put them in opposition to the majority.

For that reason, my guess is that the initial reaction of the LDS Church to the boycotts and outrage caused by their active support for Prop 8 (which I think took them by surprise) will lead them, in the short run, to dig in and hold their ground.

But I also think that this entrenchment will come at a great social and economic cost to the LDS Church and its members.  For many years, the LDS Church has been an active force in the anti-gay movement, most notably in regard to its sponsorship of the Boy Scouts of America, but these activities have mostly been below the media radar and opposition has been directed at the Scouts, not the LDS Church itself.

Now that will change.

Gay and lesbian groups and their allies will challenge the Mormons everywhere, no doubt tapping into pre-existing anti-Mormon prejudice.  Democratic members of the LDS Church, such as Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and newly elected Senator Tom Udall (D-N.M.) will be called upon to publicly separate themselves from their Church on these issues or risk being marginalized within the Democratic Party.

And the Prop 8 boycott, if sustained, can have a serious impact on businesses owned by Mormons, such as the Marriott hotel chain, on the careers of LDS members, and even on the economy of the State of Utah.

On the other hand, the Mormons do have a history of changing their minds – and their theology – under significant public pressure – most famously when they abandoned their theologically based practice of polygamy (or plural marriage) in 1890 in order to save their property and secure Utah statehood (granted in 1896).

Because the LDS Church believes in continuing divine revelation, its leaders can adapt their theology to meet contemporary needs by announcing that God has spoken to them and commanded them to change their doctrine.

Thus, in 1890, when faced with tremendous opposition in the U.S. Congress to Utah statehood and the imminent seizure of LDS assets because of polygamy, LDS president Wilford Woodruff (himself a polygamist) published a “Manifesto” announcing that God had told him that polygamy was no longer part of the Lord’s plan.

“The Lord has told me to ask the Latter-day Saints a question,” Woodruff wrote. “The question is this: Which is the wisest course for the Latter-day Saints to pursue — to continue to attempt to practice plural marriage, with the laws of the nation against it and the opposition of sixty millions of people, and at the cost of the confiscation and loss of all the Temples, and the stopping of all the ordinances therein, both for the living and the dead, and the imprisonment of the First Presidency and Twelve and the heads of families in the Church, and the confiscation of personal property of the people (all of which of themselves would stop the practice); or, after doing and suffering what we have through our adherence to this principle to cease the practice and submit to the law, and through doing so leave the Prophets, Apostles and fathers at home, so that they can instruct the people and attend to the duties of the Church, and also leave the Temples in the hands of the Saints, so that they can attend to the ordinances of the Gospel, both for the living and the dead?”

According to Woodruff, while he would “have let all the temples go out of our hands; I should have gone to prison myself, and let every other man go there, had not the God of heaven commanded me to do what I did do; and when the hour came that I was commanded to do that, it was all clear to me. I went before the Lord, and I wrote what the Lord told me to write…”

What God commanded Woodruff to write was an end to the official theology and practice of polygamy, satisfying both the worldly needs of the Church and the demands of the larger social order.

More recently, the civil rights movement and the changed national consensus on racial prejudice against African-Americans caused a similar need for a new Mormon revelation.

The LDS Church had long treated black people as theologically inferior (based on their interpretation of  passages in the Book of Mormon that described black people as “cursed’ by God).  While the LDS Church did not deny membership to black people, it barred black men from ordination in the priesthood (a requirement for all other Mormon men and a necessity for salvation), and declared that black people were prohibited from the rituals of Endowment (a kind of confirmation necessary for participation in the temple and Church) and celestial marriage.

Protest against Mormon anti-African American policy at Colorado State University (1970)

During the 1960s and 1970s, this racial aspect of LDS theology came under increasing attack (with sometimes violent protests against the participation of Brigham Young University in sports events with public institutions) and eventually became an enormous embarrassment to the Church, not least in its efforts to convert new members in countries (such as Brazil) with large African heritage populations.

As had been the case with polygamy, the problem of the conflicting demands of theology and public relations was solved by a divine revelation to the president of the LDS Church.

In 1978, LDS president Spencer W. Kimball and other elders received a revelation that God “has confirmed that the long-promised day has come when every faithful, worthy man in the Church may receive the holy priesthood, with power to exercise its divine authority, and enjoy with his loved ones every blessing that flows there from, including the blessings of the temple. Accordingly, all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color.” Church elders later declared “The Spirit of the Lord rested upon us all; we felt something akin to what happened on the day of Pentecost and at the Kirtland Temple. From the midst of eternity, the voice of God, conveyed by the power of the Spirit, spoke to his prophet. The message was that the time had now come to offer the fullness of the everlasting gospel, including celestial marriage, and the priesthood, and the blessings of the temple, to all men, without reference to race or color, solely on the basis of personal worthiness. And we all heard the same voice, received the same message, and became personal witnesses that the word received was the mind and will and voice of the Lord.”

Another revelation will eventually come to the president and elders of the LDS Church – perhaps to current LDS president Thomas Spencer Monson — regarding its opposition to same sex marriage (and its opposition to allowing gay members of the Boy Scouts).  In the meantime, we should do all we can to hasten this revelation by continuing to apply both social and economic pressure on the LDS Church and its members.

We’ll be doing the Lord’s work.

Why I’m NOT Giving to National Public Radio

Southern California’s public radio station, KPCC-FM (89.3), is in the midst of an on-air fund raising drive.  I won’t be contributing, and here’s why:

During the past election campaign, KPCC repeatedly refused to give air time on it’s talk shows (in particular, Larry Mantle’s Air Talk and the Patt Morrison show) to Democratic candidates in Orange County who were challenging Republican incumbents.  At the same time, Orange County Republican Representative John Campbell (48th CD) was featured several times on KPCC, explaining and defending his vote in favor of the massive federal bailout of financial institutions.

No one on KPCC questioned Campbell on the incongruity of his vote in favor of giving billions of dollars to financial institutions, while consistently voting against nearly every other expenditure of federal funds, including funds for a local desalinization plant and for veterans’ benefits.

Nor did KPCC permit Campbell’s Democratic opponent, Steve Young, who was against the bailout, to respond to Campbell.  Instead, KPCC insisted that before Young got any airtime, he would have to prove to KPCC that his candidacy was in a position to unseat Campbell.  Of course, it is more difficult to unseat an incumbent when only the incumbent gets free access to the public airwaves.

Since KPCC has shown that it is no friend of Democrats and progressives in Orange County, I will not be contributing to its fund raising campaign.

I also suggest that other Democrats and progressives in Orange County give their money to causes and organizations that are more responsive and even-handed.

Why Prop 8 Won’t End California’s Same Sex Marriages

For many progressive voters in California, the election results were bitter-sweet.  While Barack Obama cruised to victory here, the state’s voters also endorsed the elimination of the recently won right of gay and lesbian couples to marry.

The most recent election results show that voters appear to have have endorsed California’s Proposition 8 — changing the state Constitution to require that “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” — by 5,376,424 (52%) to 4,870,010 (48%) with 99% of the precincts reporting.

Officials have already halted issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples and stopped performing same sex marriages.  California’s right-wing social conservatives, evangelicals, and anti-gay crusaders are celebrating. 

I believe that they’re celebrating too soon.

I would advise the supporters of Prop 8 to temper their celebration until the California Supreme Court rules on whether the fundamental right to marry can be eliminated for same sex couples through the proposition process.

My expectation is that the Supreme Court will find Prop 8 to be invalid and that California’s recognition of same sex marriage will stand.

Even before the election, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Lambda Legal Defense Fund and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a writ petition in the California Supreme Court urging the Court to invalidate Proposition 8 if it passes.

The argument is that “Proposition 8 denies the fundamental right to marry to a minority group based on a suspect classification … deemed to be suspect under the equal protection guarantee of the California Constitution … [and that] Proposition 8 constitutes an attempted revision of [the] state Constitution, rather than an amendment, and therefore is invalid because it was not enacted through the process required for a revision…”

While the voters in California have the right to amend their Constitution by majority vote through the use of ballot propositions, any revision of the Constitution’s ‘underlying principles” requires a far more deliberate and complex process involving a two-thirds vote of the legislature followed by the submission of such proposed changes directly to the voters or to a constitutional convention.

The ACLU, the Lambda Legal Defense Fund and the National Center for Lesbian Rights argue that Prop 8’s changes to the Constitution are fundamental in nature, impacting the fundamental rights of a minority, and can not be made by a simple majority vote on a ballot proposition.

I expect that the California Supreme Court will first issue a stay of Prop 8’s implementation, and then hear and decide the case quickly.

I also expect that the Court will rule, by the same 4-3 vote as in the Marriage Cases, that Prop 8 is invalid.

My prediction is that the Court will issue a long and scholarly opinion, authored by Chief Justice Ronald M. George (a Republican, appointed by Governor Pete Wilson, who also authored the Court’s opinion in the Marriage Cases), centered on the statement of former Chief Justice Roger Traynor that if a Constitution “is to retain respect it must be free from popular whim and caprice which would make of it a mere statute.”

California’s same sex marriage will stand.

A Day to Remember

Before I be a slave
I’ll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free.

Greyhound bus with 14 members of an interracial group that was part of the Freedom Ride, firebombed on May 14, 1961, outside Anniston, Ala.

It’s appropriate on Election Day to remember and thank those who made the ultimate sacrifice in our military service to secure and protect the rights that we exercise today. 

Those who died in military service are not the only heroes we should remember and thank on this special and historic Election Day.

Today let us also remember and thank those whose sacrifice in the civil rights movement made this amazing day possible for all of us:

Louis Allen — A farmer shot on Jan. 31, 1964, in Liberty, Miss., after witnessing the murder of Herbert Lee, a civil rights worker.

Willie Brewster — A factory worker who died on July 16, 1965, in Anniston, Ala., from a nightrider’s bullet.

Benjamin Brown — A truck driver and civil rights worker killed on May 12, 1967, when police fired on demonstrators in Jackson, Miss.

Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman

James Chaney — A civil rights worker abducted and shot at point-blank range on June 21, 1964, by Klan members in Philadelphia, Miss.

Addie Mae Collins — A schoolgirl killed on Sept. 15, 1963, in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

Vernon Dahmer

Vernon Dahmer — A community leader who died on Jan. 10, 1966, from a firebomb in Hattiesburg, Miss., after volunteering to pay black voters’ poll taxes.

Jonathan Daniels — A seminary student shot on Aug. 14, 1965, by a deputy sheriff in Hayneville, Ala.

Henry H. Dee — A civil rights volunteer abducted, beaten and thrown into the Mississippi River by the Klan in Natchez, Miss., on May 2, 1964.

Cpl. Roman Ducksworth Jr. — A military policeman shot to death on April 9, 1962, in Taylorsville, Miss., after refusing a police order to sit in the back of the bus.

Willie Edwards Jr. — A deliveryman killed on Jan. 23, 1957, near Montgomery, Ala., when the Klan forced him to jump from a bridge into the Alabama River.

Medgar Evers

Medgar Evers — Civil rights leader shot on June 12, 1963, in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Miss.

Andrew Goodman — A civil rights worker abducted and shot at point-blank range by the Klan on June 21, 1964, in Philadelphia, Miss.

Paul Guihard — A French news reporter shot in the back on Sept. 30, 1962, during racist riots at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss.

Samuel Hammond Jr. — A South Carolina college student fatally shot on Feb. 8, 1968, when police fired on demonstrators in Orangeburg, S.C.

Jimmie Lee Jackson — A farmer who died on Feb. 18, 1965, after being beaten and shot in the stomach by state troopers following a march in Selma, Ala.

Wharlest Jackson — NAACP treasurer in Natches, Miss., killed on Feb. 18, 1965, by a bomb after his promotion to a job once reserved for whites.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — Famed civil rights leader assassinated on April 4, 1968, during an organized campaign by garbage workers in Memphis, Tenn.

Bruce Klunder

Rev. Bruce Klunder — A minister from Cleveland, Ohio, run over by a bulldozer April 7, 1964, while protesting a segregated school.

Rev. George Lee — A minister in Belzoni, Miss.,who died on May 7, 1955, of gunshot wounds after organizing a voter-registration drive.

Herbert Lee — A cotton farmer and voter registration organizer who was shot in the head on Sept. 25, 1961, by a white state legislator in Liberty, Miss.

Viola Gregg Liuzzo — A civil rights worker from Detroit fatally shot in the head on March 25, 1965, by Klan members near Selma, Ala.

Viola Liuzzo

Denise McNair — A schoolgirl killed on Sept. 15, 1963, in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

Delano H. Middleton — A high school student fatally shot on Feb. 8, 1968, when police fired on demonstrators in Orangeburg, S.C.

Charles E. Moore — A civil rights volunteer abducted, beaten and thrown into the Mississippi River by the Klan near Natchez, Miss., on May 2, 1964, .

Oneal Moore — A deputy sheriff fatally shot after his nightly patrol on June 2, 1965, during an ambush by nightriders near Varnado, La.

William Moore — A mail carrier from Baltimore shot on April 23, 1963, in Attala, Ala., during his one-man march against segregation.

Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn — A U.S. Army reservist fatally shot on July 11, 1964, by the Klan while driving near Colbert, Ga.

James Reeb

Rev. James Reeb — A minister from Boston beaten to death on Mar. 11, 1965, on the streets of Selma, Ala., during a civil rights march.

John Earl Reese — A teenager slain Oct. 22, 1955, by nightriders who opposed improvements on a black school in Mayflower, Texas.

Carole Robertson — A schoolgirl killed on Sept. 15, 1963, in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

Michael Schwener — A civil rights worker abducted and shot at point-blank range by the Klan on June 21, 1964, in Philadelphia, Miss.

Henry E. Smith — A South Carolina college student fatally shot on Feb. 8, 1968, when police fired shotguns at demonstrators in Orangeburg, S.C.

Lamar Smith — A farmer fatally shot on Aug. 13, 1955, in broad daylight in Brookhaven, Miss., after organizing black voters.

Clarence Triggs — A bricklayer shot in the head on July 30, 1966, by nightriders in Bogalusa, La.

Cynthia Wesley — A schoolgirl killed on Sept. 15, 1963, in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

Ben Chester White — A caretaker shot on June 10, 1966, by Klan members in Natchez, Miss.

Samuel Younge

Samuel Younge Jr. — A college student shot on Jan. 3, 1966, by a Tuskegee, Ala., gas station attendant following a dispute over a ‘whites-only’ restroom.

Oh-o freedom
Oh-o freedom
Oh freedom over me, over me
And before I be a slave
I’ll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free.

Obama in Disneyland

Obama in Disneyland

All photographs taken in Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure, Anaheim, California.

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