During the past few months, there has been a great deal of political talk on this board.
I believe that a much of it is the result of the personal opinion, experience and the econminc conditions that the many and varied NACHI members live with. And that is fine. That is what America is all about. The Great Experiment of Democracy.
But, some of it was also a result of ignorance (defined as "lack of knowledge or education) of the political process, and just plain old grammar school civics.
This has been proven out in the results of exit polling and in the results of multiple nationwide surveys of the American voter.
Take this quiz and check yourself out. No need to post your score, but the results might surprise you.
You answered 27 out of 33 correctly — 81.82 %
Average score for this quiz during November: 78.0%
Average score: 78.0%
You can take the quiz as often as you like, however, your score will only count once toward the monthly average.
If you have any comments or questions about the quiz, please email americancivicliteracy@isi.org.
You can consult the following table to see how citizens and elected officials scored on each question. Where to from here?
Answers to Your Missed Questions:
Question #4 - B. Would slavery be allowed to expand to new territories?
Question #8 - C. appoint additional Supreme Court justices who shared his views
Question #12 - B. the Supreme Court struck down most legal restrictions on it in Roe v. Wade
Question #14 - B. stressed the sinfulness of all humanity
Question #30 - C. decreasing taxes and increasing spending
Question #33 - D. tax per person equals government spending per person
You answered 29 out of 33 correctly — 87.88 %
Average score for this quiz during November: 77.6%
Average score: 77.6%
It would have been much worse for me if they weren’t multiple choice questions. :?
I believe that the relatvely low scores, especially from politicians, is indicative of what Jefferson said. Our people MUST be educated in history and civics in order to make the correct political choices.
Many times, people vote with their emotions rathern than their brains, not only in the Presidential elections, but in the much more important local and congressional elections.
As those who know civics understand, the President is no where near as powerful as most would like to believe. Same thing with the Congress. Most important decisions about our company are made by everyday people during their everyday lives. What to by and from whom and how much to save and how to invest. IRAs and 401 (k)s are great, but most people have no clue how to manage them. As we see, in our industry, being a successful inspector is as much about knowing accounting and business, as it is knowing what J bar is. I believe that much of the loss in retirement money is a result of people not knowing how to properly manage their money. I also believe that most of the garbage that politicians are able to feed us is also caused by lack of knowledge.
But, blming politicians is much easier than blaming ourselves, isn’t it?
Sad indeed. The electorate limits their choice between do-nothing DemocRATS and do-nothing Repugnantcans, choosing the so-called “lesser of two evils”. Its sad that the electorate facilitates the problem and then complains about it.
Regardless of education, intelligence or political savvy it would have been impossible to foresee the utter devastation our great nation would suffer under the leadership of George Bush & his henchmen. In eight years he took a thriving first world power to the threshold of becoming a third world nation and on the way down neutered the Republican Party for at least a decade.
Who would have ever envisioned the mess we are now faced with due to Bush’s failed fiscal & social programs. Social conservatism as a political platform should be laid to rest with that other great failed experiment… National socialism.
