The famously patriotic song "Proud to be an American," by Lee Greenwood, begins like this: "If tomorrow all the things were gone / I'd worked for all my life / And I had to start again / With just my children and my wife / I'd thank my lucky stars / To be living here today / 'Cause the flag still stands for freedom / And they can't take that away."
Oddly enough, this creepy song rings true with many Americans; if they lost everything, they would sooner die than place blame on the American government. The song preaches patriotism above all else, as if being sheep-like were a virtue. This, in a nation founded by public intellectuals, some of the brightest in the world - people like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin - who understood that democracy thrives on skepticism, not nationalism.
How does an empire fall? The Roman Empire burned, its head firmly in the sand. The British Empire, the biggest empire ever, ended much differently. It cut the fat, gave independence to its colonies and eventually became a respected, cooperative leader among equals. In other words, it understood it was about to be usurped as Number One and made the best of it - it did not go down kicking and screaming, singing patriotic songs.
Facing the dawn of what may someday be known as the Chinese Century, America showed wisdom in electing Barack Obama, an intellectual statesman. But we can't ignore that nearly half of us - those who voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin - apparently want to do as the Romans did. Drill, baby, drill, and burn, baby, burn.
People like George W. Bush and Sarah Palin are not just ignorant - they're proudly ignorant. Palin, who almost makes Bush look bright by comparison, did not know that Africa was a continent, according to McCain aides who spoke to Carl Cameron of FoxNews on Nov. 6. She cannot string more than two words together without sending every grammarian in the country into epileptic shock.
Her attitude about this appalling show of ignorance, and that of her supporters, is "So what?"
In a recent column in The Guardian Weekly called "Why the U.S. will keep backing numbskulls," George Monbiot notes, "ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people." Indeed, Palin, like most Republican politicians going back to Ronald Reagan (grand-papa of modern American anti-intellectualism), proudly embraces her ignorance.
She knows that if, say, professors speak out against her, it only strengthens her image among those who themselves are uneducated and suspicious of "eggheads." Reagan's supporters liked that he thought trees caused pollution.
Clearly, we need to stop producing ignorant citizens. This provides a problem. The best universities in the world are still in America, but, even as a college degree has become increasingly common, a profound ignorance pervades our country. Proud to be an American? As if. One in five adults thinks the sun revolves around the earth. Two-thirds of voters can't name the three branches of government.
It's about more than facts, though. Many Americans simply lack a curiosity about the world (as exemplified by Bush, who rarely travels outside of North America, and Palin, who received her first passport in 2006, according to the infamous Katie Couric interview on CBS). This is due to a combination of things, but mostly it's because of religion.
Take, for instance, the reputation of people in the South for being polite. Politeness does not mean tolerance - it means not talking about things that make you feel uncomfortable, like sex, evolution, science or any new ideas at all. Evangelical Christianity has no need for new ideas. This is why Baptists build their own schools - so their kids can avoid a secular education completely and never learn to think for themselves.
The Lee Greenwood version of patriotism is, after all, similar to faith. It is blind and blissful. It is no surprise that conservative Christians disavow science; they already have a book that tells them all they need to know. They're proud Americans - and they represent a failure in our educational system so grave that it just might wreck this whole experiment we called democracy.
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