Lift Up Your Hearts!

I didn't have any idea what #1 was, and perhaps that is due to growing up now, when the constitution doesn't really mean much, and can be interpreted to mean all sorts of things, so it can hardly be called an authority.

I wasn't think the Senator terms were that long either.

Yes, Porter was saying that the students could be forgiven for saying the Supreme Court was the answer to #1. I think that one might be one I actually learned in school, since you don't hear that phrase much anymore. If it's no longer taught, that may explain in part why it's no longer honored.

Senate terms seem shorter because they're staggered.

I got questions one and two wrong, essentially because I was never taught either. I thought #1 was the rule of law, though #2 should have given away #1 to a reasonably astute multiple choice test taker. I vacillated between Jefferson and Hancock for #5, and got #7 right only because I figured parities was not a technical term but a typo - though parity isn't a bad way to describe the general political situation, I suppose.

It would be interesting to see if I could answer all the Swiss citizenship questions...

Unfortunately, I know quite well how I'd do on a Swiss citizenship test. I do think I could name all the oceans that border the country, however. Now I'll go fix the typo....

I'm proud of myself for getting 90%, as I usually don't do well on such subjects. I found them all rather easy, though I was not familiar with the term "supreme law of the land" it was fairly easy to realize it was referring to the constitution as the basis for our country. I missed #8 wrong thinking it was two years, but not really knowing.

One thing the article left out was that some people were clearly messing with the test. Obama as the first president and the Indian ocean on the East coast. I knew people in high school who would have been insulted by the ocean question and who would have given a smarty-pants answer like that - especially for some phone interview that had no consequences. Still, if you had those people to the pass list, it's still under 10%.

It's very easy to think senators serve only two years, as we vote for them every two years -- just not the same ones.

I'm sure you're right that some folks were, as you say, insulted or just having fun, like Dad's friend from high school who, after having made a perfect 1600 on the SAT, took it again and got 400—which is a lot harder than you might think. I also know someone who was so insulted at being dragged out of her calculus class to take a test on basic arithmetic that she did not get the perfect score she could have. :) But I also wonder if some of those totally ridiculous answers did come from ignorance—from those who, despite the instructions, would rather give a random answer than say, "I don't know."

And what incentive would they have to say "I don't know?" Aren't we drilled to "give it our best shot," to "make a mistake so we can learn from it," and so on? If you combine that strong conditioning with a boy's inclination to pranks and silliness, you'll get first president Obama with a snigger on top.

I think question 7 is an outrage. There's nothing official about the republicrat party being major or important at all. A great many of the problems in the US stem precisely from just that assumption.

Phil: The republican party is major by virtue of the number of its adherents and voters. That's not official (and it shouldn't be, you're right), it's merely factual, and thus something people ought to know about the current political landscape.

I'm not sure which assumption you're referring to, (a) the assumption that the republican party is major (which is a fact, not an assumption) or (b) the assumption that its size and importance is somehow official (which I think most would agree is not true). Either way, I'm not sure why many of our problems come from either (a) acknowledging a fact or (b) wrongly believing that the party's pre-eminence is somehow officially pre-ordained. Could you explain that, please? And while you're at it, I'd be interested in knowing if you think the same assumptions about the democratic party also cause a great many problems in the US! Thanks!

1) Nothing is major by virtue of its popularity

2) By including that "fact" in a citizenship test, it's made official by the feds

3) I said republicrat not republican, I think that will answer your last questions.

Thanks!

Also, FYI you ought to look at ballot access laws. They pretty much make republicrats the official candidates even without regard to popularity. Non-republicrats pretty much always have to waste their money getting on the ballot while republicrats can get on for free even when they dont qualify according to the law.

Thanks, Phil. You're right that the two-party system is self-perpetuating, and I suppose telling new citizens that there are essentially only two parties contributes to that self-perpetuation. That said, I don't think taking the question off the test would change that effect either - the two parties have reached critical mass long ago and will continue dominating the US political scene for a long time, I fear.

I had to look up "republicrat" in wikipedia - I'd taken it for a pejorative term referring only to the republicans, not a "pejorative portmanteau referring to the two main political parties." I'm afraid that even with that knowledge I still don't understand why a great many problems in the US stem from regarding the two parties as major or important. Perhaps elaborating a bit on your point about ballot law would help. Thanks!

1) That question indoctrinates new citizens into voting republicrat. Therefore it's an outrage. Speculating on how effective it is is irrelevant.

2) To illustrate why republicratism is so bad, one good example would be the bailout of wall street investment banks and AIG. 95% of the american people opposed it as well as every non-republicrat party. Libertarians, Greens, Constitutions all opposed it. And yet americans still suffer under republicrat rule.

3) Regulation compliance costs money. Ballot access laws and campaign finance laws cost big $$ to comply with. In addition, while republicrats get placed on the ballot for free, non-republicrats have to pay fees and collect signatures in order to get access. This also costs money. This is a huge disadvantage.

I tried to find the 95% you quote, and the closest I got was a wikipedia mention of something a democrat senator said. And those 95% are likely not representative of the general population, as people in favor of a bill that's likely to be passed aren't likely to call their representative. Now, the polls of that time seem to show a divided public opinion, which sure doesn't support the notion that an overwhelming majority is in lockstep behind the two major parties - which the 53% to 46% results of the 2008 presidentials would suggest.

That, I suppose, brings us to your point about ballot access laws. Thanks for making me read up on it - it was instructive to learn that even the OSCE criticized the US for its ballot access laws. I understand your outrage. I also understand that back in 1880 it looked like a good idea - and kept looking like a good idea for the major parties, who proceeded to dial up the requirements for ballot access. Yes, you don't want everybody running for office on his own special interest party ("Vote Drag Racers Party in 2012!") like what happened in South Africa's first post-apartheid elections, but it would be fairer to proceed as South Africa did: Let them run for parliament, and if they make the cut, they're in and deserved to run; if they don't, we likely won't have to worry about them clamoring to add another spurious party to the ballot in the next election.

I think that it might also help to get rid of the plurality voting system. I wonder if changing to another system would lead to an increase or a decrease in the number of silly write-in candidates!

As a side note, I find it interesting to see how election systems worldwide seem to be influenced by whether a country once was a British colony - just like legal systems. Note, for instance, that Louisiana is a lone US exception to both common law and plurality voting.

On the 95%:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/business/25voices.html?_r=2&ref=washington&oref=slogin

Or if that requires login,
http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/economics-mainmenu-44/376
http://www.noquestionsasked.org/blog/?p=277

Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, said he had been getting 2,000 e-mail messages and telephone calls a day, roughly 95 percent opposed. When Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent who votes with Democrats, posted a petition on his Web site asking Mr. Paulson to require that taxpayers receive an equity stake in the bailed-out companies, more than 20,000 people signed.

“We certainly have never brought in 20,000 names in a day and a half,” Mr. Sanders said, sounding astonished. “For us, that’s off the wall.”

Sorry, Phil, but that article references the same quote wikipedia does, which I don't think gives us a representative percentage. The 95% represent the percentage of Sherrod Brown's constituents who were moved by the bailout plan to write him - a self-selected lot. They do not represent the feelings of the entire nation.

For illustration's purpose, take Polanski's arrest. Nearly all filmmakers are upset and loud about it. From the vocal reactions, one would be forgiven to think that the Swiss people were mostly against Polanski's arrest. Polls, however, show a solid majority in favor of the arrest.

Getting a percentage that correctly represents what a country's people is thinking is difficult to begin with, and the correct way of going about it certainly isn't by tallying letters written to a senator.

Well Polanski is a bad example in that there are plenty of vocal upset people on both sides of that, but fine. 1) I have a better idea as to the authenticity of phone calls to senators than any of those polls. Heck, your polls arent even consistent. 2) As you say even if we take 50-50 as true, that's still 50% of america not being represented by republicrats.

Yes, you're right, the polls aren't consistent, which is even more of a reason for me to be cautious about the 95%, but then I'm not in your position of being able to know with certainty.

The main point, as we agree, is that a two-party system doesn't adequately represent a voting people. However, I admit the last time I voted third-party was in 2000, and since then I haven't, because most third parties have some deal-breaker hobby horse on their program.

Regarding Polanski, at the time of my writing the organisations in favor of his arrest generally had not yet reacted (in a medium to which I had access) and made their position known in response to the loud protests from the cultural elite. I grant that now that they have, he's become a bad example. Sorry about that... but not so much about the reason why!