26% of Americans don’t know who America fought in the Revolutionary War

While perusing the blogs the other night, I came across a post at A View from the Right about how 26% of Americans surveyed could not correctly give the answer to the question of which country America gained her independence from in the Revolutionary War.

This means that one out of ever four people polled could not correctly answer the question, and this got me thinking.

Since I began blogging I have become a student of history; I am not stating that I know everything that I should know yet, but I have been working hard to learn as much as possible about the founding of this country, and United States history in general. While doing this reading I have come to the conclusion that people need to learn how this country was founded in order to understand where it is headed; if you learn the past you can almost see the future.

By that I mean that if a person doesn’t understand the ideas that this country was founded upon, and the vision of what the founders thought this country should be, that person cannot fully understand how far we have drifted away from the ideas and the form of government that the founders bestowed upon us.

When I read about the philosophies of the founders and I see where America is today, I understand how far we have strayed from the constitution. More people need to understand what is going on, and the best way for them to do this is to read history; history is so interesting if only people would apply themselves– there is so much to learn– but people today are more interested in American Idol and other mindless television. These are nothing but diversions, and while a diversion once in awhile may be healthy, the fact that Americans have become so obsessed with this mindless drivel that more Americans vote for their favorite idol than vote for president shows us exactly how disengaged the American people have become to what is truly the important issues.

This survey tells us that our schools– and parents as well– have been negligent in teaching our children what America is supposed to represent. Somewhere along the line American history took a back seat to other issues that are of more value to the leftist agenda than is the founding of the country, and I have to believe that this is being done on purpose as America heads to a European socialistic form of government that is at odds with the basic tenets of this country’s founding.

As I said, if you don’t know where this country came from, you won’t understand where we are headed– or how this direction is at odds with the constitution of the United States. I have to believe that that is exactly what the far left radical socialists who teach our children want to accomplish.

They want to move our country in an anti-constitutional direction and the best was to accomplish this with little resistance– the best way to ensure that the hijacking of our constitution is met with little or no resistance– is to assure that as generations pass, the newest voters will have no idea what the origins of our government was, and the reservations the founders had about government were.

Through this ignorance, the left will be able to advance an agenda that would make the founders wince in pain, and through this ignorance they are slowly succeeding. It has taken them many years to reach this point, but they have finally reached the point where a large amount of Americans do not understand what it is that America is supposed to be, if these Americans cannot even name which country we fought during the Revolutionary War, there is no way we can expect them to understand anything about the founding of this country once the war ended.

The fact that one quarter of those polled could not even answer the most basic of American history questions, tells us that the left is succeeding in this goal, and while three out of four people could name the country we fought in the Revolutionary War represents a strong majority, the fact that one quarter of the American people do not know which country America fought in the Revolutionary War means the leftists are making progress at a faster rate than I would have thought possible. We can only expect this number to grow as the years go on.

This poll is even more disheartening when you realize that this was the most basic question on American history that could have been asked. If 26% of those polled didn’t even know America’s enemy during the Revolutionary War, what would the poll numbers be if you asked these same people questions about the type of government the founders set up, of if you asked them about basic consitutional premises? The results would be much worse as the questions delved into American history.

It is unconscionable that our children are not being taught American history, but I have to believe that this is exactly what the leftists want.

James Madison once said, “knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

And that is why the left is working so hard to keep the younger generation ignorant. It is not being done by mistake.