The Daily Signal - Ep. 315: Most Americans Would Fail Our Citizenship Test

Episode Date: October 10, 2018

A new study reveals Americans know little about their own history, and our own Jarrett Stepman joins us to discuss the implications--and how to fix it. Plus: Sen. Rand Paul warns that when it comes to our political climate, the worst may be yet to come.We also cover these stories:--Hurricane Michael made landfall in Florida Wednesday, with winds of 155 miles per hour. President Trump said his message to those in Florida was “God bless you all.”--Trump went on full attack against Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan, saying it would gut Medicare and would “outlaw private health care plans, taking away freedom to choose plans while letting anyone cross our border.”--First lady Melania Trump spoke about the #Metoo movement in a new interview.--Anthony Weiner, the former New York congressman, will be released from prison early on account of “good conduct,” according to the Bureau of Prisons.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, October 11th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Well, you know something's off in America when socialism gets high marks from millennials. Comedians call for ending the Senate and public officials launched tax on the electoral college. More and more of our political tradition is coming under attack. Derek Stepman of the Daily Signal says a lot of it stems back to education. We'll sit down with him and talk about what's gone wrong in American classrooms.

Plus, Senator Ray and Paul warns that when it comes to our political climate, the worst may be yet to come. We'll discuss. But first, we'll cover a few of the top headlines. Hurricane Michael made landfall in Florida Wednesday with winds of an insane 155 miles per hour. Prior to landfall, 375,000 in Florida were told to evacuate. President Trump spoke about it Wednesday, saying his message to those in Florida was, quote, God bless you all. He also discussed visiting the state soon. But I would like to be seeing what's going on.

We want to get down there as soon as possible. At the same time, I don't want to go down where we're interfering with the people, first responders, the FEMA people. I want them to focus on the storm, not mean. So we'll probably look to Sunday or Monday to go down and meet with the governors, meet with everybody and do what we have to do like we did in North Carolina, South Carolina, where that worked out really well. President Trump is already on the hunt for a,

new U.N. ambassador. This on the heels of Nikki Haley's announcement that she'd be resigning from the position at the end of the year. Trump said he likes Dina Powell, who served as Deputy National Security Advisor to the president until leaving earlier this year. The president said he'll feel the position in the next few weeks. Jamal Kukushki, a journalist who often wrote about Saudi Arabia and whose work was featured in the Washington Post, went into the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey last week related to his upcoming wedding. But he never came out again, at least that anyone saw, and now Turkey believes he was killed there. President Donald Trump said he has been in touch with Saudi Arabia, as have other White House officials.

I want to bring her to the White House. It's a very sad situation. It's a very bad situation. And we want to get to the bottom of it. President Trump went on full attack against Senator Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All plan in a Tuesday column. Writing in USA Today, the president said that the single-payer plan would gut Medicare, and would, quote, outlaw private health care plans, taking away freedom to choose plans while letting anyone cross our border, end quote. He also noted that the plan would cost upward of $32 trillion during its first 10 years. That number was compiled by the Marquitas Center.

First Lady, Melania Trump spoke about the Me Too movement in an interview with ABC News that was shot during her trip to Africa. What is your take about the Me Too movement, though? Do you believe in them? Do you support the Me Too movement? I support the women and they need to be heard. We need to support them and, you know, also men, not just women. Do you think men in the news that have been accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment had been treated unfairly?

We need to have a really hard evidence that, you know, that if you're accused of something, show the evidence. Some women might hear that and say, how could you say that, Mrs. Trump? You need to stand with women. What would you say? I do stand with women. But we need to, we need to show the evidence. We need to show the evidence. You cannot just say to somebody,

I was sexually assaulted, or you did that to me, because sometimes the media goes too far, and the way they portray some stories, it's not correct, it's not right. Well, Hillary Clinton is once again defending Bill. In a CNN interview with Christine Amanpur, Hillary was asked whether the allegations made about her husband

fall into the same category as those made against Trump and Kavanaugh. There's a very significant difference, and that is the intense, long-lasting, partisan investigation that was conducted in the 90s. If, you know, the Republicans, starting with President Trump on down, want a comparison, they should welcome such an investigation themselves. Well, that response provoked backlash from one of, Clinton's most famous accusers, Juanita Broderick. She tweeted, quote, you lying hypocrite,

my case was never litigated. That's why I'm calling for an investigation now. If I can get 100,000 signatures, the world will know it, Hillary, then where will you hide? In quote, in a Senate hearing Wednesday FBI director Christopher Ray discussed the investigation of Brett Kavanaugh and its scope. He said, quote, our supplemental update to the previous background investigation was limited in scope, and I think that is consistent with the standard process for such investigations going back quite a long ways. Anthony Wiener, the former New York Congressman who fell from Grace, will be released from prison early on account of good conduct, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

Weiner was sentenced last year to 21 months in prison for sending sexually explicit material to a minor and was set to be released in August of 2019. He'll now be released in May. Back in 2011, Wiener was forced to resign. his congressional seat after accidentally posting a sexually explicit image of himself on Twitter. Two years later, he was caught again, this time sending explicit content to another person under a pseudonym. So, a win in Britain for Christian bakers. In 2014, Asher's bakery, owned by Daniel and Amy MacArthur, was asked to make a cake with the slogan, support gay marriage.

The bakery refused, and the case has been winding through the British legal system. But Wednesday, the Supreme Court in Britain ruled in favor of the couple, saying they were not acting with discrimination. Daniel MacArthur said, per the BBC, quote, I know a lot of people will be glad to hear this ruling today because this ruling protects freedom of speech and freedom of conscience for everyone. Next up, we're going to discuss what a new survey shows about how much or more accurately how little Americans know about history. Do you have an opinion that you'd like to share? I'm Rob Bluey editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal, and I'm inviting you to share your thoughts with us. Leave us a voicemail at 202-608-6205 or email us at letters at daily signal.com.

Yours could be featured on the Daily Signal podcast. The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation did a survey recently and discovered that a lot of Americans couldn't pass our own citizenship test. In fact, only about a third of us would be able to write now. Among the survey's findings via the press release from the fellowship, 72% of respondents either incorrectly identified or were unsure of which states were part of the 13 original states. Only 24% could correctly identify one thing Benjamin Franklin was famous for, with 37% believing that he invented the light bulb.

Only 24% knew the correct answer as, to why the colonists fought the British. 12% incorrectly thought World War II general Dwight Eisenhower led troops in the Civil War, and 6% thought he was a Vietnam War general. And then my personal favorite, while most knew the cause of the Cold War, 2% said climate change.

Joining us today is Jared Stepman, co-host of the right side of history and a contributor to The Daily Signal. Jared, you wrote about the survey in an op-ed for the Daily Signal. what did you think about the survey, its findings, and what are its implications? I definitely thought it was a very sad thing. I mean, the citizenship test, it's not like you really have to ace the test to pass.

It requires getting 60% of the questions correct. So that's essentially a D. Hey, hey, that's hard for some of us. It is, it can be somewhat hard, but it is a little sad that this test that is required for most people who are trying to immigrates the United States. Most Americans can't pass this test. It does make one wonder what we're doing in the United States. country as far as education goes. You would think, I mean, most of our, the reason why we have a public system of education, starting with the old common schools, is to create citizens

of a republic. It wasn't just about mass scores and things like that. Unfortunately, it appears we're not doing a fantastic job with that. And what I think was particularly worrying in the test is that only about 19 percent of young people could pass a test. And you'd think almost that they would do better because they're a little closer to primary school, to actually learning. these things and they couldn't. It makes me think the same polls that show that socialism is something that's embraced by young people is on the rise. It doesn't

really necessarily surprise me that much given the lack of knowledge about history and the things that have gone before. So I do think it is very worrying. I don't want to overstress this, but the part of being a citizen of a republic, you do have to be informed. We don't live under

a tyrannical form of government where the government just tells you what to think and what to do. We're citizens. We have to go out and vote. We have to understand that there are three branches of government. We have to understand these kind of basic parts of our system, how it works, or else, you know, demagogues can just say whatever they want to people and people just embrace it and say, oh, that sounds about right based on really nothing at all. So I think it is a worrying sign. It's something that we have to do something quickly to prevent this and to turn things around because we're really losing a basic understanding

of our history and basic understanding of civics and what our government, what our form of government is really meant to be. So what's gone wrong in our education system that's gotten us to that point? I think it's a combination of things. I think it's both, obviously there's just flat out ignorance in some cases that our schools just don't teach some of the basic aspects of history. I think there's a lot of misinformation out there, which is probably why people are getting questions wrong and things like that.

I think it's more disturbing when you're kind of getting ideological propaganda at, you know, very low levels of school. Books like Howard Zinn's People's History in the United States, which is, is a very radically left-wing history that's very commonly used in high schools across the country. But the problem is that a lot of our schools are merely failing. I mean, I think, you know, I continue to pound the table for things like school choice, which is very important for me, because I do think a lot of our public schools have failed young Americans for not just this generation, but previous generations as well. It's time to we rethink that system. It's time that

parents have a choice and where they send their kids to school so that if you think that your child's not learning about history and not learning about civics, they can send in a place that will teach those things. And hopefully they will be able to get a better education. So I do think that obviously stepping up our education, teaching history and civics is an important thing. And obviously that's reinforced in the home, parents going out of their way to teach young people about what this country was about and what its institutions are that someday that they may go out and they may exercise their voting rights and things like this. These are important things to have some knowledge going into these things and not just be essentially scrambling around the dark,

which a lot of Americans are because they don't have a basic understanding of how our system works. So you love history, to state the obvious. Can you think of any other countries in the history of Western civilization just to keep it broad where people started losing a sense of their history and what happened from there? I mean, is this one of the things that we can say we sort of saw the decline of Rome or something with. Yeah, sure. I mean, I think this is probably something that's going on, unfortunately, throughout a lot of the Western countries right now. I know there's Poles in Great Britain, a lot of young people can't identify Winston Churchill. So I don't think this is necessarily just

simply an American phenomenon. Of course, through most of history, a lot of people just didn't know history because they were in ignorance. I mean, people, we have access to information the way that people in the past didn't. I think a lot of, I think America was unique in its early history, in certainly 1770s, you know, I mean, when we created this revolution, Americans were a very knowledgeable population. That's in part what led to the revolution. Most populations in Europe, the average, you know, in many cases peasant, really didn't know a whole lot about history or anything. But it was very easy for a tyrannical dictator to either keep power or gain power in those systems. In America, we had a fairly literate, we had a very literate population.

We had a very knowledgeable population, not just the founders, the big ones that you know, the Thomas Jefferson's and the George Washington. Washington's, but the average person was knowledgeable, understood a little bit about history, could, you know, it wasn't necessarily an expert, but understood the kind of basics, so that liberty could essentially flourish. And that's what's something so great about America, as we have been like this. I think what we're seeing now is a kind of appealing away of that. And I think that's where it's worrying, because we are a country that's very used to having a great deal of liberty, a great deal of freedom, and, you know, participation in government.

Here are the people rule. We're not just taking orders from somebody on high. We're determining our own laws. It's important for us to actually be knowledgeable and understand our system and how it works. Yeah, you talk about the importance of education for citizenship, precisely so that we can participate in our system. And, you know, we live in a day when there's a lot of discontent on the left with Trump being president, publicans having Congress.

And you're hearing calls recently for changing the Senate, the nature of the Senate, changing, you know, getting rid of the electoral college, making some big institutional changes in our political system. How does an understanding of history, or how should an understanding of history, shape the way we understand those institutions? I really do find it incredible that the first thing they turn to is, you know, after some kind of political defeat is immediately, well, let's uproot these institutions and get rid of them.

I mean, there was even a piece recently saying that it's time to abolish the Constitution. We just lost some political fights and now we need to. And I do think that shows a general ignorance of history. I mean, to immediately jump to destroying the institutions that it made us the freest and most stable country on earth is really reckless. I mean, maybe that, you know, as a certain mindset, somebody thinks, well, you know, hey, in with the new, out with the old. Right. But a lot of our institutions are very sturdy. They allow us to innovate many times.

We have gone the wrong way. And, you know, not understanding that system, not even understanding the basis of it and saying that, well, now we should just get rid of it. I think that's an incredibly reckless thing. And unfortunately, there are a lot of people who buy that because they don't understand why the Senate exists the way it does or they don't understand the electoral college and why it exists. And yet they're saying, well, let's just get rid of it. I think that's a really reckless thing. That's how most revolutions end up failing in the long run. And I think that's something we need to know.

Ours worked because, you know, we had the right ideas and because we wanted to create a system of ordered liberty based on a constitution that protected the law and made us a nation of laws and not made. in, you know, if you have a large part of the population that doesn't really understand even what that means or doesn't understand the concept of God given rights or something like this, how can you create a system of liberty? I mean, eventually it will start to fade. Eventually, it'll start to fray and break apart. So on the Senate specifically, we've seen a lot of complaints about that with people, you know, suddenly discovering that not everyone in the Senate represents the same number of people.

And, of course, you know, we have this uproar, sorry, over the Kavanaugh vote. But why did the founders create the Senate the way they did? Well, the Senate, I mean, it was partially a compromise, but it was essentially to preserve federalism. I mean, that was a large part of it. I mean, the founders wanted the states do have a say in our system. It wasn't purely democratic. I mean, the founders didn't trust pure democracy to protect liberty. I mean, they simply did not.

They wanted to protect liberty, and this is they thought the best way to do that. Now, we have a House of Representatives that is very democratic, and we do have democratic elements within our system, the Senate wasn't really meant to be that way. It was meant to be a representation of the states so that a lot of the smaller states in particular would have power within that system. And this was ultimately the result of the Connecticut compromise where a lot of the states kind of got what they wanted in the bargain. A lot of the big states got what they wanted in the bargain because the House of Representatives is based on population. And it really worked for this country. And I think it definitely balances with the House of Representatives. And it balances with

the presidency too. And I think the idea that this just needs to be gotten rid of of that Farrellism is a problem and that we just need to go to mass plebiscites for the whole nation, I think really is a reckless thing. And it doesn't take into consideration the idea of protecting liberty for this country and for a lot of places that don't have the same opinion as a mass majority of the country. And we should note that the Connecticut compromise, you know, Connecticut is today a blue state. And there are also many blue states today that are also very small. You know, it's not just North Dakota.

There's also Vermont and Rhode Island and those kind of states. too. So the idea that it's just these tiny red states that are controlling the Senate isn't quite accurate. It really isn't. And this is constantly changing and evolving. I think that's why it's really reckless right now. You're hearing these calls to abolish the senator, Balls Electoral College. And these political fights, they change so frequently and so often. I mean, it really isn't just about, well, it's the small red rural states. No, it's a lot of small blue states. And there's a lot of big red states. I mean, Texas is a fairly large state. This is a big, popular state.

You know, we shouldn't all just be following the whims of Texas either. I mean, we want to get the... Whoa, whoa, whoa. I know, I know. I love Texas. I love Texas. I love Texas. I love Texas.

Even as a Californian, but at the same time, you know, I do think that the Wyoming... As a Texan, can I say, can you stop sending your people over to our state and ruin our liberty? Well, that might not exactly possible given how we do have the system of federalism and people voting with their feet. And a lot of people living in California have decided that's... they'd like to vote with their feet and move to Texas. So that definitely happens a lot, which is the concept of federalism. They want their cake, too. They keep voting for Democrats.

And the problem, again, with the mass plebous ideas, you know, do we want necessarily the whole country to be like just like California? I mean, I think a lot of Americans would say, oh, my goodness, no. But I would say a lot of Californians probably say, well, I don't really want to be like Texas or I don't want to be like Idaho. So, I mean, that's the beauty of the system of federalism. It does kind of protect these individual systems within these states. And we have a lot of leeway.

If it really is that bad, you know, there's a place, you know, right next door where they have things differently. So I think that's kind of a beauty of the American system right there. You know, I do have a final question for you. And, you know, since we're doing so badly on these tests, these citizenship tests, should we just, like, revoke the citizenship of people that fail these tests? Like, everyone has to take a citizenship test. And if you pass it, you get to stay in. If you don't, then you can't. That would be slightly controversial, although I would say.

Maybe a little bit since, like, two-thirds of the country would lose their citizenship. For sure. Perhaps just the answer is just do a little better job of educating ourselves and teaching next generations how to do a little better with these things. It's not just all about just going out and voting. It's actually knowing what you're voting for, why you're voting for it, and, you know, what's kind of come before and the ideas there before. So, yeah, that would be a little controversial, just taking away citizenship rights because people fail the test. Well, speaking of controversial, next step, we're going to talk about some of the extreme rhetoric. Liberals have pretty much cornered the market on 101-style podcasts that break down tough policy issues in the news.

Until now, did you know that every week Heritage Explains intermingles personal stories, news clips, and facts from heritage experts to help explain some of today's hardest issues from a conservative perspective? Look for Heritage Explains on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation battle is over, but Senator Rand Paul warns that the bitterness in our politics is hardly over. He says it could even turn deadly. In a Kentucky radio show on Tuesday, Senator said, quote, I fear that there's going to be an assassination. I really worry that somebody is going to be killed and that those who are ratcheting up the conversation, they have to realize they bear some responsibility if this elevates to violence, end quote. Paul, of course, was one of the Republican congressmen last year at the baseball practice that was assaulted by a gunman who claimed to support Bernie Sanders.

His statement comes just days after his wife told Breitbart that she sleeps with a gun near the bed and has dead bolts all around her house. And, of course, in this ugly confirmation process, we saw death threats, you know, levied both at the Kavanaugh family and at Senator Cory Gardner's wife. He's the senator from Colorado. So, Jared and Kate, you know, these threats are circulating and it's pretty ugly and we don't like to see that in our country. Do politicians bear the responsibility for, obviously, you know, it's hard to assign, you can't assign causation or anything like that. But, you know, there are folks like Cory Booker, New Jersey, saying, you know, you need to get up in these politicians' faces. Is there any responsibility there that needs to be owned up to? I don't think necessarily in the arguments back and forth that go on between the two sides.

I think that's, you know, all is fair and the kind of debates we have. But, I mean, we've seen things like from Congressman Maxine Waters basically saying you need to disrupt essentially. It's okay if you go and disrupt somebody's lunch or things like that. I think that definitely crosses the line. I mean, I think, you know, yeah, some people on the left don't like this word now. They're kind of going against it. But this kind of mob rule idea and ginning up mobs to go after your political opponents. I mean, you know, protests and things like that, they are really part of the American way of life.

And, you know, they can be heated and all this kind of thing. But once they start to verge on violence or making physical threats against people, I think that's where we get to really a worrying spot. And it's incredible to see any politician encourage that kind of thing. I mean, I mean, not only is it dangerous, but, you know, this is going to come back on them too, because why did you, why did you encourage these people to potentially commit violence? I mean, obviously, I don't think we want that as a part of our system. like something that's out of a, you know, a failing country. I mean, not the United States of America. Yeah, I mean, it's incredibly worrisome.

I think, you know, yeah, the fact that the baseball thing happened just over a year ago. We forget that happened. I mean, that was the thing that happened. I know. And I think we forget that it happened because, frankly, I know we bashed the media a lot. And it was covered at the time. But there is no way if this had happened to the left that it wouldn't have been covered a lot more and talked about a lot more. Like every time, you know, President Trump said something extremist.

whereas it often doesn't seem that the media matches what happened with the left's extremist rhetoric. And, you know, I don't think anyone prominent on the left right now is specifically calling for violence. But it is the issue that, you know, you don't know who you can incite. You don't know what people are on the edge. And, yeah, it's just so poison. It's so, it goes against, you know. I mean, one of the things that they talked about at a digital conference I was out a few months ago was that things literally go viral on either the left or the right.

They don't go viral in both. Obviously there's some exceptions. Like I would imagine cat videos. Or 9-11. Or I don't know. Major events. Yeah, major events. But in terms of news content that goes viral.

And yeah, it does seem that there's such a hardening. Like our politics are extending to everything. And we're seeing them as the most important thing in our lives. And that's where this lack of civility is coming from. And it's not good. And, you know, we did see that there was a Minnesota teacher who had tweeted, you know, who's going to go kill Kavanaugh. And then he deleted it and was forced to resign. So, you know, at least there was a negative consequence there.

But again, you're seeing it. Yeah. You know, I think there's a pretty big gap between the kind of heated protests at a political event that we saw. I mean, I remember, you know, back in 2009, you know, we were having the Tea Party protests and things like that. And a lot of these were at, you know, political rallies. they were at town halls, you know, they were arguing very heatedly with some politicians, but generally order. There's a difference between that, I think, and going to where somebody's eating at a restaurant

and harassing them and trying to get them kicked out and screaming at them and things. I think there is a gap between those things. Again, you know, this is America. We're about protesting things we don't like, and that is your kind of right, your freedom of expression, your freedom of association. But there is a line that's crossed when you are going. into somebody's private life and attacking them. Obviously, when you're actually committing violence, it wasn't just a squeeze.

There was actually a more recent event in California where somebody running for Congress, I believe in Castor Valley, California was actually stabbed by somebody with a knife who was very politically motivated. So, you know, we've seen these kind of things, and it is a little disturbing. This is not just, you know, general, you know, protests. This is verging on violence and this kind of mob rule that I think we should be worried about. And I think long term it has repercussions in the same. sense of, you know, we saw a lot of people were afraid to say they supported Trump before the

election and then they voted for him. And I think we're going to see more and more people being silent about their political beliefs. And thus, if you're on the left, you're not going to be able to argue with them or debate with them or encourage them to think otherwise because they're never going to feel confident enough to tell you because you have eradicated private space to such a place that they're afraid that if you were a colleague, you'd harass them. If you're eating lunch, they might, you know, take issue with you. You know, they've really made it. So to just say, I disagree on these politics, put you in an untenable position.

Yeah, actually one of the great things I saw, I think this happened in the last year. There was a protest in D.C. It was a rally for a Trump rally and a Black Lives Matter protest showed up. And the Trump has actually invited the Black Lives Matter protests to come up on stage and say his peace. And I thought, you know, that was a really great moment. That's kind of what this country is about. You know, it's not about, you know, people slugging it out on the streets. It's about, hey, these ties are very different.

They have very different views, but they let the other side speak and say, well, you know, we don't embrace all these things, but you're my fellow American. You have, you know, right to say what you want to as well. I mean, that's what we're about. I mean, that's the kind of debate that's good and healthy in a country. Instead, we just end up in our bubbles and people are afraid to say things for being attacked or having violence carried out of them. That's a dangerous thing.

Well, Jared Stedman, appreciate you being on as always. Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much. And you can find Jared Stetman's podcast, the right side of here. history on iTunes and SoundCloud. And thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud. And please leave us a review or rating on iTunes to give us any feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast,

executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis, sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Rampersad. For more information, visit DailySignal.com. com.