I was checking out random things on the Harris Poll website's 'Vault' and I found this breakdown of what Americans believe. According to their 2009 polling 32% of americans believe in UFOs, 26% believe in astrology, and 23% believe in witches. Meanwhile only a measly 45% think that evolution is a real phenomenon.
Think about it. We have the most powerful conventional military in the world. We also have a metric shit-ton of WMDs. And a quarter of our population still believes in witches.
I wonder if this has anything to do with that. With the elections coming up I'm already hearing the conservatives hollering about needing to cut school funding and fire teachers. Every few years in the town where I grew up they try to get their hands on millions of dollars to build a field-house for the sports teams; meanwhile the liberal arts have been slowly butchered so they can pay for maintaining the football field.
Fuck. It's not like I have anything I can say on this subject that hasn't been repeated elsewhere a million times before. For the record though; I just want to say that my instincts tell my that a well educated nation is a nation better prepared to wage war.... so it blows my fucking mind that so many of the people I know who are extremely vocal in their contempt for public education are also the same people who have "Nuke their ass/Take their gas!" bumper-stickers. There is no zero-sum game going on between supporting the military and educating our population.
But that's another rant to be ranted another time. Thanks for reading, and feel free to let me know what you think. Unless you happen to actually believe in any of that pseudoscience crap. Then you can go google "James Randi" instead.
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