{"id":3509,"date":"2011-03-22T07:48:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T07:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/03\/americans-dumb-as-hay-rakes-and-proud-of-it.html"},"modified":"2011-03-22T07:48:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-22T07:48:00","slug":"americans-dumb-as-hay-rakes-and-proud-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/03\/americans-dumb-as-hay-rakes-and-proud-of-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Americans: Dumb as hay rakes and proud of it"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>Or at least you would think so after reading <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/dailybeast\/13043_americasignorancecouldposehugeproblems;_ylt=AuIkS7wHx3oDMp0BhMJlX5pbbBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTQzZWY5djkxBGFzc2V0A2RhaWx5YmVhc3QvMjAxMTAzMjEvMTMwNDNfYW1lcmljYXNpZ25vcmFuY2Vjb3VsZHBvc2VodWdlcHJvYmxlbXMEY2NvZGUDcHpidXIEY3BvcwMyBHBvcwMyBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDaG93ZHVtYmFyZXdl\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">this<\/a> stellar piece of reporting by The Daily Beast.\u00a0 As usual, it picks up on the progressive meme that Americans have always been a bunch of stupid hayseeds who stumbled and bumbled their way to greatness despite themselves.\u00a0 Are Americans ill-informed?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0\u00a0 But notice the DB is careful not to include such things as the advocacy agenda driven curriculum in our schools and universities that focuses on indoctrinating our kids rather than teaching them actual facts about our government.\u00a0 Notice it doesn\u2019t point to a vacant and dismal quality of journalism that prefers to suppress inconvenient truths for fear of compromising the\u00a0mission at hand.\u00a0 Notice it doesn\u2019t suggest that our culture is being dumbed-down by an entertainment industry\u2019s focus on sex, drugs, and bathroom humor at the expense of enlightened and profound contributions to the human experience.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>Notice none of that is touched on.\u00a0 What is touched on is the progressive mantra that Americans are dumb, have always been dumb, and will continue to be dumb until we become more like\u2026Europe.\u00a0 You know, Europe.\u00a0 Europe that is imploding, dying, and won\u2019t exist within a hundred years at the rate it is going.\u00a0 Europe that conquered 2\/3 of the known world for itself, launched two world wars, had one of history\u2019s worst genocides, gave birth to history\u2019s most murderous ideology (Communism), and resolved to deal with its past by embracing a never before seen level of narcissism expressed through hedonism.\u00a0 That Europe is our goal. <\/p>\n<p>No, America isn\u2019t smart.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not because we never were.\u00a0 Americans used to value something they called Common Sense.\u00a0 Sure, education was important.\u00a0 But so was commons sense.\u00a0 Good old fashioned horse sense.\u00a0 The kind of common sense that said \u2018maybe the fact that AIDS \u2013 a disease spread almost exclusively through sex, drugs, and promiscuity \u2013 is not so coincidental considering it exploded on the world stage within a decade of the generation that promoted sex, drugs, and promiscuity above all things.\u2019\u00a0 That\u2019s the type of Smart Americans had.\u00a0 We\u2019ve lost that, common sense not being favored by agenda makers because it is tough to gauge, and even tougher to manipulate.\u00a0 Those things we read about and lament \u2013 the gas chambers, the gulags, the ruined cities \u2013 those happened in a civilization that valued its own intellectual and cultural superiority above all things.\u00a0 America\u2019s problem is that we\u2019ve gotten rid of the common sense, and replaced it with nothing more than shallow advocacy and punditry to advance ideals and agendas that one of those dumb moron types of old would have been hard-pressed to ever believe.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>As for the Left\u2019s continued yearning to be like Europe.\u00a0 If the\u00a0stories of social and economic implosions don\u2019t do it.\u00a0 If the fact that Europe has all but committed demographic suicide through catastrophically low birth rates doesn\u2019t do it.\u00a0 Then maybe this little clip, complements of the great James Garner, will help jar our memories a bit:<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Or at least you would think so after reading this stellar piece of reporting by The Daily Beast.\u00a0 As usual, it picks up on the progressive meme that Americans have always been a bunch of stupid hayseeds who stumbled and bumbled their way to greatness despite themselves.\u00a0 Are Americans ill-informed?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0\u00a0 But notice the DB [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Americans: Dumb as hay rakes and proud of it<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Or at least you would think so after reading this stellar piece of reporting by The Daily Beast.&nbsp; As usual, it picks up on the progressive meme that\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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