B
bloggerdude2005
Guest
...Not Disturb You? According to "Game Change", Sarah Palin, in 2008 the Governor of Alaska, the state's highest elected official, did not know the answers to some basic civics and government questions, including:
-The causes of the World Wars.
-The reason for a North and South Korea.
-The cause of 9/11.
-The nature of the problem in Iraq, and the lack of a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
One could argue that a person is not required to know such things. But these are things that an educated 10th grade student should know, let alone one who aspires to higher office. When I was in 9th grade I knew these things (except for 9/11, which happened a decade later). But there are certain basic things that any educated person should know as par for the course- it's a basic, fundamental expectation that is not generally questioned. Certainly, I would not expect Palin to know a very obscure historical fact or an obscure law. But basic things such as global issues, world events and 20th century history- these are not beyond the ken of someone who is educated, and certainly should be known by those who hold higher office or aspire to it.
The problem is not just that Palin has no knowledge of certain basic facts. It is that she did not even have the intellectual curiosity to inform herself of these things or at least to inquire about them. That is even more disturbing because it represents a repetition of the GW Bush era, an era of complete ignorance about true historical and political facts and a naive reliance on the "gut" and false, unexamined assumptions- and the Bible. GW Bush, too, felt that 9/11 was caused by Saddam, regardless of what the facts said, and we see the results of that ignorant assumption.
Sarah Palin is a devout believer in the historical "fact" of Genesis. She feels that politics should take a back seat to religious concerns, and would likely view the Middle East problems through that lens. Her followers mostly view the problems between Israel and its neighbors in Biblical terms, and would make geopolitical decisions based not on strategic importance but upon Biblico-historical conjecture.
Would anyone out there truly disagree that a person with such a narrow understanding of historical and political events must be, at least on some level, disturbing? Would you disagree with the fact that even if certain facts can be learned, the failure to even inquire into them before one had already attained political office, and while aspiring to even higher office, represents a broad-scale ignorance that cannot simply be rectified by "reading more"?
-The causes of the World Wars.
-The reason for a North and South Korea.
-The cause of 9/11.
-The nature of the problem in Iraq, and the lack of a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
One could argue that a person is not required to know such things. But these are things that an educated 10th grade student should know, let alone one who aspires to higher office. When I was in 9th grade I knew these things (except for 9/11, which happened a decade later). But there are certain basic things that any educated person should know as par for the course- it's a basic, fundamental expectation that is not generally questioned. Certainly, I would not expect Palin to know a very obscure historical fact or an obscure law. But basic things such as global issues, world events and 20th century history- these are not beyond the ken of someone who is educated, and certainly should be known by those who hold higher office or aspire to it.
The problem is not just that Palin has no knowledge of certain basic facts. It is that she did not even have the intellectual curiosity to inform herself of these things or at least to inquire about them. That is even more disturbing because it represents a repetition of the GW Bush era, an era of complete ignorance about true historical and political facts and a naive reliance on the "gut" and false, unexamined assumptions- and the Bible. GW Bush, too, felt that 9/11 was caused by Saddam, regardless of what the facts said, and we see the results of that ignorant assumption.
Sarah Palin is a devout believer in the historical "fact" of Genesis. She feels that politics should take a back seat to religious concerns, and would likely view the Middle East problems through that lens. Her followers mostly view the problems between Israel and its neighbors in Biblical terms, and would make geopolitical decisions based not on strategic importance but upon Biblico-historical conjecture.
Would anyone out there truly disagree that a person with such a narrow understanding of historical and political events must be, at least on some level, disturbing? Would you disagree with the fact that even if certain facts can be learned, the failure to even inquire into them before one had already attained political office, and while aspiring to even higher office, represents a broad-scale ignorance that cannot simply be rectified by "reading more"?