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Contents
Overview
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
― George Orwell
Liberty is dying a slow but steady death. This is not occurring because liberty is losing in an open, public contest with opposing ideologies. Rather, it is occurring because the basic principles of liberty aren’t even on the “playing field” – that is, in the arena of ideological and political battles that the general public observes.
Instead, our public battles consist almost entirely of several dominant “teams” trying to make momentary tactical gains, towards objectives that are never clearly articulated. And the general public is essentially forced into this binary choice, of supporting one “brand” of destruction of liberty, or the other.
This is happening because we’ve allowed several generations of our children to be taught that, to one degree or another, some organized authority must exercise control over all aspects of our lives, for “the common good.” To accomplish this objective, our Constitution is being steadily whitewashed out of existence, to the point where even our most “educated” citizens are ignorant of its provisions, and underlying principles. Worse, a majority of people harbor egregious misconceptions of our Constitution, and many are openly hostile towards the fundamental rights it articulates – unaware that their lives depend on the free exercise of them.
Research data
Detailed public survey research data I’ve compiled since 2000 supports all these contentions. For example:
- 95% of American adults cannot correctly answer ten of the most basic questions about the U.S. Constitution.
- 99% cannot identify all five rights contained in the First Amendment; 92% cannot name three; less than 25% can name two. 36% cannot name a single right in the First Amendment.
80% of seniors at America’s most elite colleges and universities cannot pass a basic high school history test, yet all will be able to graduate without having taken a single history class of any kind.
- 57% of high school seniors score below the “basic” level on a test of grade-level American history, the lowest ranking, meaning they have not even achieved partial mastery of this knowledge; 89% score below “proficiency.”
- Nearly half of college graduates are unaware that the Constitution establishes a separation of powers among the branches of the federal government.
Only 17% of college graduates can correctly identify the functional differences between the free market and centralized planning.
- 43% of Americans agree with the statement, “The press in America has too much freedom in our society”; 71% believe “It is somewhat to very important for the government to hold the media in check.”
- Only 51% of high school students believe “newspapers should be allowed to freely publish without government approval of stories.”
- 58% of American adults said that people should not be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to religious groups. 31% believe musicians should not be allowed to sing songs with lyrics that might offend others.
For the sources of these stats, and more – such as the fact that elected politicians score even lower on basic civics than the general public – see my report:
“Meet Today’s Typical Millennial” by Jon Sutz
My mission
The primary mission of my life is to use all my creative skills to develop innovative knowledge tools and activism projects that will help foster a peaceful rebirth of liberty in America, then nurture its expansion throughout the world.
Update 2019: I have rephrased my mission for visual applications to read as follows:
To learn about my work thus far to realizing this mission, please see:
Jon Sutz: A creative asset in the defense of liberty
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