BRUNI Learning to hate the other tribe/Fourth of July edition: In June, Marist conducted an information survey concerning the Fourth of July.
Respondents were asked two questions. Here they are:
Questions asked in the Marist survey:
“On July 4th we celebrate Independence Day. From which country did the United States win its independence?”
“In which year did the United States declare its independence?”
These were open-ended questions. Respondents were required to volunteer answers. No possible answers were provided.
As is always the case in such matters, the public’s knowledge was less than perfect. Only 76 percent of respondents named Great Britain as the country from which we won independence. Only 58 percent named 1776 as the year independence was declared.
(Presumably, Marist accepted “England” as a correct answer to that first question. But in typical expert fashion, Marist didn’t clarify this point in its press release on the survey. For the full press release, with all Marist data, just click this.)
On July 3, Steve Benen discussed the Marist survey. After quoting the press release giving the survey’s results, Benen offered his thoughts about the survey’s “internals.” Skillfully, he helped liberal readers learn to deride The Other:
BENEN (7/3/11): Taking a look at the internals, a couple of other angles stand out. For one thing, there’s a noticeable regional difference—Americans living in the South did noticeably worse than everyone else in both questions.
There are also age differences—on both questions, the younger the respondent, the more likely he/she was to be wrong. Here’s hoping wisdom comes with age.
Steve said he hopes wisdom comes with age. Perhaps he was being ironic.
How did Steve interpret the data? After quoting Marist’s basic findings, he quickly cited “a noticeable regional difference,” with the South doing “noticeably worse than everyone else in both questions.” In this way, Steve helped liberal readers enjoy a favorite habit—mocking the dumb-ass ways of the red-state South.
Sorry. Steve was basically playing you again, as he sometimes does. In fact, the differences are fairly small among the four regions identified in the data, although the South scored lowest on both questions.
Where does a much larger difference occur? Being a party-line man, Steve would never tell you. But a much larger difference occurs when Marist breaks the data down by race (white versus non-white), as you will quickly see if you review “the internals.” Example: 67 percent of whites got the year of independence right, versus 39 percent of non-whites. This 28-point difference dwarfs the difference between the score of the South and the scores of the other regions.
By the way: Are we aware that the South has a larger non-white population than higher-scoring regions?
Given the sweep of American history, it shouldn’t come as a giant surprise that whites did better with these questions than non-whites did. Nor should it come as a giant surprise when Benen spins readers the way he does. How were readers supposed to react to his remarkably selective presentation of “the internals?” In comments, one of Benen’s misled readers barked out a preferred party-line:
COMMENTER: “There's a noticeable regional difference—Americans living in the South did noticeably worse than everyone else in both questions.”
Why I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that the heavily RightWing South is so extremely ignorant.
Sad. In fact, there is no evidence in the Marist data that the “right-wing (i.e., white or conservative or Republican) South” proved any more ignorant than anyone else about this historical topic. But so what? This commenter greedily swallowed the bait his affable host had served.
Did Steve intend for readers to have this sort of reaction? We don’t know. But here’s how he ended his post:
BENEN (continuing directly from above): Rick Santorum recently argued the public’s limited historical knowledge is the result of a liberal conspiracy—apparently, ignorance will help lefties “impose…new values” on the country”—but under the circumstances, it appears we’d be much better off if Americans simply ignored the historical recollections of people like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin.
In the past month, Bachman and Palin have made some historical misstatements. But there is no sign in the Marist data that Republicans did worse on these measures than we brilliant Democrats did. We’d guess that they probably did better, though Marist didn’t keep track.
Let’s repeat: Given the sweep of American history, it shouldn’t come as a giant surprise that whites did better with these questions than non-whites did. (Presumably, this may also be a reflection of more recent immigration patterns.) But might we make a further note about Benen’s work? Like many assembly-line pseudo-liberals, he rarely stoops to discuss the public education issues which are suggested by data like these. In fact, Benen almost never discusses public school topics at all. In the pseudo-liberal coalition his type has assembled, black and brown children no longer count. They simply aren’t one of the groups we discuss. As far as we pseudo-libs seem to care, they can go hang in the yard.
Are southern Republicans dumber than northeastern Democrats on the measures surveyed by Marist? There is no indication of that in the data. But so what? We pseudos just want to have fun!
Remember: “Divide and conquer” is an oligarch strategy. In the long run, it stands in the way of progressive advance; it keeps average people in the two tribes from seeing their common situation. But it also provides a lot of good fun for those who enjoy tribal politics.
Rush and Sean have always played it this way. How quickly our tribe moved to ape them once we emerged from the woods!
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