Looking at the image above is a rather depressing statement of the reality of our lack of knowledge of our own political systems. Every day on Facebook, Twitter and more you see people all fired up about ‘ObamaCare’, ‘legitimate rape’, or whatever the hot buzzword of the day happens to be. Yet how many of these people know much of anything about the political systems they rant and rave about? How many can name the Vice President? Our election process? The number of Senators? The names of your own Senators and Representative – and those going to your state assembly as well?
Further, I think it would have been interesting to expand the survey to first ask HOW MANY justices there are on the court? I wonder what THAT survey might have looked like?
The thing that struck me was the way the survey was split – if you knew at least ONE you were OK. There was no separation beyond that, so it was really ‘all’, ‘some’, ‘none’ or ‘refuse to answer’. And I can certainly understand missing a couple as there have been a number of changes over the last several year – and personally I always liked David Souter so I tend to list him before remembering he retired a couple of years ago.
In case you don’t know, the nine justices are:
Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen G. Breyer, Samuel A. Alito, Elena Kagan, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg
How would YOU do on that survey?
Source: USA Today