Plea to Pollsters: Won’t You Please Stop Embarrassing Americans By Asking Us Questions About Civics and History?

Communist Manifesto , U.S. Constitution;  potato, po-tah-to :

Can the young people you know tell the difference between James Madison and Karl Marx? Sadly, a new national poll reveals that 42 percent of Americans wrongly attribute Marx’s famous communist slogan, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” to one of the country’s Founding documents. Nearly one in five Americans believe this phrase can be found in the Bill of Rights, of all places. You can take some solace in knowing that among young adults, only six percent made this mistake, though 30 percent of them believe Marx’s statement can be found in either the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution.

Seriously, pollsters, please stop asking questions about what’s in our historical documents. We don’t know, okay, we haven’t gotten around to actually reading them yet. Give us a break, we just finished reading Atlas Shrugged last week . . .

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