American Government Mr. Bekemeyer Are Americans Politically Engaged?

Part 1: Introduction

Trust in Government (Source: Gallup)

From “Report: Majority Of Government Doesn't Trust Citizens Either” (Source: The Onion, May 19, 2010) At a time when widespread polling data suggests that a majority of the U.S. populace no longer trusts the federal government, a Pew Research Center report has found that the vast majority of the federal government doesn't trust the U.S. populace all that much either.

According to the poll—which surveyed members of the judicial, legislative, and executive branches—9 out of 10 government officials reported feeling "disillusioned" by the populace and claimed to have "completely lost confidence" in the citizenry's ability to act in the nation's best interests.

"All the vitriol and partisan bickering in Congress has caused most Americans to form negative opinions of the U.S. government," Pew researcher Amy Ratner said. "However, over the same time period, the government has likewise grown wary of U.S. citizens, largely due to their utter lack of foresight, laziness, and overall incompetence." Added Ratner, "And the fact that American Idol is still the No. 1 show on television doesn't exactly make our government burst with confidence."

Out of 100 U.S. senators polled, 84 said they don't trust the U.S. populace to do what is right, and 79 said Americans are not qualified to do their jobs. Ninety-one percent of all government officials polled said they find citizens to be every bit as irresponsible, greedy, irrational, and selfishly motivated as government officials are….Citing the billions of dollars wasted annually on flavored water and boneless buffalo wings, the number 1 of drunk-driving deaths each year, and the lack of citizen accountability for the rise of Kim Kardashian, government officials registered extremely low opinions of the American people overall.

Part 2: General Political Engagement

Civil and Political Involvement, 2008 (Source: Pew Center) Proportion of adults who did each of the following in the last 12 months.

Frequency of Political Discussions, 2012 (Source: Pew Center) Political Discussions by Demographic Group, 2012 (Source: Per Center) Percent within each group who ever discuss politics with others offline/online. Offline Civic Communications by Gender, Age and Ethnic/Racial Group, 2012 (Source: Pew Center) % of adults in each group who have signed a petition, contacted a gov’t official, called a radio/TV show, or sent a letter to the editor offline in the preceding 12 months.

Offline Civic Communications by Income/Education, 2012 (Source: Pew Center) % of adults in each group who have signed a petition, contacted a gov’t official, called a radio/TV show, or sent a letter to the editor offline in the preceding 12 months. Demographic Characteristics of Social Networking Engagement, 2012 (Source: Pew Center) “Social networking engagement” includes any political activity that takes place on Twitter, Facebook, or any other social networking site. ”SNS users” are those who regularly access Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

Source: Take Part ( http://ww w . takepart.com / slacktivism) The link has better visuals. From “Small Change” (Source: The New Yorker, October 4, 2010) At four-thirty in the afternoon on Monday, February 1, 1960, four college students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. They were freshmen at North Carolina A. & T., a black college a mile or so away.

“I’d like a cup of coffee, please,” one of the four, Ezell Blair, said to the waitress.

“We don’t serve Negroes here,” she replied.

The Woolworth’s lunch counter was a long L-shaped bar that could seat sixty-six people, with a standup snack bar at one end. The seats were for whites. The snack bar was for blacks. Another employee, a black woman who worked at the steam table, approached the students and tried to warn them away. “You’re acting stupid, ignorant!” she said. They didn’t move. Around five-thirty, the front doors to the store were locked. The four still didn’t move. Finally, they left by a side door. Outside, a small crowd had gathered, including a photographer from the Greensboro Record. “I’ll be back tomorrow with A. & T. College,” one of the students said.

By next morning, the protest had grown to twenty-seven men and four women, most from the same dormitory as the original four. The men were dressed in suits and ties. The students had brought their schoolwork, and studied as they sat at the counter. On Wednesday, students from Greensboro’s “Negro” secondary school, Dudley High, joined in, and the number of protesters swelled to eighty. By Thursday, the protesters numbered three hundred, including three white women, from the Greensboro campus of the University of North Carolina. By Saturday, the sit-in had reached six hundred. People spilled out onto the street. White teen-agers waved Confederate flags. Someone threw a firecracker. At noon, the A. & T. football team arrived. “Here comes the wrecking crew,” one of the white students shouted.

By the following Monday, sit-ins had spread to Winston-Salem, twenty-five miles away, and Durham, fifty miles away. The day after that, students at Fayetteville State Teachers College and at Johnson C. Smith College, in Charlotte, joined in, followed on Wednesday by students at St. Augustine’s College and Shaw University, in Raleigh. On Thursday and Friday, the protest crossed state lines, surfacing in Hampton and Portsmouth, Virginia, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and in Chattanooga, Tennessee. By the end of the month, there were sit- ins throughout the South, as far west as Texas. “I asked every student I met what the first day of the sitdowns had been like on his campus,” the political theorist Michael Walzer wrote in Dissent. “The answer was always the same: ‘It was like a fever. Everyone wanted to go.’ ” Some seventy thousand students eventually took part. Thousands were arrested and untold thousands more radicalized. These events in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade—and it happened without e- mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter. . . .

Greensboro in the early nineteen-sixties was the kind of place where racial insubordination was routinely met with violence. The four students who first sat down at the lunch counter were terrified. “I suppose if anyone had come up behind me and yelled ‘Boo,’ I think I would have fallen off my seat,” one of them said later. On the first day, the store manager notified the police chief, who immediately sent two officers to the store. On the third day, a gang of white toughs showed up at the lunch counter and stood ostentatiously behind the protesters, ominously muttering epithets such as “burr-head nigger.” A local Ku Klux Klan leader made an appearance. On Saturday, as tensions grew, someone called in a bomb threat, and the entire store had to be evacuated.

What makes people capable of this kind of activism? The Stanford sociologist Doug McAdam compared the Freedom Summer dropouts with the participants who stayed, and discovered that the key difference wasn’t, as might be expected, ideological fervor. “All of the applicants—participants and withdrawals alike—emerge as highly committed, articulate supporters of the goals and values of the summer program,” he concluded. What mattered more was an applicant’s degree of personal connection to the civil-rights movement. All the volunteers were required to provide a list of personal contacts—the people they wanted kept apprised of their activities—and participants were far more likely than dropouts to have close friends who were also going to Mississippi. High-risk activism, McAdam concluded, is a “strong-tie” phenomenon. . . .

So one crucial fact about the four freshmen at the Greensboro lunch counter—David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, and Joseph McNeil—was their relationship with one another. McNeil was a roommate of Blair’s in A. & T.’s Scott Hall dormitory. Richmond roomed with McCain one floor up, and Blair, Richmond, and McCain had all gone to Dudley High School. The four would smuggle beer into the dorm and talk late into the night in Blair and McNeil’s room. They would all have remembered the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott that same year, and the showdown in Little Rock in 1957. It was McNeil who brought up the idea of a sit-in at Woolworth’s. They’d discussed it for nearly a month. Then McNeil came into the dorm room and asked the others if they were ready. There was a pause, and McCain said, in a way that works only with people who talk late into the night with one another, “Are you guys chicken or not?” Ezell Blair worked up the courage the next day to ask for a cup of coffee because he was flanked by his roommate and two good friends from high school.

The kind of activism associated with social media isn’t like this at all. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life.

This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvelous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism. . . .

Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice. We are a long way from the lunch counters of Greensboro. . . . If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause. Part 3: Political Knowledge

Knowledge of Political and International News, September 2013 (Source: Pew Center) Based on 13-Question Online Quiz

Political Knowledge by Age Group (Source: Pew Center) Based on 13-Question Online Quiz From “Failing Grades on Civics Exam Called a ‘Crisis’” (Source: The New York Times, May 4, 2011) Fewer than half of American eighth graders knew the purpose of the Bill of Rights on the most recent national civics examination, and only one in 10 demonstrated acceptable knowledge of the checks and balances among the legislative, executive and judicial branches, according to test results released on Wednesday.

At the same time, three-quarters of high school seniors who took the test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, were unable to demonstrate skills like identifying the effect of United States foreign policy on other nations or naming a power granted to Congress by the Constitution.

“Today’s NAEP results confirm that we have a crisis on our hands when it comes to civics education,” said Sandra Day O’Connor, the former Supreme Court justice, who last year founded icivics.org, a nonprofit group that teaches students civics through Web-based games and other tools.

The Department of Education administered the test, known as the nation’s report card, to 27,000 4th-, 8th- and 12th-grade students last year. Questions covered themes like how government is financed, what rights are protected by the Constitution and how laws are passed….

On average, Hispanic eighth-graders scored 137 and non-Hispanic whites 160…. The achievement gap between blacks and whites in civics [was] about 25 points at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels and 29 points among high school seniors….

“We face difficult challenges at home and abroad,” Justice O’Connor said in a statement…. “We cannot afford to continue to neglect the preparation of future generations for active and informed citizenship.

From Guardian of Democracy: The Civic Mission of Schools (Source: Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools) At the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a woman approached the eldest delegate, Dr. Benjamin Franklin, outside of Independence Hall. She asked whether the framers had created a monarchy or a republic. In reply, he told her that America would be “a republic, if you can keep it.”

Dr. Franklin’s brief response captures a vital, often overlooked aspect of one of the key ingredients in making our democracy work: an educated and engaged citizenry. In a democracy in which the final authority rests with the people, our local, state, and federal governments will only be as responsive and great as citizens demand them to be. . . .

[O]ur crisis has led many Americans to turn back to the wisdom of the framers, as others — from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King Jr. — did in times of national challenge. But it is important not just to quote or praise the framers, but to understand their ideals of liberty, equality, and democracy. they believed that democracy was not limited to voting in quadrennial elections. They envisioned Americans as educated citizens, active in the lives of their communities and country, and they believed that civic education was essential to responsible self-government….

Reasons for concern are reflected in the answers our Annenberg Public Policy Center surveys elicited from national samples of the U.S. population in the past decade. These were among our findings:  Only one-third of Americans could name all three branches of government; one-third couldn’t name any.  Just over a third thought that it was the intention of the Founding Fathers to have each branch hold a lot of power, but the president has the final say.  Just under half of Americans (47%) knew that a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court carries the same legal weight as a 9-0 ruling.  Almost a third mistakenly believed that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling could be appealed.  When the Supreme Court divides 5-4, roughly one in four (23%) believed the decision was referred to Congress for resolution; 16% thought it needed to be sent back to the lower courts.

One can debate the importance of knowing the name of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or the details of Paul Revere’s ride, but there is little doubt that understanding such foundational concepts as checks and balances and the importance of an independent judiciary does make a difference. . . .

Federalist John Adams wrote that “liberty cannot be preserved” without civic education, and his Democratic- Republican counterpart Thomas Jefferson argued that since the citizenry is “the only safe depository of government power […] if we think them not enlightened enough […] the remedy is not to take it from them, but inform their discretion by education.”

Improved civic learning can address many of our democratic shortfalls. It increases the democratic accountability of elected officials, since only informed and engaged citizens will ask tough questions of their leaders. It improves public discourse, since knowledgeable and interested citizens will demand more from the media. It fulfills our ideal of civic equality by giving every citizen, regardless of background, the tools to be a full participant. . . .

Jefferson’s warning is just as applicable today as it was over two centuries ago: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.” Statistics about the state of civic learning and civic engagement in the United States confirm the urgency of this crisis. Upon examining the data, it becomes impossible to ignore the individual disempowerment, lack of participation, and civic achievement gap that threaten the fairness and democratic nature of our system of government. . . .

Many have argued that educational inequities are the preeminent civil rights issue of this era…. Recent research shows that low income, African-American, Hispanic, and rural students score lower on tests of civic knowledge and have less optimistic views of their civic potential than their more privileged counterparts. . . . African-American and Hispanic students are twice as likely as their white counterparts to score below proficient on national civics assessments. A similar civic knowledge gap exists between America’s wealthiest and poorest students. . . . [T]rue civic equality demands that all citizens have the knowledge and skills to make positive changes in their communities and in the nation at large . . . .

Research shows that Americans who are not properly educated about their roles as citizens are less likely to be civically engaged by nearly any metric. They are less likely to vote, less likely to engage in political discourse, and less likely to participate in community improvement projects than their counterparts who receive civic education. Our system requires democratic accountability as a check on government officials — accountability that becomes nearly impossible if citizens do not understand how to make it happen and how to demand better when it doesn’t. Because disengaged citizens fail to ask hard questions of their leaders, it is no wonder that problems become crises and power is so easily abused. . . .

From “America’s Ignorant Voters,” by Michael Schudson (Source: Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2000, Vol. 24, Issue 2) Every, week, the Tonight Show's Jay Leno takes to the streets of Los Angeles to quiz innocent passersby with some simple questions: On what bay is San Francisco located? Who was president of the United States during World War II? The audience roars as Leno's hapless victims fumble for answers. Was it Lincoln? Carter? No pollster, let alone a college or high school history teacher, would be surprised by the poor showing of Leno’s sample citizens. In a national assessment test in the late 1980s, only a third of American 17-year-olds could correctly locate the Civil War in the period 1850-1900; more than a quarter placed it in the 18th century. Two-thirds knew that Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, which seems a respectable showing, but what about the 14 percent who said that Lincoln wrote the Bill of Rights, the 10 percent who checked the Missouri Compromise, and the nine percent who [said] Lincoln [wrote] Uncle Tom's Cabin….?

How can the United States claim to be model democracy if its citizens know so little about political life. . . ? How can so many, knowing so little, and voting in such small numbers, build a democracy that appears to be (relatively) successful?

There are several responses to that question. The first is that a certain amount of political ignorance is an inevitable byproduct of America's unique political environment. One reason Americans have so much difficulty grasping the political facts of life is that their political system is the world's most complex. Ask the next political science Ph.D. you meet to explain what government agencies at what level — federal, state, county, or city — take responsibility for the homeless. Or whom he or she voted for in the last election for municipal judge. The answers might make Jay Leno’s victims seem less ridiculous. No European country has as many elections, as many elected offices, as complex a maze of overlapping governmental jurisdictions, as the American system. It is simply harder to [understand] U.S. politics than the politics of most nations. . . . Citizens in other countries need only dog paddle to be in the political swim; in the United States they need the skills of scuba diver….

Lending support to this notion . . . is the stability of American political ignorance over time. Since the 1940s, when social scientists began measuring it, political ignorance has remained virtually unchanged. It is hard to gauge the extent of political knowledge before that time, but there is little to suggest that there is some lost golden age in U.S. history. . . . In 1945, for example, 43 percent of a national sample could name neither of their U.S. senators; in 1989, the figure was essentially unchanged at 45 percent. In 1952, 67 percent could name the vice president; in 1989, 74 percent could do so. In 1945, 92 percent of Gallup poll respondents knew that the term of the president is four years, compared with 96 percent in 1989. Whatever the explanations for dwindling voter turnout since 1960 may be, rising ignorance is not one of them….

Low as American levels of political knowledge may be, a generally tolerable, sometimes admirable, political democracy survives. How? One explanation is provided by a school of political science that goes under the banner of “ political heuristics .” Public opinion polls and paper-and-pencil tests of political knowledge, argue researchers such as Arthur Lupia, Samuel Popkin, Paul Sniderman, and Philip Tetlock, presume that citizens require more knowledge than they actually need in order to cast votes that accurately reflect their preferences. People can and do get by with relatively little political information. What Popkin calls “low- information rationality” is sufficient for citizens to vote intelligently.

This works in two ways. First, people can use cognitive cues, or “heuristics” [to make decisions about what candidate to support]. Instead of learning each of a candidate's issue positions, the voter may simply rely on the candidate’s party affiliation as a cue. . . . Endorsements are another useful shortcut. A thumbs-up for a candidate from the Christian Coalition or Ralph Nader or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the American Association of Retired Persons frequently provides enough information to enable one to cast a reasonable vote.

Second, as political scientist Milton Lodge points out, people often process information on the fly, without retaining details in memory. If you watch a debate on TV — and 46 million did watch the first presidential debate between President Bill Clinton and Robert Dole in 1996 — you may learn enough about the candidates' ideas and personal styles to come to a judgment about each one. A month later, on election day, you may not be able to answer a pollster's detailed questions about where they stood on the issues, but you will remember which one you liked best — and that is enough information to let you vote intelligently. . . . All of these arguments. . . do not add up to a prescription for resignation or complacency about civic education. [In other words, none of this means that we should abandon any efforts to raise the level of political awareness among the American populace.] In this world, the ability to name the three branches of government or describe the New Deal does not make a citizen, but it is at least a token of membership in a society dedicated to the ideal of self-government. Civic education is an imperative we must pursue with the full recognition that a high level of ignorance is likely to prevail.

Part 4: Case Study

From “Girl, 5, Collects Hundreds Of Dollars For Peace Selling Lemonade Outside Westboro Baptist Church” (Source: The Huffington Post, 6/15/2013) What happens when a little girl decides to set up a lemonade stand for peace outside the Westboro Baptist Church headquarters in Kansas? Members of the community step out in droves to show support, even as the hate group tries to quash it.

Five-year-old Jayden, the daughter of Jon Sink, founder of the philanthropic arts group FRESHCASSETTE - Creative Compassion, decided to set up a stand selling pink lemonade at The Equality House on Friday afternoon. The Equality House is a rainbow-colored building directly across the street from Westboro's Topeka compound. The house, which was painted the colors of the pride flag in March, was bought by Aaron Jackson, one of the founders of Planting Peace, a multi-pronged nonprofit set up in 2004 and aimed at spreading goodwill and equality around the globe.

Jayden, who is from Kansas City, decided to set up her stand at the Equality House after her parents explained to her the significance of its construct. After being told that the church across the street had a message of hate, she set a goal of raising money to go towards a message of love and peace.

So she painted a banner for the event reading, "Pink Lemonade for Peace: $1 Suggested Donation." She put the stand in the grass and waited. But the waiting didn't take long. Supporters came in by the droves and $1 turned into hundreds of dollars.

During the day, Westboro sent representatives outside to try and find a way to stop the event. They apparently attempted to call the local police and stooped to yelling profanities when that didn't work, like calling a group of soldiers who rode out on their motorcycles to support the event "bastards."

Westboro's hate couldn't stop Jayden. She not only raised $400 during the day on Friday, but she has also collected over $1000 with an online campaign set up through Crowd Rise. Some people donated as little as $10 and as much as $230. One person gave $26, dedicating it to every person killed six months ago in the Newtown, Conn., massacre. "As we all know, the Westboro Baptist Church puts a lot of hate into the world," Jackson told HuffPost in an email Friday. "Since we cannot stop them, the next best thing is to smother it with love. That is what 5-year-old Jayden accomplished today! Jayden set up a lemonade stand in front of the church. Not only did she quench the thirst of a lot of loving supporters, the money she raised was donated to Planting Peace so she could help Planting Peace promote a more peaceful world."