US Citizen Test
Dean
| You Passed the US Citizenship Test |
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I must admit I panicked briefly over two questions, but with some thought got them right.
One of them I remembered specifically from a lovely song from my youth:
In 1787 I'm told our founding fathers did agree
To write a list of principles for keepin' people free
The U.S.A. was just startin' out, a whole brand-new country
And so our people spelled it out: the things that we should be!
50 points for anyone who can recite the next stanza.
500 if you can name the lady who wrote it.
By the way, I picked up this test from Dennis at Eric's blog, who might also enjoy this somewhat more lengthy list of questions given by U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services.
Frankly I think someone ought to score at least 70% on such tests in order to be allowed to vote...
Man, I can't sleep tonight so quite naturally I told meself to go to Michigan and see Dean. I am looking forward to *beam me up, Scotty* Sorry, off topic. ;-)
(And I think Eric's buddy Dennis actually posted that at Classical Values, guy.)
I'm of the flip side, there should be a small fine for NOT voting, if you are a citizen and legal adult, which I think should be the only requirement for voting. (though I would even go so far to allow even children who expressed the desire to vote, the right.)
No taxation without representation. If you pay taxes, you should not be denied the right to vote.
The only disabled people who should be denied a vote in my view are those who are clearly too disabled to know what they're doing. There are in every election season in the U.S. scandalous cases of people ordering absentee ballots for people who are more or less vegetables just so they can stuff the ballot boxes in their name--it's an even more morbid and disgusting practice than the instances of the dead voting.
A test which anyone with an IQ of 80 or so could pass with reasonable study seems sufficient to me.
The flip side of "taxation without representation" is that I don't want to be represented by people who were put in power by those who were bribed or coerced into voting and who care so little about their country that they cannot answer such basic questions as who their current congressman is or what the difference is between the House and the Senate.
As for penalizing people for not voting: this seems a bit of a civil rights abrogation to me. If I don't want to vote, you have no place coercing me to do so. Freedom includes the freedom not to participate doesn't it?
The lady who created both the lyrics, AND the music is one Lynn Ahrens.
So, where are we keepin' score?
Oh, for the record, my kids watch School House Rock on a regular (atleast 3 times a week) basis. But it's nice to know I'm not the only 'Gen Xer' that remembers those songs. ;)
Lynn Ahrens was given very short shrift on the Schoolhouse Rock DVDs. I mean, all her stuff is there, but she has no interviews, no interviews about her, etc., yet to my mind she was every bit as important and talented as Bob Dorough (the guy who did "Three Is A Magic Number" and so many of the other great songs from that series).
That "original 13" question threw me but I guessed right.
What's the deal with Vermont anyway? Were they part of New Hampshire or were they an independent neo-libertarian thinktank/commune that exported maple syrup and imported hockey?
I agree with Dean about restricting the vote to the Constitutionally literate. Funny, because Dean is usually the democrat and populist while I'm the anti-democrat and elitist. I'm absolutely against making voting compulsory. It's a violation of my freedom not to vote if I don't want to, which is just as much a right as the right to vote for one candidate over another. We're getting to the point where everything that's not forbidden is compulsory. I'm against that. Government should leave people alone.
I'm also against "get out the vote" drives. It means stuffing the voting booths with people who don't know and couldn't care less. I also think lowering the voting age to 18 was a big mistake. It should have been raised instead.
Scott: My reading of history is that at one time Massachussetts, New York, New Hampshire, and Connecticut all at one time claimed parts of Vermont, with much squabbling over it. They were the 14th state admitted to the union, apparently in part because they were something of a backwater--although some very important battles in the Revolutionary War were fought there.
And while, in theory, I have no problem with requiring a certain level of literacy and awareness of the structure of American government in order to vote, in practice, such tests could be, and would be (and were, when they existed), tweaked in such a way as to acheive certain political ends. The test would have to be subject to the political process, and I have no doubt that whichever party was in power at any given time (Dem, Rep, or other) would modify the test in order to maintain or extend their political advantage. It's very much like the current reapprotionment process (in which state legislators choose which voters will have a chance to vote for or against these very same legislators in the nexxt election), which has become basically 100% corrupt.
Yep. And yes, it is very much like the current reapportionment process. The fact that we routinely simply call it "the gerrymandering process" speaks volumes--that used to be a dirty word.