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An Enemy of the People
 My
enemies, who call
themselves “the United States Government,” appear formidable
at first glance. They have a global empire (democracy, you know), the power
to make arbitrary laws, a vast prison system, the Internal Revenue Service
(service? Well, no doubt it’s serving someone), the allegiance of the
American people, plus a few thousand nuclear weapons, and not too many
scruples.
 Me,
I’m just one stroke-addled old man with a cane. All I have on my side is
Jesus. It hardly seems fair.
I
mean, what chance have they got?
The ancient Romans proved that you could beat Jesus. Once. If he
let you.
But let’s look at the enemy’s mightiest asset, the
American people. Or rather, to speak to you like an honest man, the
ignorance of the American people, who are semi-literate, innumerate, and up
to speed only on American Idol and what journalists call
“lingering questions about the death of Anna Nicole Smith.”
Politicians always use the phrase the American people
with profound reverence. Senator Barack Obama speaks of “the basic
decency of the American people,” who elect men like him and George
W. Bush and make tycoons of men like Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt. No
wonder our definition of basic decency has changed somewhat since
Pat Boone crooned “Love Letters in the Sand.”
In his new book, Religious Literacy
(HarperSanFrancisco), Stephen Prothero of Boston University notes that
about half the American people can’t name the first book of the Bible
or any of the four Gospels. Roughly the same number identify the man who
delivered the Sermon on the Mount as Martin Luther King. Care to guess how
many know whom King was named after?
And many think Joan of Arc was married to Noah. Arc, Ark:
Natural mistake, I guess. The Maid of Orleans would have been swept up in
the New Orleans flood. Who can keep these things straight?
![[Breaker quote for An Enemy of the People: Or their victim?]](2007breakers/070326.gif) Heckuva
job, Mr. Education President! After all, you never claimed to be the Pedant President, did you?
And this didn’t start on your watch. If the American people sound like
the hicks in Huckleberry Finn being bamboozled by a pair of
rogues nearly as dumb as they are, well, it’s nothing new.
That’s what makes Mark Twain so funny. Anyone can write
a satire about smart people outfoxing dumb people. Twain shows dumb
people, his bogus “duke” and “king,” outfoxing even
dumber people. Yet he makes his dumbest character, a runaway slave,
sublimely wise and lovable. That’s genius for sure.
No wonder Twain’s greatest novel is still unfit for American
schools. He actually shows his white Southern characters, before the Civil
War, using a slang racial epithet about black slaves. (Even his slaves use it
about themselves.) Think how much better his book would be if all his
characters had used the term “African American.” Maybe
— or should I say “hopefully”? — the next edition will
correct it.
Bill Clinton, no mean bamboozler himself and measurably smarter
than his dupes, knew how to make the most of the educational level of the
American people. He understood that even hicks are more apt to fall for
whoppers if spoken in complete sentences. (I will venture the suspicion
— I can suppress it no longer — that Twain might find much to
laugh at in today’s America.)
If there is a single document the American people venerate even
more than the Holy Bible, it is surely the U.S. Constitution. Even atheists
worship it. I am now taking bets — are you listening, Professor
Prothero? — on whether they know any more about the supreme law of
the land than they do about the Scriptures.
The Bible and the Constitution. President Bush has sworn on the
one to uphold the other, so this could get interesting. Especially considering
that his foreign policy seems to be based on the book of Revelation
(sometimes called Apocalypse, but let’s not go into that). For those
of you who may be Americans, that’s the last book of the Bible, right
after II Ben-Hur.
I’m not just talking about things everyone used to be
taught; I’m talking about things a body could hardly help knowing, even
if he was barely photosensitive. Nothing against the American people, but
today the dunce cap is obsolete.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2007 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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