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Unfortunately, under the Bush administration a lot of these fallacies have somewhat came true.

Lets not forget one UNWRITTEN freedom in the first amendment..the freedom to be "ignorant"

Revolutionary speech is punishable under the Constitution???? Oh my God, dissent is what brought this country into being in the first place. Dissent is patriotic, believe it or not, although in the last 8 years Bush and Co. would have you believe the opposite is true. I am continually amazed at the ignorance of a great number of our fellow citizens and the ease with which these myths gain strength is truly scary.

Ignorance is what keeps these rumors flying about Obama-this and Obama-that. Ignorance is why many still think that Intelligent Design is a better "theory" than Darwin's Law of Evolution and that by finding one little nit, they can disprove natural selection. (And, when the nit is un-nitted and disproven, they can simply go on to another nit, then another).

And on and on and on.

Carl Rove and others know to never over-estimate the intelligence of the American public when it comes to believability. That is why the Swift Boaters were so successful in their dis-information campaign. And it is why that kind of attack from the Right will continue.

Me, I support MoveOn and some of their outrageous stuff because it is simply in-kind marketing and has the same impact as the negative stuff from the extreme right.

Ignorant, yep. The public is ignorant.

(Iraq WAS all about oil. But since the invasion by this country of that country drove up the cost of oil so much, NOW it is okay that we have gotten control of the oil, right??? I mean, aren't we justified?)

Answer: NO.

And I remember that only a couple of years ago, 64% of Americans still connected Iraq with the events of 9/11, even though none of the perpetrators were Iraqi and that any connection of a dictator (Saddam) with an anarchist (Bin Laden) would be TOTALLY ILLOGICAL. But our administration paired those two things on FOX so many times that people believed Iraq responsible...

Ignorant.

Well said, Scot; I couldn't agree more. Allow me to expand. . .

Knowledge, the opposite of ignorance, is anathema to the stated aim of the Republican Party, which is to establish a permanent Republican majority in Washington. Think of the implications in that one phrase: PERMANENT REPUBLICAN MAJORITY. . .

Ignorance is what makes otherwise rational people believe that Ronald Reagan was right in decrying "big government;" ignorance is what makes otherwise rational people believe that same Ronald Reagan was responsible for the fall of Communism, even though the largest Communist state in history - China - is flourishing; ignorance is what makes otherwise sensible Americans believe Ronald Reagan won the Cold War when he exhorted Mikhail Gorbachev to "please, tear down that wall;" ignorance is what makes people blindly follow charismatic "leaders" like John Hagee, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, etc., etc.; and ignorance was what allowed an impoverished corporal with only marginal artistic skills and a flair for public speaking to take over a beaten-down and impoverished Germany in 1933.

Thanks to the efforts of Republican presidents and legislators since the Nixon administration our schools have become breeding grounds for ignorance. Teachers are underpaid and furnished with outdated textbooks year after year, while the football teams get new uniforms every season. Schools have their curricula monitored and mandated by a Department of Education that is every year beholden to a new crop of political hacks, each with its own agenda, each convinced of the rightness of its own mindset. Our public schools today are reduced to spoon-feeding their charges only that information mandated by a government authority more concerned with maintaining the status quo than with actual learning. Today's students are taught WHAT to think, not how to think. Forget critical thinking, that takes effort; just spit out the "facts" as you've been fed them. Never mind WHY the invention of the light bulb and the telephone were important in our history; just remember that Thomas Edison invented one and Alexander Graham Bell the other. Who cares that Henry Ford was a fascist sympathizer and early supporter of Adolf Hitler? He built the Model T and revolutionized the auto industry. So what if Charles Lindbergh was an anti-semite? He flew non-stop from New York to Paris (only the 33rd person to do so, too)!

Now we have No Child Left Behind, a ludicrously-named and heinously under-funded piece of Republican toilet paper that punishes schools for their inability to meet an arbitrary and unrealistic standard. Even in the 1980's, those of us studying education knew that knowledge could not be quantified. But, Republicans don't like that; everything has to be reduced to a number on a chart.

So, where are we now? Since the Baby Boom began in 1946 this once-great nation has produced three generations of successively more ignorant citizens, a nation of sheep more concerned with the antics of a bleached blonde pop tart with fake tits who doesn't have enough common sense to leave the house with her panties on than the crimes of a spoiled fratboy cheerleader who managed to buy his way into the most powerful political office on the planet so he could prove his manhood to his snobby parents.

(I just re-read that last sentence. . .damn, I'm glad I'm addressing non-Republicans. . .)

We should all be afraid. . .very, very afraid. . .

To PD ................ AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!

PD, I wish you hadn't held back.