Left-wing American intellectuals were fascinated by Prussia's indoctrination and imported it to the United States. They were motivated not by peasant revolts but by the frustratingly small government ethos of American Catholics. --Peter St Onge
It's a modern fetish that we are brilliant but our ancestors were idiots. After all, they didn't have iPhones, the internet, or Kim Kardashian. There's also an academic consensus, for what it's worth, called the Flynn Effect, the idea is that people do better on puzzles, so we must be smarter. Of course, one wonders if puzzles translate into say understanding monetary policy or how welfare destroys families. Thankfully, we have a real-world test, an actual political campaign. Back when I was a professor, I ran every inaugural address through a Flesch Kincaid text analysis to measure the grade level. The logic being that top speech writers know how to talk at the voter's level. Doing that, it turns out that we are getting dumb breathtakingly fast. In 1900, inaugurals were written at between 13th and 14th grades, in other words, modern college level. Today, they are 8th grade for Obama, 9th grade for Trump, and 7th grade for Biden. It gets worse further back we go. Andrew Jackson's 1828 inaugural was written at 22nd-grade level, meaning strictly speaking two PhDs were the median voter in 1828. Keep in mind, that Jackson was a populist man of the people. Washington's inaugural is closer to 26th grade, so you'd need that third PhD. Also, keep in mind, that almost nobody in 1828 or 1789 had a formal education.
Jackson, for example, kicks off [his inaugural address] with "Undertaking the arduous duties that I've been appointed, . . ."
Washington starts with "Among the vicissitudes incident to life, . . . ."
For Biden, it's "This is America's day."
So how did we get so dumb? Easy: Public Schools. The modern government school came from 1800s Prussia who had enough of worker riots in peasant revolts and resolved to indoctrinate kids into pro-regime obedience. It worked like a charm, turning the once unruly Germans into a government-directed Army that went on to do terrible things. Left-wing American intellectuals were fascinated by Prussia's indoctrination and imported it to the United States. They were motivated not by peasant revolts but by the frustratingly small government ethos of American Catholics. Progressives figure they couldn't progress figured they couldn't frog march American Catholics into government Utopia, but by gum they have their children. These activists spread government schools to every state and got a major boost post-war when competence tests were declared discriminatory forcing companies to instead rely on formal education to discover Talent this launched the University from a fringe toy of the 1% into a $300,000 tax on anybody hoping for a white collar job. Meanwhile, like all government programs, opportunists, i.e., teachers' unions, took over spending at this point $878 billion per year, dutifully peddling politics but neglecting the actual purpose of education, leaving American kids illiterate and innumerate. In a video last year, I mentioned how fully 23 Baltimore schools have zero students proficient in math. And in Detroit, 96% of students can't do math; 95% cannot even read, but by gum, they know their Demi genders. Take people who can't name a state or don't know what a Supreme Court is, wash them with decades of left-wing propaganda, stick them in a voter booth, and here we are.
If we are to save our democracy we have to save our voters by replacing government schools with schools that actually teach instead of indoctrinate that could mean school choice,, it could mean vouchers it could be homeschooling co-ops, but until we fix it, things will keep getting worse.
Here's Rothbard's "Education: Free and Compulsory," 1979.
