About six years ago I spent the July 4^th holidays at the sensational Grove Park Inn & Spa  in Ashville, North Carolina.  While there I was treated to several editions of The Asheville Citizen-Times.  This was (maybe still is) a Gannett newspaper ... same folks as USA Today.  Needless to say, the slant is decidedly leftist.  That seems to fit in quite well with the Asheville community which, I'm told, is quite proud of its liberal leanings.

The July 2nd edition of the Citizen-Times carried a front-page questionnaire titled "How Patriotic Are You?" Readers were invited to take a quiz of ten questions and grade themselves.  Under this questionnaire there was a quote from one Randy Goodstadt, the chairwoman of social and behavioral science at the Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College.  To wit:

"If people don't have a basic knowledge of history and civics, it means that people who are voting are complete ignoramuses, people who don't read a newspaper, who don't understand the policies of the people for whom they are voting.  It's very scary.  Very worrisome."

Well said, Ms. Goodstadt!  Now perhaps you should have had a bit of a talk with the folks at the Citizen-Times.  Here are the ten questions they posted to test the historical knowledge of the readers:

1.    What is the date that the Declaration of Independence was signed?

2.    What document is the legal framework of the United States?

3.    Who wrote the words to the "Star Spangled Banner"?

4.    What is the Pledge of Allegiance?

5.    Where was the Declaration of Independence signed?

6.    What is the number of original Colonies?

7.    Who was the first president of the United States?

8.    What is the minimum voting age in the United States?

9.    Who is the current governor of North Carolina?

10. What is the motto of North Carolina?

Well ... somebody's gotta say it, so here goes.  There are only two questions out of the ten that are worth spending more than one nano-second in answering.  Those would be questions 2 and 8.  People do need to know that the Constitution is, or is supposed to be, the legal framework of the United States, and if you are at all interested in voting it might serve you well to know that the minimum age is 18.  The other eight questions are complete BS.  Worthless bits of information that do not make one either knowledgeable or patriotic. 

Eight out of ten makes the entire article a vapid exercise in banality.   Perhaps the Citizen-Times was having it's annual "Shallow and Meaningless Writing" contest.

This wholly ridiculous patriotic quiz in the Ashville newspaper sent me to the word processor to develop a REAL quiz.  It ended up in my (ahem) New York Times Bestseller “Somebody’s Gotta Say It.”  I then posted the quiz on line and teachers across the country printed it out and gave it to their students as an open-book take-home test.  It also became hugely popular with home schoolers.  So .. here it is, somewhat revised …..