Interaction - Survey

For my live interaction I decided to do a survey to find out how much the American public actually knows about their government. I questioned 30 people ranging from teachers to Freshmen and the questions range from "how many senators does the US have" to "Can you name the Harry Potter characters". The questions all have a reason behind them even though some sound stupid -- e.g. "Can you sing the Doug song from the Hangover?". But they are all thought through so I can personally poke fun at all the answers I received.

The first question is "Can you name the 1st amendment freedoms?" The response was embarrassing but not surprising. 100% could name one of the freedoms and it was speech. All but 7 could name speech and religion. Only two got them all right. And the most left out freedom was petition. The saddest part of this question is that most thought that the right to bear arms was in the first amendment (its the 2nd), and only 1/5th could name more than three of their Constitutional Freedoms!!! We Americans can never get anything right. Of the people I polled 5/6Th's could list me the Harry Potter characters. Hmm, 5/6Th's Harry Potter and only 1/15Th's God Given Rights. Confuses me.

Another interesting thing I noticed was that only 5 could tell me what state John McCain ran from. It is interesting because Alabamians voted McCain in the 2008 election but yet they don't even know what state he ran out of (Arizona). This proves my point that people only care about parties not the character of the candidate. And throughout this whole survey I am noticing that America is apathetic and pathetic at the same time. We don't care that we have a right not everyone has, such as the right to vote. It's not like Americans can't educate themselves in their own rights, for Pete's sake when you are taken to jail even your rights are read to you then. We need to have a sense of urgency that our rights aren't actually rights to all. People would kill for a voice in their country but we Americans are just so apathetic that it sickens me.

There is a quote that states "war is God's way of teaching Americans geography", but even that is false, only a little over half could tell me the capital of Iraq (Baghdad). We are pathetic and the only question that I got a consistent yes to was the question "Will you vote when you turn 18". Watch out future generations because you will have stupid people running your country, if we still have one...