Suggested Answers - First Short Quiz

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Suggested Answers - First Short Quiz

Post by johnkarls »

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Question 1

Is it the fault of American males that their favorite topic of conversation seems to be sports?

Answer 1

No – they have been raised to avoid religion and politics as topics of conversation, and the weather isn’t very interesting.

Question 2

Have Americans always segregated themselves based on economic status?

Answer 2

Yes – though previous books on the subject have focused primarily on the American Apartheid system (please see the Second Short Quiz located in this Section of the Bulletin Board).

Question 3

Why is Sunday morning always called the "most segregated time" in America?

Answer 3

Because America’s churches have always been, and continue to be, the most segregated institutions in American society.

Question 4

Who is Jonathan Kozol?

Answer 4

An American educator who devoted his career to documenting the American-Apartheid education system, including its causes and how it has created a permanent American underclass in the inner-city ghettos despite the fact that identical-twin studies (the Gold Standard for determining the effects of environment vs. genetics) consistently show that American inner-city kids have the same intelligence as suburban kids.

Question 5

What does Bill Bishop, our author, claim to be the additional criterion by which America now segregates itself?

Answer 5

Politics.

Question 6

Is Bishop correct, or have large American metropolitan areas always segregated themselves using this additional criterion?

Answer 6

Large metropolitan areas such as NYC where “yours truly” has been based for the last 43 years, have always segregated themselves using this additional criterion. What Bishop describes is the segregation of the rest of America using this criterion.

Question 7

If Americans have begun in recent years to discuss politics in normal social settings, is this the "tail wagging the dog" or vice versa?

Answer 7

Who knows??? It might be that Americans now feel more comfortable discussing politics in addition to sports, or it might be that Americans are segregating themselves in order to feel more comfortable because the conversations in smaller American communities have become more politically oriented.

Question 8

Are "religious lefties" more numerous in American society than the "religious right"?

Answer 8

(A) Polls consistently show that approximately 80% of all Americans believe in a deity and approximately 80% of all Americans attend religious services at least once a month.

(B) U.S. Presidential elections show that the country is evenly divided politically – on the Democratic side, President Obama’s 52.9% of the popular vote was the highest percentage for a Democratic Party presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson’s 61.1% in 1964 and, on the Republican side, Ronald Reagan’s 58.8% in 1984 and Richard Nixon’s 60.7% in 1972 surpassed either of Dwight Eisenhower’s percentages. [Since 1964, the percentage of the popular vote captured by the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate has ranged from a low of Bill Clinton’s 43.0% in 1992 and George McGovern’s 37.5% in 1972 to a high of Barack Obama’s 52.9% in 2008.]

(C) If one assumes a 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans and assumes that 100% of all Republicans are religious, that still leaves 30% of the 80% of Americans who are religious inside the Democratic Party’s 50% of the population.

(D) It is entirely possible that “religious lefties” are more numerous than the “religious right” – the CIA (http://www.cia.gov/library/publications ... os/us.html) reports that of the July 2010 U.S. population of 307.2 million – 12.85% is black and 15.1% is Hispanic. It is well known and documented that both groups are overwhelmingly religious, though the first group is overwhelmingly Protestant and the second is overwhelmingly Catholic. To this should be added the true “religious lefties” who “lead the charge” on most of the liberal political issues around the world – just take a look at the activities of the World Council of Churches and the American Council of Churches (aka National Council of Churches USA).

Question 9

Is Bill Bishop correct that political "independents" have become an endangered species?

Answer 9

The personal view of “yours truly” is that Bishop’s vision of a graph showing the distribution of the American population along an axis of political liberalism/conservatism is an “inverted V” rather than a typical “bell curve” is probably wrong. It is probably more accurate that (A) political independents have become more politically aware and, therefore, at any point in time have a viewpoint on anything/everything that seems to imply that there are no longer many independents, but that (B) the vast swing in the American electorate since 2008 back to the conservative side indicates that independents are as numerous and agile as ever.

Question 10

Would President Obama have been more successful with his domestic legislative agenda if he had engaged Congressional Republicans directly, rather than abandoning the legislative process to the Democratic Committee Chairs who, to acquire the necessary seniority to become Committee Chairs, come from the "safest" states and Congressional Districts - in other words, abandoning the process to the most liberal members in each chamber?

Answer 10

Obviously!!! The Committee Chairs aren’t going to concede an inch more than necessary to achieve the minimum number of votes required.

Question 11

Or was, instead, President Obama's fatal error the violation of Saul Alinsky's cardinal rule that you don't attack the Middle Class, thereby rendering yourself the minority party - or did President Obama think that the American electorate was so ignorant that it would never dawn on them that there aren't enough wealthy Americans to pay for President Obama's spending?

Answer 11

Both are probably also true!!!

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