According to a recent Newsweek quiz, 29 percent of Americans could not pass the citizenship test, leading to several doubts about the civic awareness of the population, and our ability to compete on a global stage.

“The problem is ignorance, not stupidity,” Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker said. “We suffer from a lack of information rather than a lack of ability.”

For example, in a 2009 Gallup poll, Americans believed that half of the government budget was ‘waste,’ but when confronted with the facts about our budget situation, came to much more sober realizations and solutions.

Faced with a misguided and decentralized education system (that presents challenges from non-native speakers, etc. that other nations don’t have to deal with) and a media driven by profits (exacerbated by efforts to defund public broadcasting), Americans don’t have the ability to combat ignorance. Politicians also prefer to pander to this idiocy instead of focusing on the much more difficult and intelligent solutions the country needs to actually fix its problems.

For example, intelligent tax reform such as the value-added tax (VAT) would help solve our budget problems, reduce overall taxation rates and help make American products more competitive overseas. Instead, we have spent our time arguing whether the wealthiest Americans need to pay less in taxes when the U.S. has one of the highest income inequalities among developed nations (the CIA World Factbook estimates that the top 10 percent of earners control nearly one-third of the nation’s wealth).

America needs to wake up and take a sober look at the problems we face. While brawn was enough in the past to see us through, the age we now live in requires brains to deal with the complex issues our nation must navigate to avoid hitting an iceberg to sink our Titanic.

Click here to take the citizenship test.

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