Not Always a Nation of Dunces

Here’s a nice counterpoint to our post last week covering Susan Jacoby’s new book The Age of American Unreason and her lament that America has declined into a morass of anti-intellectualism and low expectations.

Let’s set the scene: A reporter selects a young Barack Obama supporter at a rally and starts peppering him with questions about the candidate. And it all feels like a staged effort to demonstrate that the mobilized youth has no real handle on the issues. He’s just blindly buying the hype. Without wasting time, the reporter leads the young man into a conversation on the complexities of health care. It’s the perfect setup. But then it suddenly becomes clear that the reporter chose the wrong kid (who is a naturalized immigrant, by the way) to play the fool. Watch the video below (and check out this follow up video that gives you more of the back story).

via Think on These Things

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