I was always a BHM (Black History Month) hater. I've thought of it as pandering to Blacks for not sharing our rich history in classrooms regularly.

If ever a nation needed to do anything to improve the historical knowledge of its people, it is the United States. Much has been made of the political-geographical ignorance of the young American "idol" who thought Europe was a country. She has many thousands of people, young and old, who are just as ignorant in this field and history. In her recent book, "The Age of American Unreason," Susan Jacoby tells of two men she overheard talking in a bar about Pearl Harbor. One had never heard of it, so his companion explained it was when the Vietnamese attacked Pearl Harbor. In a sense, Ms. Jacoby's book is a history of the decline of American intelligence and the ascendancy of ignorance.

Thanks for the very interesting link.

OPB ran a series in Feb. on Black History and genealogy, featuring prominent African Americans in various fields. Through the use of genetics they were able to trace their ancestry. The narrator and guide in this journey, (I forget his name) is an historian I believe. He was able to weave together historical archives and genetics (DNA matching) to put together the stories of many of these people. It was quite moving and interesting.

In fact, by any neutral measure, the general American public is smarter, deeper, and more moral than we've ever been in the past.

That's a very difficult statement to prove, especially when we consider the Vietnam war in which the American military killed an estimated 1.5 to 3 million Vietnamese, and our government has been supporting dictatorships around the world since shortly after the end of the Second World War and U.S. officials have been complicit in the murder and torture of people under oppression of those dictators. Then there is the ongoing crime against humanity in Iraq initiated by the Bush Administration and friends with the complicity of about three quarters of Congress and the American people.

There are some areas in which we have become more civilized and humane, but Uncle Sam is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - capable of both good and evil. These things go in cycles, so a question might be, "Are we in a Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde phase at this time?"

There are many episodes in American history that are not to this nation's credit, but I would submit few as bad as what have happened since, say, 1953 when the CIA in league with British intelligence overthrew the democratically-elected president of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh.