June 21, 2011--Knowing Nothing

I've been catching up with my American history and in recent years have learned enough to test almost as well as a typical American 12th grader.

One question, for example, from the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, stumped all but 34 percent of these teenagers. But, I am proud to say, I got (or guessed) the right answer.

See how you do; and if you require more humbling, click on the New York Times link below for eight other knowledge teasers.

One of the central ideas of George Washington's foreign policy [you know who he is?] was the the United States should:

A) play an active role in European affairs

B) expand its influence throughout the Americas

C) support democracies and oppose monarchies

D) avoid permanent a;;iances with other countries

The answer is . . . D.

Now that you're warmed up, here's another one for you. About the Know Nothing Party. No, not the Tea Party, but the Know Nothings of the mid 19th century. They were--from Wikipedia:

The Know Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to Anglo-Saxon Protestant values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success. Membership was limited to Protestant males of British lineage over the age of twenty-one. There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle-class and entirely Protestant membership fragmented over the issue of slavery.

The movement originated in New York in 1843 as the American Republican Party. It spread to other states as the Native American Party and became a national party in 1845. In 1855 it renamed itself the American Party. The origin of the "Know Nothing" term was in the semi-secret organization of the party. When a member was asked about its activities, he was supposed to reply, "I know nothing."

Come to think of it, what is it that they say about history repeating itself?