Americans Fail History Exam

Don't complain to Anthony Pour about the economy, failed foreign policy or the lack of healthcare coverage for many Americans. He'll likely just throw a history book at you.

And from the looks of a recent study, most Americans need it. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute's National Civic Literacy Board recent Civic Literacy Report found that more than 71 percent of Americans would fail a basic test on American history, and fewer than four percent would be capable of scoring a B or above.

Pour - international journalist and author of the spy novel The Undercover Gentleman, from Marlborough Books (www.pourbooks.com) - believes that it is this lack of emphasis on history that dooms our country to the rest of the world's most fatal mistakes.

"James Joyce once wrote that there is no future, there is no past, but rather, only the present, repeating itself over and over again, right now," he said. "The way our country continues to err without ever truly learning the lessons of the global past (often purposely obscured with the trendy gibberish about global climate) is a symptom of the disease of ignorance. The recent economic downturn, preceded by vast unregulated corporate greed and indiscriminate government-mandated compassion, a series of foreign military engagements with no real success and no end in sight, urban neighborhoods faced with the blight of crime and drugs, all this is nothing new. We just like to act like it is."

Pour, who has chronicled current events here and abroad for more than 20 years, is less concerned about the substance of the plight that has affected America than he is about the attitude that allows it to continue happening.

"Intentionally or not, history is no longer a priority in American schools, and what most folks know about the extinct civilizations and formidable empires of the past is what they learned from simple-minded Hollywood epics," he added. "Only a few diligent students of historical facts still realize that it was not the titillating sexual depravity, intrigue and murder inside imperial palaces that sells pseudo-historical movies, but the dull, all-consuming epidemic of entitlement mentality in the streets that would, in the long run, undermine the glory and prosperity of any empire and turn a grand state into an impoverished bunch of blundering little people."

Pour, who lives in Marina del Rey, California but holds a dual citizenship in the Principality of Liechtenstein in Europe, uses his international perspective to formulate his simple hypothesis on what might help the U.S. emerge from its troubles.

"Learn a little more history, and whine a little less," he said. "In California, I recently visited a friend of a friend, a single mother living from paycheck to paycheck. She was truly one of the unsung millions of working stiffs like me that politicians love to depict as wallowing in a morass of oppression and dire need. Yet her house was spic-and-span, complete with a couple of handsome, well-behaved, well-dressed, well-educated teenagers — and all that without a penny of a charitable or other politically correct assistance. In her living room was a handwritten sign that read "no whining." And, ironically, she had no idea why I hugged and kissed her when I saw it. If we had, say, 300 million more like her, we'd be on easy street."

Anthony Pour is an acclaimed international journalist and author of the spy novel The Undercover Gentleman. He has been writing for newspapers, magazines and television both in California and Europe for over twenty years and won a literary competition in England in 2001. Critics have praised his style as ". . . a tour de force of great writing, comedy and perception . . . against the backdrop of real sounds, smells, and colors." Pour is a resident of Marina del Rey, California and the Principality of Liechtenstein in Europe - the latter residence being a sort of a bomb shelter in case free speech in America is declared mean-spirited and thus punishable by exclusion from national health care.