Students used to ask me whether I graded on a curve or an absolute scale. "Both," I would tell them, because even though I grade on an absolute scale, I nearly always get a perfect bellshaped curve. 10 Percent A's, 20% B's, 40% C's, 20% D's, 10% F's. It amazed me how uniformly and consistently a semester of instruction yielded the old 30/40/30 distribution without my even thinking about it.
The bottom 30% leave school knowing less than they did when they arrived. Mostly they're fools, and knowledge cleaves their heads.
Then after they graduate or don't, whichever the case may be, when a pollster comes around, they agree with the statement “In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties.” More Republicans than Democrats, and more men than women ("armed revolution" is so macho!) are among the clueless one third of Americans who believe this.
As if.
As if this population of aging, overweight, underexercised, guys is going to roll their big butts out of their recliners and stop watching Idol and gorging on Hot Pockets™ long enough to take to the ditches and hedgerows and overthrow the liberal, democratic government of the Kenyan usurper in an "armed revolution." That they might have difficulties involved in sweeping aside the forces of the Pentagon with their Bushmaster AR15's doesn't occur to them, and anyway, it's their fantasy, so let em think that if they want to. It's certainly harmless enough.
That'll be the day.
29 Percent, or about a third. The 20% who think this might happen get D. The 10 percent who believe it definitely will happen flunk. I simply don't know what they have in mind for this "armed revolution", and neither do they, but it has something vaguely to do with having the "liberty" to eat Hot Pockets™ while watching TV shows that are cut off above the eyes, and to shoot any policically correct dogooder who tells you you're ruining your life with that crap, with your Bushmaster AR15.
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