George Monbiot, writing in The Guardian about one of the great mysteries in American policies — why we prefer stupidity, or at least the appearance of it, in the White House. (Another is why we think adultery disqualifies a man for public office — a bizarre notion that has cost the nation dearly.)

But enough of that. Here are some teasers from Monbiot’s essay:

Like most people on this side of the Atlantic I have spent my adult life mystified by American politics. The US has the world’s best universities and attracts the world’s finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage…

On one level this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is notorious for its failures. In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves around the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15 year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD…

One theme is both familiar and clear: religion — in particular fundamentalist religion — makes you stupid. The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing…

A survey by researchers at the University of Texas in 1998 found that one in four of the state’s public school biology teachers believed that humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time.

Monbiot also has interesting things to say about how the revolting philosophy of Herbert Spencer managed to put religion on the side of reason in the latter decades of the 19th century. Too long to excerpt, though, so read the full piece.