Evidently human beings are programmed to look for causes. Something goes bump in the night and we grab a flashlight, and maybe a gun, and go searching for the cause. Average temperatures go up for a few years and folks start running around in circles pointing fingers -- It’s the cars! It’s the electric bill! It’s toilet paper!. Here we are hip deep in impending doom and, right on cue, I’m looking under every rock for the reason. Deep in my gut I believe there’s just one explanation.

Yes, the problems we face are diverse: skyrocketing debt, illegal immigration, stagnant economy, dysfunctional government, a broken health system, horrible schools, a horrifying foreign policy, rampant deadly sexual immorality, to say nothing of fantasy football. We all know the problems and I contend that we needn’t peel back the onion very far to arrive at a common cause: ignorance.

Would we have $19,000,000,000,000 national debt if most people had any idea how much money that is? Or any idea that economic law is as sure as the laws of gravity and thermodynamics. Most folks appear to think that the economy ends at their own pockets. Fill that cavity and all’s well. Remember the young women in Detroit early on in Obama’s presidency? They were standing in line to get some cash giveaway with Obama’s name on it. A reporter asked them where this money was coming from and one giggled and said, “We don’ know – Obama’s stash?” Giggle, giggle.  For decades now the only econ taught in public schools and most colleges is Keynesian nonsense -- way too many of us really believe we can pull money out of thin air and do it indefinitely. Anyone with any knowledge knows that’s mathematically impossible.

Illegal immigration is also an ignorance problem. Way too many of us are so parochial, so provincial that we assume all societies function and think just like we do. But any objective observation will prove that wrong. Some societies treat their women like livestock and their children even worse. Some folks find sloth the norm, crime a reasonable answer to their money problems, and violence proof of spirituality. They train their small children to hate and murder, and marry their daughters off while they’re still in grade school. Nothing we observe about these invading cultures demonstrates that they want to live like we do. But the silly meme continues -- they just want a better life for their children; we owe it to them… Really? What do you know about what drives these folks over our borders? What do you know about how their presence here will affect our economy? Our health and safety? Our schools? Our elections? Right. Nothing.

Speaking of our economy -- how many of the voting public has ever read Friedman or Sowell or Hayek or Smith? Those with college educations know how to say those names with a sneer, but they know nothing of their economic observations. Note I didn’t say “theories” -- what these guys have to say about how money works has been proven over and over, whereas Keynes is proven wrong everywhere you look.

Therefore our government, which is dedicated to Keynes’ worship of debt and taxes, never produces the results it claims to want. The only thing our senators and representatives appear to be good at is spending money that belongs to someone else, and their lust for that spending power trumps (no pun intended) their duty to their constituents and to the Constitution -- of which many are completely ignorant. They didn’t even flinch the first time Obama snatched away some of their legislative power and by now they don’t even notice.

Obamacare, which never did have popular support, received what little backup it did because people don’t understand how insurance works, don’t have any idea what it takes to become and remain a doctor, and are clueless about the effect supply-and-demand has on the practice of medicine. Even the richest government can’t pay for medical care it has destroyed.

Not only do people not get how health care works, they have no idea how education works. Why does anyone think you can measure the success of education with test scores? Education has never been about the amassing of dry facts, about stuffing heads; real learning has to do with opening the mind to the possibilities, about encouraging lifelong curiosity. Education is about truth and there’s very little of that in our schools. In fact, the higher up the school ladder you go, the less truth is available. It is no wonder that we have become a nation of ignoramuses -- too many of us are without a real, solid, classic education that allows us to question intelligently the nonsense the media feeds us.

And then there’s the rest of the world. Horrors that haven’t been seen since the medieval torture chambers thrive and our government appears to support that activity. How is that happening? Mark Twain once said, “God made war to teach Americans geography.” There’s a certain truth to that; America’s location has allowed us a certain comfortable isolationism, which worked fine in Twain’s day, but no longer. Now we either know or we die.

When I hear people supporting Palestinian aggression I’m just astonished at the ignorance of Middle Eastern history. Did you know that even back in 70 A.D. when Rome sacked Jerusalem they did it with mercenary Arab soldiers -- they knew the Arabs would be passionate about killing Jews, and they were. Anti-Semitism dates back to Abraham and Ishmael, to Jacob and Esau, and anything we try to do other than support Israel (always the safe side to be on -- see Genesis 12) will only make things worse.

A lot of the cluelessness regarding the Middle East, and a lot of the ignorance regarding the sexual immorality in our culture is a result of a stunning lack of knowledge about the Bible, even amongst Christians and Jews. This document contains much of what we need to know about how decent citizens should behave individually, and about how national entities should wisely comport themselves. Over and over again we see nations try to make up their own rules and fall flat on their faces. Economies fail, marriages and families break apart, health collapses, babies die before they are even born and all because people have chosen to be ignorant of 1) the proof, both historical and scientific, that the Bible is accurate and God does exist and 2) that He has reasons for the rules He has set for us. We are making life and death decisions witlessly.

Our education system has not only withheld biblical information from our children, it has openly attacked the authenticity of the information contained therein. It has so aggressively taught Darwinian evolution, promoted such organizations as Planned Parenthood, twisted the history of our nation, and reduced education to the parroting of pat phrases of propaganda. It has assisted in subverting our language, of erasing moral distinctions, and has trained our children to think like victims.

This problem is not even hard to fix if we just turn the open market loose on the solution. Children want to learn. Parents want them to learn. They just need schools that can teach and the free market, if allowed, will provide them -- if enough knowledgeable teachers can be found. Aye, there’s the rub.

Deana Chadwell blogs at www.ASingleWindow.com and is an adjunct writing professor at Pacific Bible College in southwestern Oregon.