Arrogant ignorance

Some Americans, particularly it seems those associated with the Republican party and especially Donald Trump are demonstrably ignorant. Here is Mike Pence making a complete hash of both science and history with a mangling of the English language on the side. Not only does he clearly not understand the first thing about what the theory of evolution claims or how science works, he also doesn't understand what the word "theory" actually means. His smug Christian mocking exposes a truly epic level of ignorance, he keeps repeating that "this is what we were taught at school and evolution is a theory not a fact", clearly the religious meddling was so bad at his school that he must have been force-fed the usual pack of straw-man BS that creationists peddle (which he's never bothered to fact-check since) or the man is as thick as pig poo or he's a lying huckster fishing for the religious vote, you decide.

More worryingly, for someone aspiring to the #2 job in the world, he also doesn't understand US history nor the backgrounds of the people who authored the declaration of independence. A pivotal document and an historic moment upon which many of the principals of the US constitution were layered. Unlike Mr Pence, many of the (key) founding fathers of the USA were very intelligent men and at most they were Deists born out of the Enlightenment going on around them, certainly not Bible literalists. If these men had been born after Darwin I have no doubt they would have embraced the scientific reality of his findings, especially Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen. Washington, Franklin, Adams and Monroe were also well documented skeptics at a time when society was utterly drenched in Christianity and it's various flavours and dogmas. These were also the people who understood the need for and codified the principal of separation of church and state (smart people) not ignorant literalists like Pence, who spend their political capital trying to insert private delusions into the public square by lying for Jesus.