Are people stupid, or just ignorant?

If you care at all about democracy, here's something scary: A new Harris Poll suggests that a significant number of our population are so ignorant or stupid or both that they can't intelligently participate in our democracy.

OK, the poll doesn't really say that. But it does show that a surprisingly large number of people (surprising to me, anyway) believe things about President Obama that are provably false. A significant number of people believe things such as:

• Obama is a Muslim (32 percent).
• Obama wasn't born in the United States and thus is ineligible to be the U.S. president (an astounding 25 percent).

And those are just the two biggies where proof to the contrary is incontrovertible. (For the record, Obama is a Christian, a fact that was well-publicized during the 2008 campaign because of controversy over his pastor, and Obama was born in Hawaii after it became a state.)

Also:

• Obama is a socialist (40 percent). Never mind that even the health care plan recently signed by Obama is far, far more free-enterprise-oriented than anything Canada or the industrialized countries of Europe have.
• Obama wants to take away people's right to own guns (38 percent). Of course, he's never advocated any such thing and in the campaign was endorsed by pro-gun governors such as those of Wyoming and Montana.
• Obama "wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers" (23 percent).
• Obama is doing many of the things that Hitler did (20 percent). Well, I suppose Hitler slept, ate and brushed his teeth too.
• And here's a good one: 14 percent, that's one out of seven, say Obama may be the anti-Christ. Obviously, they haven't been paying attention. Even Hal Lindsay says Obama isn't the anti-Christ, although someone like him might be.

It's hard to know how seriously to take such numbers. This is a poll taken online by people who said they wanted to participate in a poll, so there is no determinable margin of error. But the Harris folks, who are reasonably reliable, say they did weight the poll for factors such as age and education. Some of the rhetoric of the last few days also seems to indicate these percentages aren't all that far off.

And, of course, it's not just this kind of anti-Obama ignorance that's alarming. Other polls show that similarly large percentages of people have believed that George Bush knew of the 9/11 attacks in advance. I wish I were making this stuff up.

As a journalist, I have long felt that I was playing an important role by helping people better understand the world around them. But when I look at numbers like those in the Harris poll, I have to wonder if anyone is paying attention.