No Way, No How

Website’s patriotism ranking shows truth in old saying

Figures lie and liars figure. We’ve all heard the saying. It’s means that numbers don’t always tell the whole story, often as a way to explain away uncomfortable statistics during a difference of opinion.

Sometimes the old saw is wrong. But sometimes it’s dead on.

Take Internet surveys and rankings. They can be useful. But just as often the data is misleading and offers nothing more than clickbait to draw eyes to ads on a website.

Such, in our view, is the latest offering from WalletHub, a personal finance website

On Monday, the site published a ranking of the most and least patriotic states in America based on what WalletHub calls 13 key indicators of patriotism. These include the average number of military enlistees from a state, veterans or reservists per capita, Peace Corps volunteers per capita, voting rates in presidential and primary elections, overall volunteer rates and the average number of hours volunteered, jury participation, membership in civic groups and whether schools require U.S. history and civics course.

And based on factors like those, Arkansas came in dead last among the states. Texas fared better, but didn’t make the top half. The Lone Star State came in at No. 31.

Alaska was No. 1, followed by Montana and Virginia. At the bottom — but just ahead of Arkansas — were New York, Rhode Island and Florida.

Now, we are sure Alaska and the others sates at the top of the list love this country. But here in Arkansas and Texas we don’t take a backseat to anyone in our patriotism. Never have, never will.

No matter what your figures say!