up until Bennett's gambling bust their personal lives were squeaky-clean.... 
 
What gambling bust? People found out he gambled, but he was never arrested or charged with doing anything illegal.

If north is to your right, straight up is not west, it is east.  
 
Only if you rotate the person so that they are facing downwards. Rotate the person so that they are looking stright up and they are looking westwards.  
 
Better still, imagine that a MAP is being rotated on a wall. Set it that so N points to the right. If you're looking at the top-side of the map, W is straight up.

Somewhat more seriously, the USA's biggest impact on the world seems to have come as much from its abilities in mass production as it has from its form of government. Also, the growth of our influence seems to be somewhat related to our abandonment of the principles of limited government.

So let me see if I understand this: Students under the Communist Chinese Party got pissy and stood up to columns of tanks, signifying that King George III was tyranical (he had gout, too), that the USA invented limited government, and that without that contribution, Chinese students could never make replicas of French statuary. Correct?

Looc, Soccer = Metric Football.

As someone who has to put the pointless Excel charts into PowerPoint presentations, I certainly hope you're correct, nil.

Someone has to make a South Park episode about this. 
 
Dude, this has to be a South Park script. Someone got a hold of it and decided to publish it under their own name. Matt and Trey will be calling their lawyers directly....

Hmm, on the class question I answered "lower middle". That's 'where I came from', but it isn't where I am. These days I would be classified as either middle class or upper middle class. I'm not quite sure where the cut-off is between the two. Also, I didn't answer the last one because I can't remember how I found out about this site.

What do they mean "No famous Belgians"? Have they forgotten the Mussels from Brussels, Jean-Claude van Damme?

Wow, that is insane. Now I'm going to have to waste part of the weekend reading the entire archives.

Yeah, Arcane, it's clear you have no experience being catheterized! It is HIGHLY unpleasant, and when it's removed you'll be stunned at home many YARDS of tubing they shove up there. It's been 18 years since my own experience, and I still remember it vivdly. The horror, the horror....

Fly, this effect should hit areas with low barriers first. There's nothing really stopping anyone from playing chess (except perhaps locale), so there's not much of an entry problem. 
 
But consider, say, Law. To become a practicing attorney in the USA, it is necessary to pass a bar exam. To take the exam, one has to graduate from an accredited law school. To get into law school, one has to complete an undergraduate college degree, and so on. But really, is there any doubt that a lot of bright people could pass the bar exam by studying on their own, if given access to the relevant material without jumping through all those hoops? My guess is that if it were opened up, we be seeing a rush to who was the youngest person to pass a bar exam.  
 
So the interesting question is: how long will it take before these artificial barriers get overrun?

Fly, I think that the chess world has already seen some of what you are getting at re: education. (Sorry, this will probably be a little incoherent, but I'm quite tired.) 
 
A little background on titles in the chessworld. The title grandmaster is the highest title one can attain in the chess world. It's origins are somewhat disputed, but often traced back to a tournament in Tsarist Russia in 1914. 
 
After WWII, the International Chess Federation (FIDE) became the dominating organizing force in the chess world, and created a means of awarding titles based on results. In the 1950s, Boris Spassky became the youngest grandmaster ever, winning the title at age 18. Not long thereafter in 1958, Bobby Fischer became the youngest GM ever, at age 15.  
 
Fischer held this record until 1991! Judit Polgar finally beat his record by a few months. Then, Peter Leko lowered the age further. Since Leko, the GMs are getting younger and younger at a veery fast clip. I think the current record is held by a Chinese player named Bu, but it's hard to keep up. (It's not uncommon to hear jokes about a fetus becoming a GM.) 
 
And the record is only part of it. There are LOTS of prodogies at any given moment. The holder of 'youngest ever' depends to an extent on luck these days. It's also not uncommon for teenagers no one has heard of to win (or almost win) tournaments with very strong fields. (E.g. Wang Hao and Needleman.) 
 
The reason for my post is to ask (and answer): why has this happened? It's simply a matter of technology and information. When Spassky became a GM, he was part of the Soviet chess machine: talent was identified early, and provided extensive coaching and playing opportunities (in the Soviet Union only, typically) designed to get the most out of their talent. Fischer was a manaically hard worker who was fortunate to be living in NYC, where he had access to large libraries and lots of foreign magazines. The fact that Spassky and Fischer are two of the all-time great talents also helped. 
 
When Polgar came along, she and her sisters were taught by their fother and mother in an intensive home schooling environment, so that the father could test his own education theories. (They were taught much besides chess.) This took place in Communist Hungary, for the most part. 
 
Since then? Well, now almost every serious chess player in the developed world (and many elsewhere) have access to things these players did not: databases of millions of games, and strong chess playing programs. This has revolutioned chess education.  
 
Now everyone has databases of MILLIONS of games. And programs that are arguably of GM strength. I don't have any talent, and this all came along too late for me anyway, but young players can now absorb vast amounts of information in a very short time, amounts that didn't even exist 25 years ago. IT has changed
More....