Critical Thinking

In order for a democracy to function in a stable manner, ie it continues to exist, serve its citizens, and provide for a durable legal framework for the society, it must have a citizenry who are capable of informed critical thinking.

This is, ideally, the only purpose for a systematic public education system. The inherent problem in this solution however, is when a public education program becomes encumbered by either a politicized professional corps of educators or the course of study becomes encumbered by idiomatic doctrinal goals. The injection of a political bias into the administration and classroom education can have the unintended result of damaging critical thinking in terms of a biased presentation of study or a requirement of students to subscribe to a particular frame of reference in order to be "successful" in classwork. If a classroom's study programs are also encumbered by dogmas that demand an inherent favoritism over other views on purely judgmental grounds instead of empirical comparatives the class that leaves such an environment will be decidedly disadvantaged when it comes to critical thinking skills.

And these problems cross both sides of the current political landscape. It can be justly and unbiasedly argued that the NEA has simply hijacked education policy to conform to its own political dogma. It can be argued that Creationists are trying to encumber science coursework with an unscientific dogma. Both are examples of my point. For brevity we shall skip over the thousands of other examples.

The founding fathers were, without exception, elites or at least came from an elite class. They publicly stated individually and often the fact that the Republic was intended for a well educated and critical thinking elite. They did not intend for the Republic to be a massively enfranchised citizenship. If you doubt that fact look to the early suffrage standards that were allowed. For that matter look at just how small the eligible pool of voters actually was.

The thing that these early participators in our Republic had in common was that for the most part they were literally the leading men of their individual communities and often educated to a degree that we would find hard to fathom. Imagine if the current electorate consisted predominately of people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, presidents of colleges, leaders of industry, - basically only the hob nobs of the hob nobs.

There wasn't much diversity- and they did not intend such a diversity. The actually reflected that if the voting pool was consistently made up of only those who are most likely to have developed the skill of critical thinking, then the need for political parties would be non-existent and most decisions could be made in an effective and logical manner. They had in mind a fraternity open to the best leaders who would exercise a patrician like benevolence upon the remainder of the citizens in the Republic.

It lasted about 8 years.

What we have now is a hodgepodge of precedents which has either expanded the voting public membership or sought to influence that voting public into becoming blocks of votes for programs that can be offered by politicians.

I think Ben Franklin made the remark that once the voters realize that they can vote themselves blank treasury checks, the Republic would fail. And to some extent we endure that situation. About the only check to that disease is the fact that there are still an active minority of people who exhibit the facility for critical thinking. On both sides of the aisle. Thankfully the average great unwashed pool of eligible voters member is simply not even interested enough to register or vote.

I say thankfully because such voters eliminate the votes of people who have considered both sides of an argument and cast very reflective intelligent votes. People who vote straight tickets, or party line votes, or randomize whom they pick without any critical evaluation are collectively doing a disservice to themselves and the remainder of the country. And it is largely due to such uneducated voters that we have what is essentially political deadlock in Washington.

This deadlock isn't between just the two parties. Rather it is a deadlock which derives from individual elected officials being so mindful of the lack of critical voting of the citizenship, that they instead pander to the lowest and most populist sentiments of the voting public.

The ultimate cause for this decline is education. Children today are exposed to social science that often contain only the most cursory examination of Constitutional Law and even basic civics and government. Children now can explain what political correctness is- without ever even realizing that they are being politically correct nor recognizing the self inflicted bias such a dogma imposes upon their thinking. Often, they do not even know what the term Political Correctness is. It is part of an inherent dogma that is now part of the educational norm. They often cannot explain the actual rights retained by the citizens of the country- but they will willingly jump on the ideas of wealth envy, fairness, and victimology. They replicate a point of view which isn't exampled critical thinking. It is instead an example of what happens when students do not develop the ability to critically evaluate a problem or issue without an imposed external framework. It is in a way, an example of the way citizens of China reply as to what the freest nation on Earth is. They almost always respond "China" although to the rest of the world, China is better known for its repression, dictatorship, and systemic abuses of its citizens.

While they have the right to vote without a single critical judgement or evaluation of facts, they are setting the stage for a governmental collapse in the future. Brought on by the needs of populist support, the ever increasing payout to voters in entitlements, and a stagnation of actual action in solving problems instead of group thinking things to a permanent committee- the role of an elected official is rapidly becoming one of pandering offers of money in exchange for the votes of the self interested.

That situation has happened a few time in the last sixty years. And in all cases the outcomes were abysmal.