CRITICAL THINKING IS A GREAT WAY TO DETERMINE WHO YOU ARE

Regardless of political party, if you call yourself an American, please read. 

My purpose is to challenge all Americans to practice a skill we seem to have lost and that skill is called critical thinking. 

In all candor you must be aware that the person writing this has made the statement, “when our founders formed our government, they knew they were forming the single biggest threat to the freedoms they had just one.”  We know this because they told us and because the premise of the Constitution was to place limitations on government.

What I am going to ask you to do is to the best of your ability, set aside your political biases and hatred for or likes for political parties or individuals.  Then I am going to ask you to react to the following only after you have researched and contemplated the following questions and statements.  This will require that you move out of your comfort zones, and I know that is frightening, but it is also enlightening and freeing.

What is liberty?  Should there be constraints on liberty and if so, what and by whom?

What is freedom, for instance is freedom when you can make your own decisions and be responsible for the results and consequences, or is freedom when you are free from making your own decisions and do not have to be responsible for the results and consequences?

What does it mean to error on the side of caution?  Is this an extension of the prudent man rule?  Do these concepts free us from taking responsibility for our decisions or do they enable us to make wiser decisions that prove to be more beneficial?

What characteristics do long term government employees and elected officials have?  How do they contrast them with the characteristics of highly successful innovators, scientists, business people, and other members of the private sector?  Which of the two would you want to emulate?

What do you believe the role of government should be?

When the role you prefer is exercised, h it accomplished what you think is best for mankind?

We have defined liberty.  Now let us define equality in the same manner in which we defined liberty.  Can liberty and equality co-exist?   Would you prefer a society that leans more toward one than the other, and if so why?
There are so many more questions to ask, research, and ponder.  Every individual has a right to answer these questions for themselves.  It is wrong, however, when you allow others to answer these questions for you because you listen to bumper stickers, thirty second sound bites, believe people because they carry the same label you think you carry, and you do not ask, why are you saying that and why do you want me to believe it without me questioning you and doing my own research, contemplate and arrive at my own conclusion.  An independent and critical thinker is essential to any and every free society.  They are ostracized, demonized, segregated, and eliminated in a despotic and dictatorial society.

Please, do not demonize me because I think differently from you, demonize me when I do not think.