Our country certainly has its problems right now.  A bad economy, militant Islamists,  unemployment, two wars, and a country split over health care reform.  But to me the biggest problem facing our country today is that Americans seem to have stopped thinking for themselves.

Unfortunately,  I have been guilty of this myself.  Back when I was in college,  I was totally anti-government.  To me, there really wasn’t a choice.  Being a part of the “counter-culture” of the day,  you were expected to protest against the Vietnam War, and to paint the government as evil, and to revile everything that the government stood for.  For that, I am extremely embarrassed.

Why am I embarrased?  After all, most of what the counter-culture protested about turned out to be true.  My embarrassment stems from my total lack of desire to check if the things I was protesting about were actually true.  I was more than willing to listen to the rhetoric of the ‘leaders’ of the movement.

In those days, we didn’t have cable news or the Internet.  We got our information from flyers handed out on campus,  or from people screaming through bullhorns at protests.  Of course, a lot of that information was exxagerated or outright fabrication (the word “spin” had not been coined yet).  We didn’t know that, and frankly, we didn’t care.  We had a cause, and we had people to tell us what to do and say.  So I blindly followed.   No reason to do my own thinking.  After all,  I figured those people had to be smarter than me.  It never even occurred to me to at least listen to what the other side was saying before I developed an opinion.  I already had my opinion.  I heard it through a bullhorn.

I’ve grown a lot since those days.  I always check claims made by people on TV and the Internet.  In many cases,  people will ‘color’ the facts to fit their agenda.

Unfortunately,  because we have 24 hour cable news, and the World-Wide-Web, it’s become very easy for people today to be led along blindly like lemmings.  They will quote the words of like-minded pundits or bloggers without even checking it’s accuracy or truthfulness.  And they find it a waste of time to watch the shows of people with the opposite opinion.

These are not bad people.  Most of them are well-meaning people who are trying to hold to an ideal.  They are so eager to “educate” others about what’s going on in this country that they repeat the ‘proof’ on their own blogs or in their daily discussions that they’ve heard on their favorite cable news show.

A great example is the Moveon.org push against George Bush.  Granted, Bush was a terrible president.  Some of the things he did are clearly unconstitutional.  Which makes me wonder why Moveon used lies and spin so much, when the truth would have served just as well.  The end does not justify the means.  Fairness is important, even to those who have not been fair to us.  After all, this is America.

We’re seeing the same thing today with the group of people who are mad because Barack Obama was elected.   They are more than willing to spread bald-face lies like Obama is a Muslim, or that he was not born in Hawaii.  These lies have been disproven beyond reproach, yet there are those who still  make these claims every day.  Why do people still repeat them?  because they are told so by the people they respect (pundits), and because, for their own reasons, they dislike the fact that Obama is president, and think he’s not the right leader for the country right now,  and will grasp at any ‘fact’ that supports that belief.

WAKE UP AMERICA!

I understand what it is to be dedicated to a cause.  But you’re being led down a road that you don’t want to walk.  It’s time we ALL take the time to make sure we’re being told the truth.  Don’t think that because somebody says something on TV, that it’s true.   Remember, Keith Olberman and Glenn Beck are not reporters. They are pundits.  Their shows are opinion shows, not news,  and they get paid to create controversy where there is none.

THINK FOR YOURSELF.  PLEASE.

My best buddy is a Conservative who’s not a fan of Obama or his policies.  This guy is a real Patriot and loves this country as much as I do.  Over the last couple decades, we’ve had many great discussions about politics, world events, and the like.  Sometimes we agreed, sometimes not.   But we usually left the other guy thinking,  and occasionally even saw, and agreed with, the other’s point of view.

He’s really afraid that some of Obama’s policies will hurt the country.  And I’m proud of him for caring as much as he does about the USA.  I wish more Americans had convictions as strong as his.   He recently started a blog to try to educate Americans about what this country stands for, and why he feels we’re heading in the wrong direction.   Good for him!

However, he’s unwittingly become part of a cult that insists that the current administration is ignoring the Constitution with some of its recent actions.  The justifications that they use are often outright lies or actual facts that are spun to the point of absurdity.  But loyalty is blind,  so he simply repeats what he’s been told,  without ever doing due diligence to make sure what he’s saying is true, valid, and complete.

In a recent discussion about the merits of term limits,  he tried to “educate” me that George Washington left office after two terms because he feared the country would end up with a president for life, and that he said as much in his farewell speech.  Being a student of history,  I know for a fact that Washington said nothing even resembling that sentiment.  I gave him a link to the actual text of the speech, and suggested he read it.

I was flabbergasted when he informed me that he could give me 20 links to support his contention about what Washington said in his speech, so there was no need to read the actual text.   Yes, he’s perfectly willing to take someone else’s opinion instead of going to the source and making his own determination.

This is why America is in trouble.  We have well-meaning, intelligent people concerned about the state of our country,  yet they are so dedicated to their cause that they’d rather spend their time educating others than themselves.

Yes, stand up for your cause.  It’s the American way.  But PLEASE do some thinking first!

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This entry was posted by Nick Bulka on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 at 6:58 pm You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.