Be Patriotic! Disagree With Something!

I my weekly reading of the wonks, hacks, pundits and other such people who opine ad nauseum about world events (I can't help it...News is a drug and I am hopelessly addicted), I ran across the weekly offering from Thomas Sowell. Here is a link to the article.

It is great to see a good piece on an overall issue rather than "micromanaging" every daily occurrence with no regard to it's actual import.

What Sowell gets at, and quite well indeed, is the need for disagreement and questioning in a democracy. There cannot be the mass silent/complacent majority. Ask questions, demand answers and take action if you don't agree with what you are told.

Also, as Sowell points out, schools do a bad job of teaching logic and critical thinking. To me, this is a bad miseducation. Critical reading and thinking are skills that cross all of the disciplines. It should be required material (hey, let's put it in the place of phys. ed. or homeroom...they are worse than useless).

In my own experience, one of the most valuable classes that I took in college was a basic level logic class. Thinking, to work properly, must have an organization. I am not saying to restrict yourself. Random thoughts and ideas, however, to need to be systematized to make sense of the whole thing. It also makes it easier to remember things.

So get out there and criticize! Debate! Argue! Be Wrong! Be Right! Be American!