COS Indiana Newsletter March Edition

Opinions expressed in the following articles are solely the expressed views of the authors.
CITIZENSHIP and THINKING
An Ordinary Citizen | March 4, 2022
It’s hard to forget the image. Matthew Banta, Antifa’s Commander Red, is crying and lying in a
fetal position on the ground. Why? Because he was scared. His actions had consequences and he
was actually arrested. Caught up in the rhetoric of the BLM/Antifa web, Matthew was a Millennial
who did not know how to reason. How to say "what if?" He had no Plan B. Matthew could not
think for himself.
One over-riding and undergirding tenet of this experiment we call America is that freedom of
thought is the key to wisdom. The right to express those thoughts without fear of reprisal is the
key to a free society. The lack of that right is the key to tyranny. This tenet is the basis for the First
Amendment to the Constitution which guarantees us the right to many things.
But that guarantee comes with an obligation of ownership. Citizens each own a piece of this
country. As a result, we each have a responsibility to carefully identify whether or not we agree
with and support what our country is doing. Not what we hope it’s doing, but what is actually
going on. That’s because the keeping of this republic is a job that belongs to all of us.
But the ability to carefully analyze the actions of our government requires a skill that many of us
have not mastered. That skill is critical thinking and we ignore it at our peril.
What Is Critical Thinking?
First off, critical thinking is not common sense, though the result may seem that way. It is not
intuition, though intuition may start the process. It is not a belief, though it may be overly
influenced by beliefs if we’re not careful.
Critical thinking is a practice, a habit, a mental muscle that we must shape and tone…not just
once, but frequently. Further, we must model it and teach it to our children. No other person, no
government, no institution is going to do that.
The Basics
While critical thinking began getting a lot of play in the 20th century, it’s actually a concept that’s
about 2500 years old. It is a disciplined intellectual process that:
involves conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, or evaluating information.
obtains (or generates) information by observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or
communication.
is based on the intellectual values of clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance,
sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.