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Know Yourself Politically (and a little about critical thinking)


Before you can think clearly about politics, you need to have a clear understanding of your own political beliefs. Most people have a good idea of whether they are conservative or liberal, or perhaps even radical in their politics. That's easy to know. What's harder to know is the source of your beliefs. -- Why do you believe what you believe?  What's also hard is being clear on the difference between what you believe and what you know about each issue. So the purpose of this page is to give you a clearer understanding of yourself politically, so that you can more easily hear and understand the views of others. Understanding the source of your values is one part of critical thinking.

Looking at Yourself


Here are a few questions to help you get an idea of where you stand politically.

1.  When you vote, whose interests do you vote? In other words, on whose behalf do you vote? Check all that apply:

__  Yourself
__  Your family
__  Members of a group you belong to (such as your union or professional group)
__  Your religion or religious group
__  Your local community
__  Some oppressed group
__  The environment
__  The long-term interests of all humanity
__  Other ________________


2.  People often label each other as conservative or liberal, but we've learned that those labels can be confusing. There are at least two different meanings to conservative, and two different meanings to liberal. One set of meanings is economic; another set of meanings is social.    

Generally, someone is economically or "fiscally conservative" when they are for free markets. In other words, they want very little government interference--no laws and rules that help or hurt businesses. Republicans are usually but not always fiscally conservative.  On the other hand, someone who wants government to influence the economy, would be economically liberal. Democrats are usually but not always fiscally liberal. By the way, don't be confused by the way "Libertarian" sounds: Libertarians are usually fiscally conservative, not liberal.  

Generally someone is socially liberal if they they are for maximum personal freedom. Democrats are usually socially more liberal. (And here's where Libertarians are liberal.)  But they are socially conservative if they believe that tradition and authority (sometimes religious authority) should be followed. Republicans are usually socially more conservative.

So, economically, which are you, liberal or conservative?  ________________

And socially, which are you, liberal or conservative?  ________________



3.  How would you rate the following as priorities? (Put a 1 for the highest priority, a 2 for the second, etc.)

__  Health care issues
__  National security
__  Environment
__  Jobs/ the Economy
__  Education issues
__  Other ________



   
4.  In each of the following pairs, check the one that most closely describes your view.  If you are exactly in between, check both.  If neither is close to your views, don't check either. (Notice that the statements are not mirror images of each other. -- That's okay; this exercise is just to give you a general idea of your views.)

__  Corporations and business owners are greedy.  
__  Corporations and business owners make the country strong.

__  America is supposed to be a Christian country.
__  American is a country where people can practice any religion or no religion.

__  Unions are good. They protect workers.
__  Unions make America less competitive. That hurts workers.

__  People are basically good and should be allowed to do what they want within reason. They should be allowed freedoms, as long as they don't interfere with other's freedoms.
__  People are basically selfish and irrational. If their behavior is not controlled through laws and authority, they will harm each other.

__  Things are better when action is centralized and occurs at the Federal level.  It's more efficient.
__  Things are better when action happens locally or at the State level. Then programs can be more flexible and better  tailored to the local situation.

__  America needs to take an active role internationally -- to help other nations and to protect ourselves economically and militarily.
__  America should not try to run the world. We should mind our own business, and let other nations decide their own destinies.

__  The federal government should try to control markets so that inflation and unemployment stay low.
__  The federal government should not try to control markets. Markets 
should be free, and the government should do other things to reduce unemployment and inflation.

__  Environmentalists are generally unrealistic. The priority is to compete economically, and markets will eventually take care of environmental problems.
__  Environmentalists are very realistic. The priority is our long-term survival, and so employment come second.

__  People should be legally allowed to do what they want sexually, as long as it doesn't harm or disturb others. That's what freedom's about.
__  Much of what people want to do sexually is immoral and selfish.  Giving in to it will gradually destroy America. That's why we need laws about morality.

__  Affirmative action is good. It promotes fairness.
__  Affirmative action is bad.  It gives unfair advantage to some people.

__  In general, survival of the fittest is the way things are. We need compete economically and stay on top militarily. Both in this country and around the world, people need to stand on their own two feet. Helping people in need too much just fosters weakness and it depletes our strength. Limited natural resources are the reality in this world. Survival of the fittest is the reality.
__  In general, people need to rise above a survival-of-the-fittest mentality.  All religions teach compassion and care of the needy.  We are not just animals.  Cooperation is better than competition. Cooperation will help us get the most out of limited resources.

5. Now for the tough part: Separating what you believe from what you know. We're going to ask you to go back to each pair, and try to figure out why you believe something, or have a certain attitude toward something. For instance, do you have facts about all corporate greed or average corporate greed, or is this just the impression that you have from a few news stories that you've heard?   

Another example: If you checked off the sentence that says America is a place where people can practice any religion, how do you know that? Is it written down somewhere in the Constitution?  

In general, beliefs are fine if they are based on reason and information. The following are good reasons for belief:

- Some principle that applies.
- Reasoning from enough factual information.
- Some precedent that is very similar.
- Some statistical survey or observation.
- Broad and deep personal experience.


And here are some weak reasons for belief or having a certain attitude :

- You picked up the attitude or belief from someone you respect or like.
- You have a very limited experience. (For instance, you met one environmentalist who was flaky, or met one businessman who was greedy, so you just decided they were probably all like that.)
- You read a single article about the subject, and that's what the author says.
- It's just a gut reaction or intuition that you have.

(Note: sometimes gut reactions and intuition can be very good.  For instance, you might a gut feeling that you don't trust a certain politician. If your intuition has proved correct in the past, you may have reason to trust it. But sometimes gut feelings are wrong. In the example mentioned, perhaps the politician might just resemble someone you didn't like, or you just don't like their way of talking. So, sometimes intuition is like instant reasoning: you pick up a pattern all at once, and later you can figure out the reasons. But at other times, intuition can be reacting to something superficial.) 


Now, looking back at what you checked off, what are the sources, what are the origins for what you believe about...


Corporations

Religion in America

Unions

Whether or not people are good or bad; and whether or not they need to be controlled through laws. 

Action at the federal level versus action at state and local levels

Foreign policy: (Should we be involved or isolationist?)

Environmentalism

Making laws about sexual behavior

Affirmative action

Survival of the fittest versus compassion







If you are honest with yourself...

Most people, if they are honest, will realize that many of their political beliefs have weak foundations. This is to be expected because most people are busy with other things, and few people naturally gravitate to politics. Also, most people don't carefully evaluate the political opinions that they take in. This is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, it can lead to three great benefits (if you stay honest and open):

First, you will be more eager to become a critical thinker and, if you agree with us that politics is important, you will pay more attention to other views. Then you will gradually replace opinions and gut-reactions with well-thought-out views.

Second, you will be more open to other people's arguments and views. They could be right, in whole or in part.  On the other hand, it's the people who are so sure that they are right who can't listen to others.  

Third, if they do have weak reasons for some of their beliefs, you are likely to be more tolerant and forgiving (since they are like you, but just started out with other opinions.) Perhaps they just adopted the views of their parents or friends, and never really thought about it. A lot of people do this.  

Getting Excited about Critical Thinking -- Some Quotations

We emphasize the importance of critical thinking because it's part of being an informed citizen: Not only do you need news and background information on the issues, you need to think about the issues. Doing that well requires some skills and practice. Here are some quotes to get you in the mood for the work you will be doing in the rest of this online course:

"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't."
-- Anatole France

"The less you know, the more you think you know, because you don't know you don't know."
-- Ray Stevens

"Critical thinking is a lot harder than people think, because it requires knowledge."
-- Joanne Jacobs

"When children enter our public schools, they are encouraged not to learn what other people thought about things, but rather to 'think for themselves' -- which is crucial, but also fruitless without insights from beyond one's own mind or beyond the minds of one's similarly underdeveloped peers." -- Dr. Jeffrey H. Anderson, professor of political science

"In 1998 a study ... reported the most common discussion model among students was stating what they were certain they already believed, not learning what they did not or exploring the views of those with whom they disagreed." -- Anna Quindlen, "Life of the Closed Mind," Newsweek, May 30, 2005

"We hear a great deal these days about the pedagogical benefits of discussion. But the assumptions we uncovered -- such as the belief that advocacy is the purpose of discussion -- illustrate why this method is often not as effective as we'd hope."
-- Carol Trosset, Ph.D., Change, Sept-Oct, 1998

"The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is -- second only to American political campaigns -- the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time." -- Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism, 1990

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
-- Winston Churchill

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I didn't know."
-- Mark Twain

"The problem with many youngsters today is not that they don't have opinions but that they don't have the facts on which to base their opinions." -- Albert Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers, ("Debating the Standards", New York Times, Jan. 29, 1995 )

"The evidence regarding critical thinking is not reassuring. ... Usually, it isn't the logical structure of people's inferences that chiefly causes uncritical thinking but rather the uninformed or misinformed faultiness of their premises."
-- E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

"It is easy to spot an informed man -- his opinions are just like your own." -- Miguel de Unamuno

"Learning without thought is labor lost. Thought without learning is perilous." -- Confucius

"A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion." --Proverbs 18:2 (RSV)

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -- Aldous Huxley

"Insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth." -- Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic (1929)

"Not to know is bad, not to wish to know is worse."
-- Nigerian Proverb

"Professors complain about students who arrive at college with strong convictions but not enough knowledge to argue persuasively for their beliefs. ... Having opinions without knowledge is not of much value; not knowing the difference between them is a positive indicator of ignorance." -- Diane Ravitch, The Schools We Deserve

"Frequently our students come into the university domain thinking that all opinions are equally valid. This view has threatened the intellectual development of students since the time of Socrates because it allows students to think that incomplete, illogical, and nonsystematic thought is 'good enough.' Unfortunately, it never is."
-- Rev. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Educating in the Jesuit Tradition

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." -- Sherlock Holmes, speaking in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Scandal in Bohemia "

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment." -- Sherlock Holmes, speaking in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet"

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
-- Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan

"Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts." -- Bernard M. Baruch

"Nothing is more tragic than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang Goethe

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -- Aristotle

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd." -- Bertrand Russell

"The young specialist in English Lit ... lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern 'knowledge' is that it is wrong. ... My answer to him was, '... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.'" -- Isaac Asimov

[We thank illinoisloop.org for these quotes picked from their extensive "educational quotes" page.]

When ready, please continue with the next part, Basics of Government.