Critical Thinking

Here is an excerpt from a recent post by one of you.

____is the most uneducated, unprepared, and idiotic man to ever take the postion as _______. He needs to do what is right for the american people, not the american elite. This country was founded by the people and for the people...not for your personal agendas Mr. ______

I intentionally put blanks for the person actually named and same for the office though given our circumstances I suppose it is obvious who he meant. My point is this, the objective of a college education should be to develop critical thinking skills and analytic ability. By that I mean the abiltiy to unemotionally analyze and draw conclusions without preconceived bias. Tom Sowell made the very correct point the other day that this virtually never happens on talk tv or radio anymore, everyone always has a preconceived conclusion and never changes their opinion. To wit, this comment above is being made about Dems and Libs about Bush, previously virutally the SAME comment was made by Republicans and so called conservatives about Clinton, go ahead, substitute either name, and you have the 'argument' made by the other side at that time.

This is standard fare to what passes as polic science in Liberal Arts but I expect more from business students. Logically this is called an argumentum ad hominem, literally an argument against the man. The complaintant can only personally attack the person, there is not criticism of their programs or policy. If this were a movie actor that might have validity but certianly not for a policy maker. What is lacking is any public discourse about what the other side would do, or what should be done, or how the policty was flawed and therefore failed. Indeed such attacks are bereft of any intellectual argument at all.

AS I have mentioned in replies on the blog, actually most of the people that have recently been president came from the SAME EXACT COLLEGE no less-Yale for both Bushes, Clinton, Gore, and Ford before them. Even Carter went to the Naval Academy, ditto for Eisenhower-West Point and Kennedy was Harvard (the current Bush actually can claim Harvard and Yale). Lack of education, no worse, they all have the SAME education, no chance for many new ideas from this bunch.

As for the comment that this shold not be about personal agenda, gee why do you think these people run for office anyway, for public service! PLEASE, do you think An Inconvenient Truth is anything but a personal agenda, or the Bush ivolvement in Saudi, is that not a personal agenda. Do you think Edwards would not oppose tort reform, that is how he got rich and that would certainly be his personal agenda. Lyndon Johnson's father went broke a couple of times, clearly Lyndon made sure that would never happen to him and left office with his own media conglomerate, another personal agenda. We could go on endlessly here but

My point is that as far as choice of rulers we are about back to the French aristocracy, remember the French finally got so exasperated that they separated Marie from her own head!Yet the two parties have so gerrymandered the entire country that we have had virtually the same choices the last six or seven elections. Dole and Bush names were on I think no less than six presidential ballots as one or the other. Now Gore and Clinton share about the same distinction. This is choice? All rich folks educated at Ivy League schools? What is lacking is any substance of policy debate. Instead we get a silly political argument lately about eight attys getting canned, don't these people have anything to do other than attempt to make the other party look bad? Is anyone looking out for me? Where is the debate on something that matters like

our failed drug policy
our failed war on poverty
our failed school system, why don't we have vouchers
our failed border policy
our disastrously complex income tax law that wastes time and money and gains no one anything for all the time spent on it
our ever growing federal govt-a dpt of commerce that does not make anything, a dept of education that does not educate, a dept of agriculture that does not grow anything and is bigger than ever for a smaller than ever ag sector, a dept of transportation that does not transport anyone, geez...who needs this stuff...
Here is an idea, after the disasters of Katrina and Walter Reed, why not contract these services to private agencies that do a better job anyway? Wal Mart responded faster to Katrina that the FEDS, any hospital is probably better than the VA, who ever heard a great VA story? IF we can contract out prisons (CCA), why not the FED GOVT?

no policy debate, no critical thinking,l each party spending more than the other each time they get in charge, geez, would you buy stock if the FED Govt was a public company?

DLE

Comments

[Jordan McClary]

Buy stock in the governement?? are you kidding me?? I would get what kind of return maybe like -200% cause last time I checked those bozos spend more money then they ever had. And I agree both parties are always busy trying to stab everyone in the back, but I was under the impression bush's ratings by the public were what stood out more than anything. you can try to compare him to Clinton but last time I checked Clinton did not end hid presidential term at or near zero on approval ratings. I realize these could be bias ideas, but I know its bad when my dad a staunch republican, comes home and tells me bush is nutts.

I agree things are getting a bit out of control in washington, but its hard not to blame bush when you see the all mighty dollar becoming the almighty crap due to his policies and poor spending. He's spending money like a crackhead at the MGM grand $1,000 slot machines. I work for a government agency and some of the things I here about contractors charing the government in Iraq are crazy. I had a guy tell me Haliburton charged something like $800 to come fix a door in their dorms in Iraq. A Freaking door!!! are you kidding me. And the military says their going to get it under control? yeah ok its been what 4 years you been letting it happen? what are the chances of that? This was an average door, not some stupid high dollar metal door.

I think we spent more money in Iraq than we did on education... I could be wrong about that, but considering the national debt is currently at or about 9 trillion and we spent 500 billion on wars, its kinda hard to argue. Would it be possible for someone to invent a time machine and go back and save GW the work and tell him there are no weapons of mass destruction in IRAQ? It might make things easier. Just my opinion, unless Guliani can muster together a miracle, I think the Dems are going to win the next election. Because bush and his hard headed ways just make the republican party look worse and worse.

Voting to me is like buying a car. If you buy a lemon and it keeps breaking down, you usually tend to never buy that same brand again, or have an absence from buying them for quite a while. George Bush is definetly becoming a lemon. If you don't think its true, look at the fact that their was a big party switch in the house this last november. Much of the American public thought Bush was becoming to stupid in his decisions so they switched their votes and gave control to the democrats who as of today passed a bill forcing him to pull out by near end of 2008. I know he will veto it but its clear proof of whats going on.

[Jeffrey Burkholder]

Dr. Elam
The more I write on your blog the more I want to know. I love what you wrote above and it makes me think "Why"...... as in why do I think the way that I think about Bush? I have had almost 7 years to formulate an opinion on our president and from the sound of my post you can tell that I am unimpressed with his presidential campaign. I am going to do some research on our president's policies and programs.... then I will write a more intelligent post.

[Dennis Elam]

Again this is all about critical thinking. We are getting pretty far afield from accounting here but Clinton had the entire media on his side, obviously Bush does not, witness Clinton's firing of every single US Atty, not a word, Janet Reno roasted David Koresh and his followers alive, they had not even been charged much less convicted of a crime as I recall, that did not get one comment from the press, and Bush fires 8 attys and it is controversial? I am not making excuses here but critical thinking suggests the two were treated very differently.

As for Iraq, the issue of the US as the world policeman goes on. This is way too much of an issue to discuss here but I suspect the Kurds and others he abused are glad he is gone, you saw how long it took them to convict Sadaam H.

As for Bush, I agree, he has put his party in very difficult straits, as I said, not having a VP running was a handicap which was Tom Friedman's observation. The Republicans do not have an attack dog like Carville or the rest like Begala et al.

Bush is still acting like he is governor of Texas where the Dems were more or less his friends.

[Jordan McClary]

awww those are some very valid points....i especially agree that he is still trying to act as a govenor instead of a president. Good point!

[Dennis Elam]

Jordan,

interestingly there is a test of the new Jag sports car in the Sunday Dallas paper mar 25 today that makes the points I was making in my post, given the $12 B that Ford has put into Jag, apparently they have about 18 motnhs to show it has been worth it. Now Jag is pursuing a strategy of selling fewer cars at much higher profit levels, what have we learned in pricing and TQM that would support such a strategy? What was wrong with selling the bland 3.0 S Sedans that looked like the 1960s sedan?