Is America's "Democratic Republic" becoming too difficult for it's citizenry?

The Health Care Reform package has 4 bills currently up for consideration in the Congress. One of those bills has 1,038 pages. Does the average citizen have the time to read and comprehend all that material? NO. Part of citizenry is knowing when to allow your elected representative to make the decision. Yes, you can send him your opinion, after reading, discussing, etc., however, you are going to reach a point where you are going to have to allow your representative do the job you sent him to the legislature to accomplish.
That is why you have to establish people/newsgroups/TV news/discussion groups whom you value their opinion, whatever it takes to help you reach your opinion about the item. Remember, our form of government only allows you an opinion that you give your representative/senator and you have to be ready to support his decision and the congressional process after the vote. If you are not happy with the vote, you will get another chance to correct the situation, by working harder for your position!

Citizens come out to speak to Congressmen about Health Care

President Obama's Health Care initiative has sparked the citizenry to come out and fact find with their congressmen. Congressmen are on their summer break and will return in September, so they have been using the time to meet with their constituents and find out what they feel about Government Health Care for the Nation. There have been repeated shouting matches, organized people shouting down the other attendees, rude planned behavior to everyone, it is not a pretty thing. It appears there are many concerns that need to be explained, however, it is become difficult to get a word in edge-wise. To the benefit of congressmen at these meetings, for the most part, they have been courteous, and have tried to answer the questions from the electorate.
There are several areas that need to be touched on:
1. It does not appear most people have really read the documents involved, not even summaries, but some appear to have been coached with aids. There is nothing wrong with this, it is their first amendment right. If you are faced with such a situation, you need to be prepared to respond and learn from your experience.
2. It "appears" that the Republican Party has coached with instructions, handouts, placards, people to vent their emotions towards the congressperson and members of the audience. Tactics such as "Ramsey Clarke and his 'rent-a-mob' is using is staged and organized to disrupt. It is not being positive.
3. People appear to be worried about more than just health care. They are worried about where this country is headed, the lack of leadership, the high debt, it is a ground-swell of people that have always been in existence, but have not had the readily available venue and access to express themselves.
4. There does not seem to be a modicum of energy towards working together!! " It is my way or the highway" Health care for all citizens has been attempted for over 70 years. The lobbyists and the free enterprise system has arranged to win the battles. In the movie "Wall Street", Gordon Gecko, investor tells a board meeting, "Greed is good". This seems to be the theme throughout America's version of free enterprise, however, "Greed is NOT good. The only reason Greed appears to be good is because only a few can participate at the top. No one cares for the remaining population. Now is the time where this equation needs to be changed and people at the top are going to have to adjust.

4. Be able and willing to regularly engage in questioning

4. Be able and willing to regularly engage in questioning the forces, institutions, and belief systems that shaped not only his or her own values and beliefs, but those of teachers and classmate, the university and the larger community as well.
Questioning during "debate" is a very central portion of such a "debate". Shouldn't you question those entities within our society that helps form and shape daily activities and decisions? Yes, you should, however, you need to have a background in those areas that you question. Perhaps you have taken classes, or spent much discussion with peers, done research, had experiences that bring out those real life items that explain what you are trying to clarify. Experience usually includes, success, failure, partial failure and incomplete success.
To have your opinion counted in a "discussion", you need to make your point offering reasons for or a cause of your case. Usually people that have done prior research in the topic for the evening, say for a town council meeting, will be listened to more than those who do not know what they are talking about. Our democracy demands that people keep abreast of current, statewide, national and international events so we can understand the activities of our government and contact our representatives with information that may help them with the decision making process.
Representatives in a Democratic Republic such as ours are dependent on "public opinion" to help them vote. Citizens do not have a direct vote on these matters, only the representatives which interpretate what the citizenry wills.

#3. Understand their values and Moral beliefs...

3. Understand their values and moral beliefs and how and why they may differ from those of others. Be able to accept and address criticisms of his/her values and beliefs.
Part of your growth and frame of reference is a development of values and moral beliefs.
VALUE: ...to consider with respect to worth, excellence, usefulness, or importance. What do you value within your makup? What makes you have worth? If your interest is academics, do you "value" a "A" grade, or is a "C" acceptable. The higher your value, the harder you work towards that goal. That is why grades are representative of your efforts. An employer likes to see those kind of values, because it indicates you will be a hard worker, independent, organized, loyal, etc. College recruiters always say that high school grades are the best indicator of success in college. Establishing goals early in life and striving to acheive them makes you work and find out how to acheive things that you may never thought you could.

MORAL BELIEFS: Of or concerned with the principles of right and wrong in conduct and character: teaching of conduct standards of good behavior; conforming to the rules of right conduct: sexually virtuous: judged by one's conscience to be ethical or approved: capable of distinguishing between right and wrong.

Moral beliefs are taught by parents, the village, the government, church, and the friends developed over years. The main portion of moral beliefs is knowing the difference between right and wrong AND ACTING IN THE CORRECT MANNER. Politically speaking, do you vote for a person of proven good character, or someone of lesser character. The church provides morals and ethics that are examples of proper behavior.
Your values and beliefs will not always be the same as others. Do you know why you have your values and beliefs? Can you justify your beliefs in the face of criticism in a "debate" about questioning those beliefs and having people try to change your position? Can you accept others position with their values without making enemies? Remember, if you are entitled to your values/beliefs, so is everyone else . This is an area of political discourse that gets out of hand. Several religious entities become overzealous about their views and attempt to "convert" those that they evangalize. They think if the potential convert does not agree with their position they will go to hell. If you think this is not a big thing, rethink the Iraq war situation. The Muslims think Christians are not a respectful religion because they do not do church-like things everyday like the Muslims do. Christians only go to church once a week. Look at World History, most of the wars through-out history have to do with "religion".

#2

An educated person should...
#2. Understand and evaluate their own and other's decisions.
"Understand and evaluate..." To understand beliefs and values that you accept in your life, you call on reserves first. An example would be: Your frame of reference. This has been discussed in earlier blog messages. In your "frame of reference", you have amassed a tremendous amount of "education", that you call on everyday. It depends upon how diligent you have been in your life to accumulate a good "stockpile", of information. It is good information if you have received it, hashed and rehashed it, and accepted it into your existence as a belief or value that you stand behind. For instance, if your parents were/are conservatives, you have been privy to their discussions and beliefs and have accepted many into your "frame". To you, that becomes the way you look at current happenings and reports. After many challenges to those beliefs, you feel comfortable with some and uncomfortable with others. This is now starting into the "evaluate" portion. You need to see how strongly you believe in those comfortable ones, what makes you comfortable, and why you feel uncomfortable with the ones you can't believe in--and why. You are now starting to weigh what you can support and what is needed for that support and why you can't support an item. One of the most polarizing issues is abortion. If your religious beliefs feel that the mother should carry the fetus full term--NO MATTER WHAT, then that is what you would choose. However, if you believe that the mother's rights to free choice, supercedes the rights of the fetus, then you will desire a mother the choice to have an abortion or not.
New evidence:
Once you have established your value system, you then need to keep current on all the latest technological,current events, local, national and worldwide, Congressional events, your federal political subdivisions (House of Representatives) and Senators for your state , State government members and city government representatives. You should be able to read about an event, enter or not enter it into your frame of reference and be able to stand up and voice an opinion on that event. You also need to keep current on world events and be able to support or not support what is going on and be able to get involvled in discussion about the way you feel about what is going on. How does this effect you? The George W. Bush Presidency made so many "errors" that the public rose up and elected a Barak Obama as President. The people were so insensed that they took their "well-formulated opinions" and put them into action by electing a new political party to the Presidency with new ideas, similar to their own. Those original opinions were ideas that people saw didn't work, they accepted new ideas to alter their "frame of reference" and put that new altered opinion into action.

What should an Educated Citizen Be Able to do? #1

An educated person should be able to do the following:
1. Be able to make conscious, informed decisions in the public sphere and in their private lives and be able to explain their reasons for the decisions.

Be able to make conscious, informed decisons...
A person needs to keep an open enough mind to hear all sides of an issue, make a decision based on his/her frame of reference, plus new evidence that your research has uncovered, and be able to formulate a decision backed up with well-thought out reasoning for your belief.

...in the public sphere...
A person needs to be comfortable enough with that decision to discuss his/her belief so when "threatened" by outside critical opinions, that decision will stand the test of time. That would include being able to talk in public groups, such as a city council meeting, or a planning and zoning meeting. It would be up to you to convince the public entities that you are dealing with that your point of view has: Sound reasoning, the latest available data...that is researchable, and you do it in such a way that people want to be on your side...not against you. When you are talking in the public sphere, you are trying to convince someone to your way of thinking about an issue.

...in their private lives...
Sometimes, there are private entities that need the benefit of your "research", that you need to bring on your side, or just explain, your point of view. All of the above would apply.

...and be able to explain their reasons for the decisions.
When a person "cries Wolf" too many times, people do not listen after being burned. If you tell data in a conversation/debate/ whatever, that is unsubstantiated, people will listen until they find out that it is unsubstantiated. After that, it will take many attempts to gain their "trust" in anything that you say. When you make a statement based on a newspaper/magazine, make sure you remember the date, issue, etc., so people can go back to it and look it up in total. They are entrenched in their own opinion/belief and it will take substantial evidence for them to come to your way of thinking. If you cannot deliver a date of the article...etc....it is the same as being without value.

What should an Educated Citizen Be Able to do?

An educated person should:

1. Be able to make conscious, informed decisions in the public sphere and in their private lives and be able to explain their reasons for the decisions.

2. Understand and evaluate their own and other''s decisions.

3. Understand their values and moral beliefs and how and why they may differ from those of others. Be able to accept and address criticisms of his/her values and beliefs.

4. Be able and willing to regularly engage in questioning the forces, institutions, and belief systems that shaped not only his or her own values and beliefs, but those of teachers and classmates, the university and larger community as well.

5. Be able to think for himself/herself.

6. Be able to engage in discussions about political and economic issues that affect his or her community.

7. Be able to lead.

8. Be open-minded.

9. Be able to communicate and listen effectively.

10. Be able to conceptualize a problem and solve it.

11. Be able to consider ethical issues thoughtfully.

12. Understand that learning is a continuous lifelong process.

13. Be able to think critically, creatively, and independently.

14. Be flexible in order to adapt to changing economic and social conditions, new workforce needs, and the demands of a multicultural society.

15. Be able to explain and use the ideas and principles underlying the major areas of modern knowledge.

16. Be a good citizen based on their knowledge of democracy.

The above items were taken from "Summary of Comments Made on the Educated Citizen List Service, Fall 2003" Some of those items were taken from the California Education Code 66050 and 66070, also from an article in September/October issue of Change: "Teaching students to think."

I will continue the Blog going through each of the above trying to give examples for easier understanding.