Let me see a show of hands…how many of you reading this were at child at one point or another in your life? Hold them high…good…1,2,3…OK. That looks like just about everyone.
I want you to remember back to a conversation I’m sure we all had with our parents at least once. Your parents would tell you to do something, you’d ask, “Why?”, and they’d say, “Because I said so!”?
Do you remember when that answer stopped being good enough? There comes a point in everyone’s life when they stop blindly following authority and start thinking for themselves.
Around the time a kid gets to be eight or nine years old, they start to question why they’re supposed to do what they’re being told to do. At that age, they’re no longer content to simply follow orders, they want to know the reasoning behind them. This pushback against authority allows them to improve their logic skills and to better understand how decisions are made.
Sadly, many people have either forgotten how, or have lost the ability, to think independently.
Benjamin Franklin said, “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”
By any measure, Ben Franklin was a pretty smart guy, well, except for the whole flying a kite in a thunderstorm thing. But, other than that, if Ben said something, then it’s probably worth listening to.
When we question authority, we’re keeping those authorities honest. If we don’t question authority, then they’re free to do pretty much whatever they want, whenever they want, to whoever they want.
Many people today aren’t following Ben’s advice and believe anything told to them by a person in authority, even when what they’re told doesn’t make any sense. The authority could be the government, a credentialed “expert” or the media. If they say it, people believe it.
It turns out that this great responsibility of questioning authority is remarkably simple to do. When government says you must do something, ask “why”. When the government says you can’t do something, ask “why not”. And, when the media or experts tells you to believe something, you can demand that they produce the facts to back up their claims.
The instant that a politician decides to run for office, they become at least a little corrupt. Their trustworthiness is tainted because their main goal is to be elected, so they’ll tell you whatever they think you want to hear. They convince themselves that the good they can do once in office outweighs the lies they need to tell to get there. Once they’re in office, their main goal is to be reelected, so their strategy remains the same.
So, you can’t really know whether what they’re doing is in the best interest of their constituents, or the best interest of themselves. Challenging them is the only way to be sure which one it is.
I’ve written many times about the bias in the media. In fact, the media is so biased it’s hard to comprehend why anyone would trust them. Here’s the tricky part, the bias is demonstrated in what they tell you, and what they don’t.
Here’s an example:
The State of Texas, along with 18 other states, are suing Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania. CNN says they’re doing so “even though there is no evidence of widespread fraud”. But that’s not what the case is about. What CNN wants you to believe is that this is just another “baseless claim” of election fraud. What CNN doesn’t tell you is that the suit claims that the four states in question violated constitutional law when the election laws were changed by someone other than the state legislatures. The case isn’t about fraud at all. But they don’t tell you that.
The motto of The New York Times is, “All the News That’s Fit to Print”. Another way of putting that is that they’ll only report newsworthy items. But, who decides what news has worth? Well, they do. That is, they and the rest of the media. And, since they get to decide, they only “print” items that support their bias. This means that there’s a whole lot of stuff they’re not telling you and that you should know.
What can you do? Question everything they tell you and demand that they give you information and not just what they consider to be news. And, you can look elsewhere for your information.
To make sure you’re not missing anything important, go outside of your social media echo chamber to hear alternate points of view from people you might not agree with. Try sources like Newsmax, The Epoch Times and One America Network. If you’re a Liberal, you’re likely to be upset by some of what you find. But, it’s far better to be informed and upset than ignorant and happy.
Now, I can already hear some of you say dismissively, “Pffft. Those aren’t reputable sources of information!” But, if you hear the truth, does it really matter where it comes from? The truth, from any source, is still the truth.
If you blindly believe everything you’re told, you may never see what’s really happening. Albert Einstein put it better when he said, “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
