“The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.”
-Edith Stilwell
I remember as a child watching the news and admiring the anchors that passed on that day’s news. I thought it was neat how they always seemed so neutral and businesslike while others fought like cats over certain hot topic issues. I could never quite put my finger on what the news guy personally thought. He just read the news and was everyone’s best friend no matter who you were or what you believed.
I admired many of my teachers for some of the same reasons. In sixth grade I had a social studies teacher, Mr. Grier, who held a mock campaign and debate for each class that he taught during a presidential campaign year. I was fortunate enough to have taken his class during the Reagan-Mondale presidential campaign. I remember trying to figure out which he would be voting for. He wouldn’t let on who he liked and refused to answer when asked. I liked it that way. We could all like Mr. Grier and no one’s political identity was influenced by him.
It wasn’t until high school that I eventually started seeing the prejudices slowly seep into the classroom via the teacher. I also began to recognize that the T.V anchors weren’t all they were cracked up to be either.
I started to wonder why Sam Donaldson treated President Reagan as though Reagan had bombed his house rather than Muammar Qaddafi‘s.
While taking my first college courses I was introduced to the first liberals that I had ever met. At least that I was aware of. Some of my professors did little to disguise there political affiliation. They also did not hesitate to inject their liberal opinions into the course curriculum whether it was English, history, or psychology.
It is common knowledge today that the majority of college professors are bleeding heart liberals. In a study conducted by Eli Lehrer it was determined that liberal professors outnumbered conservatives by ten to one and sometimes by more than twenty to one. Think about that for a second. Out of 100 professors on a campus it is possible that less than 5 of them hold conservative ideals!
These are just the results I would have come to expect. But at the time I was having my first interactions with these educated minds and it was a shocking new discovery. I frequently found myself in positions where I felt compelled to confront these instructors. While debating them I noticed that these educated minds were of little consequence when confronted with a small dose of common sense.
Outside of their liberal textbooks, their perceived and often misinterpreted view of history, and their classrooms, intellectual liberals are usually morons. Many of them are unable to hold a decent and normal conversation or apply simple solutions to simple problems. Yet, we are expected to stand in awe of them and their enormous minds, while taking their words and opinions for gospel.
Sorry, but I’m not impressed. While I admire the time, effort, and genius often required to obtain the level education that many of these individuals have acquired, I’m frequently unimpressed.
Instead, I generally have more respect for the guy down the street who can tear a car motor apart and put it back together again. The guy who came about his abilities naturally or who developed his skills tinkering on his car in high school because he liked what he was doing.
I respect the people who build houses, design roads, or for instance, grow our nations food supply. Yes farmers.
When you grow up in Iowa it’s impossible not to become familiar with some aspects of farming. In order to be a successful family farmer a person must be a horticulturalist, a veterinarian, a chemist, a mechanic, a weatherman, a businessman, you name it. Persons such as these have been given natural abilities by God and an innate desire to utilize their abilities. They ultimately find themselves doing what they are doing because they enjoy it and would not want to be doing anything else.
I firmly believe that the truest defining factor in determining intelligence is a person’s ability to adapt to any given situation.
For instance, take your local quantum physics professor and put him in the middle of a cornfield with a 10,000 lbs tractor with a flat tire in the middle of July. Give him five dollars to his name, 3 kids, and 150 head of cattle left to feed before dark and then see what kind of genius he really is.
When I hear people bragging about their Masters degree or their genius level I.Q, I sometimes tell them about the time when I was working in telecommunications and was interviewing job applicants. I interviewed a gentleman who had just graduated from Iowa State University with an MBA. He seemed a little odd during the interview.
He was one of those guys that I mentioned earlier who was probably a real whiz when it came to crunching numbers but had little value doing anything else.
Still, I felt compelled to hire him since the majority of the other applicants I had encountered had little more than a high school diploma. And honestly I was young at the time and still in the mindset where I was influenced and intimidated to some degree by his education. To make a long story short, I hired the guy who managed to get himself fired within 3 months. He was a complete and utter bungling boob.
The irony of the situation is this: At 20 years old I, who had 2 years of community college education, had hired and fired a 25 year old man with a Masters degree. You tell me who the genius is.
There is little that can be done about the political prejudice offered by our institutions of higher learning. We as parents can only teach our children the difference between right and wrong and educate them about the stupidity they are going to be confronted with when they go off to college. As long as colleges continue to blackball prospective professors who do not share their warped perspective on things, we will continue to have the problem of assembly line liberalism that are today’s universities.
This problem has now infiltrated our elementary and high schools and is now the rule rather than the exception. The curriculums offered in schools are ones concerned more with political correctness and tolerance than with accuracy and content.
Even in schools where liberalism has not become an obvious part of the curriculum it has become part of the public school culture. Christmas programs put on by the students have now become holiday programs or have been deleted all together. We don’t want to offend non-Christians.
Our children cannot play dodge ball anymore. We don’t want to hurt the feelings of those kids who constantly get pummeled.
Children had better not think about playing tag. We do not want a child touching another child. No. This would be grounds for a sexual harassment suit.
And whatever you do, do not let your children draw any pictures of guns as this is would advocate violence as an acceptable form of behavior.
I say, this is still America. The America founded on Christian principles. The America where you can go out and play in that dodge ball game of life and succeed if you are tough enough to take your shots and keep trying. This is the America where kids play tag, girls have cooties, and where guns were used to fight for the freedom for my kids to draw pictures of guns.
It was while pursuing my growing interest in history that I first realized how inadequate my formal history classes had been. Whether it is the founding of our country or the Vietnam war era, I had been given a dumbed-down interpreted version of history.
I’ve found that if my children are to have an accurate knowledge of relevant history, it will be up to me to educate myself and disseminate the information to them. I’ve learned I must search to find accurate historical information that has not been watered down by those wanting to make history conform to their beliefs rather than conforming to history’s truths. This is especially true if it is something that is on the liberal “agenda of the month.”
I challenge you to read the writings of Thomas Jefferson as they relate to the second amendment and then look at how your local high school’s textbooks interpret the second amendment. I’m sure you’ll find the differences to be monumental. That is if you can find the second amendment even mentioned in a high school textbook.
Liberals often use the Constitution to advocate their agenda but apparently they do not actually read it. If they did, they would stop their assault on religion (primarily Christianity). They have distorted the separation of church and state issue and used it to further their agenda. The United States Constitution is riddled with references to God throughout the document. It should be evident even to the most Godless liberal that our country was founded upon the basic ideals and values described in Christianity.
I wonder how the events in today’s world will be filtered, altered, and rewritten for future history books. Only time will tell.
The liberals have been successful at manipulating our educational system and history, but we must draw the line at their manipulation of the present. Unfortunately, they have been successful at this tactic as well through their monopoly of the mass media. The liberals have infiltrated the news media from newspapers to T.V and have turned what was once an unbiased form of media into a political propaganda machine equaling the magnitude of Lena Riefenstahl’s propaganda movies in Nazi Germany.
In a study conducted by the Media Research Center’s Free Market Project many of my suspicions were confirmed. The study found that the evening news shows delivered liberal talking points on the social security reform debate more than twice as often as points from the conservative side advocating the restructuring of social security. The study looked at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox News. Shockingly CBS and CNN were found to be the most liberally biased. And equally shocking to some was the fact that the Fox News channel that calls itself “fair and balanced” was found to be just that with 30% liberal talking points and 30% conservative talking points. Fox is often accused of being a conservative station and it is true some of the shows and personalities on their channel do cater to a conservative audience. It is important to note however, that the study examined the content of the news segments of programming and not the content of programs that consist of a hosts opinions which are editorials and not news. Those are different entirely.
Several years ago, I was sitting at a dinner table with a family member discussing the left-wing media and how the news was slanted. My observations were dismissed as right-wing extremist paranoia. Now, after the revelations of the past presidential election I can finally say those four words that I love so much. “I told you so.”
The true colors of the big three networks became obviously apparent even to the most naive and casual followers of the news. Most notable, Dan Rather and CBS were nearly successful in their fictional creation of news by passing off forged documents as genuine. Yes, they were caught creating the news. Even though they could not find credible document analysts to validate their documents, CBS chose to pass them off as factual. This type of unethical news coverage can only suggest an attempt to influence a presidential campaign.
Following the break of the scandal Dan Rather offered what was, at best, a half-hearted apology. I found it pathetic that Rather failed to offer an apology to the one person most affected by the lie, President George W. Bush. By refusing to offer the President an apology, Rather showed his hate and discontent for the President. He also showed that he lacked remorse and that his only regret was being caught. Typical criminal thinking.
CBS was not the only network to get their hand caught in the proverbial cookie jar, however. The infamous ABC memo urged producers to use greater scrutiny when covering news stories related to President Bush than when reporting on the dog-faced Frenchman John Kerry.
Little was reported about NBC and its ties to the dark side. In a sparsely reported story, Tom Brokaw was allegedly under consideration by John Kerry as a potential Vice Presidential running mate. You mean Tom Brokaw is a democrat? Wow, who would’ve thunk it?
So there you have it. The three major news networks busted within a year of each other. Their attempts to “wag the dog” were made public to those who are willing to see what is right in front of them. Still, there are people who don’t get it, and continue to get the bulk of their information from sound bytes on the news and do not scrutinize or question the crap that their being fed. They eat what is put in front of them and follow the direction they’re being pointed just like good little sheep.
Amazingly, even with the media’s all out assault on President Bush he was able to claim a fairly decisive victory. This, I believe, is in large part due to the increasing popularity of conservative radio personalities who have become information equalizers for a growing number of people.
I grew up listening to talk radio. Whether it was advice guru Bruce Williams or the godfather of conservative radio Rush Limbaugh, I have always enjoyed these programs as a means of entertainment as well as education. With more and more conservative radio shows experiencing greater popularity it is becoming increasingly difficult to listen to them all and get an adequate assessment of each. Most are intelligent and articulate men who are knowledgeable in history, government, and current events.
Most importantly, they bring a truth and a revolutionary spirit to their media forum. Conservatives often have beliefs that are not popular or politically correct. I admire men or women who can stand on a mountain and shout out their beliefs to millions listening around the country and do so not because what they are saying is popular, but because it is something that they believe in.
People often accuse T.V or radio networks for being politically biased based on the content of their programs or opinions expressed by hosts represented on their stations. This may be true in some cases, but people need to be able to understand the differences in programming being offered to them.
The distinction must be made between editorialists or commentators, and journalists. When a person listens to a Rush Limbaugh or a Sean Hannity they know they are getting a politically biased perspective on news and events. Limbaugh, Hannity, and others like them are editorialists or commentators. They make their living of giving their take on politics, news, or whatever they may decide to speak about on a given day. They are not news reporters and they do not hide their opinions or affiliations.
Journalists, on the other hand make a living covering the news. When people watch the news at night, they expect to get an overview of that days news events. If a plane crashes into a mountain in Colorado, you expect the local news to give you the facts about the crash.
Where was the crash?
How many victims were there?
Were there any survivors?
What caused the crash?
These are some of the questions that you would expect to be answered by the news anchor, providing that the information was available. You would not expect the news anchor to say something like:
“Another plane crashed into a mountain today in Colorado. This clearly shows that FAA safety standards are unsatisfactory. If I were you, I would demand that the FAA and the airline industry take another look at their safety inspection standards before climbing aboard another airplane.”
The problem today is that journalists are allowing their opinions to influence how they cover the news. What they cover as news, the amount of attention given to particular news stories, and the type of attention given to stories are all being influenced by the message that a journalists or networks are trying to send.
Once again, I’ll make reference to the 2004 presidential campaign. I use this example frequently because it was the first time in my life that I had seen the American media so actively and obviously involved in campaigning for a candidate for President. They attempted to build John Kerry up by tearing George W. Bush down.
Bush was blamed for everything from the attacks on 9/11 to the hurricanes in the Gulf Coast. Yes, hurricanes. No, they did not say that the evil Bush had created a weather machine to alter the weather, but references were made to the global warming “crisis” and how Bush’s environmental policies may be affecting it all.
Though the media would not come out and pass these things off as facts, they would find a way to fit them into stories. Whether it was showing an interview of some environmentalist whacko broad with hairy armpits standing in a snow storm talking about global warming, or a pacifist liberal democrat blaming Bush for 9/11 - stories like these were crammed down our throats. People buy into this garbage. Is this really news or is it the biased and slanderous opinions of people who truly do not have a clue?
Remember sometime in early October 2004 when the flu shot vaccine shortage became news? You would have thought that the black-plague had reared its ugly head or the terrorists had hit us with a smallpox bomb. Bush was blamed for the flu shot crisis. Crisis? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve never had a flu shot and rarely have gotten the flu. I understand that the flu can be deadly for some people, but the media attempted to equate the flu problem with major plagues that would cause nations to see entire families literally obliterated.
Bush was characterized, once again, as an evil villain who had allowed this to happen. It was as if he had not only allowed it to happen, but it was presented as though he had intentionally orchestrated the whole thing. The media did everything short of showing footage of President Bush rummaging through a laboratory destroying test tubes while giggling like a twelve-year-old school girl.
The real news story should have been the media’s compulsion to create panic among the masses in order to increase ratings or sell newspapers. And, I almost forgot, to influence voters. The crisis of the week turned out to be for nothing. After November 2nd there was not a word mentioned about the looming vaccine shortage or the upcoming crisis. That is because the story no longer had political value.
Ironically, less than three months later clinics were trying to do everything possible to give the vaccine away. Now get this, they had so much of it left over that they feared the existing inventory would go bad. Apparently, the batches have a specific shelf life and will no longer be viable if not used by that time. Apparently, we would live to get the flu another day.
Another shining example of the media’s failed attempt to create a crisis and influence an election was the missing weapons cache in Iraq. Remember that one?
A couple days before the election a story broke about a missing weapons cache. On October 25, 2004 the New York Times published a story about 380 tons of explosive material that had suddenly come up missing. Actually, the story was months old and coincidentally been printed just a week before the Presidential election. There was a media frenzy as the media spun versions of the story which basically played out that Bush was to blame. The media painted picture of Bush, this time is was of him as a keystone cop. They did everything short of showing footage of Bush falling asleep at his post while guarding the weapons as terrorists tip-toe past him carry boxes of explosives.
Upon further examination it turned out that the story wasn’t as big as previously reported. Not only that but the accuracy of the story became questionable.
During a press conference from the Pentagon Army Major Austin Pearson, who had been responsible for securing the weapons cache, reported that the site was unsecured when his men arrived in mid April 2003. Major Pearson explained that his soldiers removed 250 tons of explosives and other related materials. It was obvious to anyone to watched the press conference that this soldier clearly knew his job, was knowledgeable, professional and very specific with details.
To the average person, the amount of weapons in question seemed to be mind boggling at a couple to a few hundred tons. However, even at that amount it was a tiny fraction of the weapons already seized or destroyed by that time in Iraq. Some experts reported that it was only one-tenth of one percent of the weapons already seized or destroyed.
Ultimately, not enough was known about the story for it to have ever been a story. It was as if the media was rushing to get the story out now and with little or no effort or concern with obtaining the facts.
Prior to the breaking of the story all that could be heard about weapons in the news was Bush’s failing to find the weapons of mass destruction that he sought. After the story broke the missing weapons cache was frequently referred to as weapons of mass destruction. When, in fact, these were the types of weapons being seized and or destroyed by coalition forces everyday.
The story vanished quicker than a bottle of vodka at a Kennedy family reunion on November 3rd. What had for a few days been the biggest news story since Clinton’s vanishing cigar act, was now nothing but a footnote in history. Nothing could be found in the news, following the election, about the once infamous missing weapons cache. As a matter of fact, a flashback quickly took place back to the days where we questioned the whereabouts of WMD’s.
All along the story had been nothing other than another failed political ploy. Another October surprise. Only this time the surprise was that 51% of us weren’t stupid enough to fall for those tricks. The sad thing is 48% of you were.
The days of watching the news at night and going to bed feeling confident that you had been given an honest dose of the days news events are gone. The days of an unbiased media are history. The days of admiring news anchors for there ability to blend in to the social and political landscape are now distant memories. The “free” press now meddles in politics trying to influence the masses. The media that should be giving us news stories of interest now feed us news stories that are in their special interest.