First Amendment vs. Liberty?
- Friday, September 30 2005 @ 08:41 AM CST
- Contributed by: filbert
- Views: 2,178
During my little sabbatical from posting, I've had some time to think about a few things. I've stepped away from the news, played a bit of Civilization III, watched/recorded some MST3K, took in some football.
I've come to some conclusions:
1) The major news media is irredeemably corrupt, biased, and actively working to undermine the soul of our country, the United States of America. Emphasis on the word "irredeemably."
I do not believe that the news media in its current form can rise above its baser instincts as shown by Shepard Smith and the pack of baying hounds who transformed the Hurricane Katrina response into the Bataan Death March without a shred of substantial evidence.
2) The implicit deification of the person in the office of President of the United States is repugnant. I am referring to the deification of Bush not by his supporters, but by his opponents: supporters of Islamic terrorism (aka anti-war activists) and the news media (aka the Baying Hound Pack and their followers).
Case in point: the Iraq War. The President can't declare war. Congress has that power. Congress exercised that power (absent only the word "war") when the House and the Senate passed the Iraq War Resolution. Bush, the Congress, and the rest of the world had the same facts in front of them. It was Congress' job to weigh the facts in evidence and either declare war or not.
They declared war.
So, if there is blame, it is laid primarily at the feet of every Representative and Senator who voted for the resolution. They had the final say, and they spoke. That is, if they were wrong in their fundamental decision. I continue to believe that it was in fact the right decision at the right time.
Even absent the WMD mantra, there were good and sufficent reasons to take down Saddam's regime. There was in fact evidence for WMD's found in Iraq. There wasn't much, and it was nowhere near the threat it seemed before the war, but it was there. Did you know that? Of course you didn't. Those small but inconvenient finds did not support the news media Hate-W meme, so they simply buried on page A-27, and would never have been noticed at all if not for the Internet and conservative talk radio. (See point #1).
3) Some of the same people are saying "if only I knew now what I knew then, I'd have voted the other way." Yeah, hindsight's a B-itch, isn't it? But let's speculate for a minute on where we would be if the war resolution had been defeated.
Saddam Hussein would still be in power, murdering and terrorizing his citizens. His sons would still be picking girls off the street, raping them then tossing them away like bagels from a street vendor.
With the loss of Afganistan as an operational base, al Qaida would move elsewhere. Their plain intent is to create a radical Islamic Caliphate whose heartland would be Iraq. It is possible, even likely, that AQ would have settled in Iraq, not to blow up car bombs, but to plan the next, bigger attack on the U.S.
So that's what the news media is working towards (along with the pro-terrorism demonstrators and their tragically deluded puppet figurehead Cindy Sheehan): the Islamic Caliphate, continued terror and misery for the Iraqis, and the ultimate world domination of radical Islam. Yeah, I know that any sentence that contains the words "world domination" sounds seriously wacked out. But that's where we are.
4) Katrina would still have hit New Orleans. The corrupt and incompetent Louisiana and New Orleans governments would still have badly fumbled the response, then passed the blame to FEMA. And Shepard Smith would still have made a spectacle of himself on the highway overpass.
I conclude with great regret that the news media is an unregulated center of power in our society. Like all such centers, as Lord Acton noted, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
The news media is dangerously close to absolute power, and is deeply, irredeemably corrupt, at a time when I believe our national survival is (or soon will be) threatened by a radical and violent religion.
We are coming close to having to make a horrible choice: Limiting First Amendment freedom of the press, or national survival. The thought chills me to the bone.
I've come to some conclusions:
1) The major news media is irredeemably corrupt, biased, and actively working to undermine the soul of our country, the United States of America. Emphasis on the word "irredeemably."
I do not believe that the news media in its current form can rise above its baser instincts as shown by Shepard Smith and the pack of baying hounds who transformed the Hurricane Katrina response into the Bataan Death March without a shred of substantial evidence.
2) The implicit deification of the person in the office of President of the United States is repugnant. I am referring to the deification of Bush not by his supporters, but by his opponents: supporters of Islamic terrorism (aka anti-war activists) and the news media (aka the Baying Hound Pack and their followers).
Case in point: the Iraq War. The President can't declare war. Congress has that power. Congress exercised that power (absent only the word "war") when the House and the Senate passed the Iraq War Resolution. Bush, the Congress, and the rest of the world had the same facts in front of them. It was Congress' job to weigh the facts in evidence and either declare war or not.
They declared war.
So, if there is blame, it is laid primarily at the feet of every Representative and Senator who voted for the resolution. They had the final say, and they spoke. That is, if they were wrong in their fundamental decision. I continue to believe that it was in fact the right decision at the right time.
Even absent the WMD mantra, there were good and sufficent reasons to take down Saddam's regime. There was in fact evidence for WMD's found in Iraq. There wasn't much, and it was nowhere near the threat it seemed before the war, but it was there. Did you know that? Of course you didn't. Those small but inconvenient finds did not support the news media Hate-W meme, so they simply buried on page A-27, and would never have been noticed at all if not for the Internet and conservative talk radio. (See point #1).
3) Some of the same people are saying "if only I knew now what I knew then, I'd have voted the other way." Yeah, hindsight's a B-itch, isn't it? But let's speculate for a minute on where we would be if the war resolution had been defeated.
Saddam Hussein would still be in power, murdering and terrorizing his citizens. His sons would still be picking girls off the street, raping them then tossing them away like bagels from a street vendor.
With the loss of Afganistan as an operational base, al Qaida would move elsewhere. Their plain intent is to create a radical Islamic Caliphate whose heartland would be Iraq. It is possible, even likely, that AQ would have settled in Iraq, not to blow up car bombs, but to plan the next, bigger attack on the U.S.
So that's what the news media is working towards (along with the pro-terrorism demonstrators and their tragically deluded puppet figurehead Cindy Sheehan): the Islamic Caliphate, continued terror and misery for the Iraqis, and the ultimate world domination of radical Islam. Yeah, I know that any sentence that contains the words "world domination" sounds seriously wacked out. But that's where we are.
4) Katrina would still have hit New Orleans. The corrupt and incompetent Louisiana and New Orleans governments would still have badly fumbled the response, then passed the blame to FEMA. And Shepard Smith would still have made a spectacle of himself on the highway overpass.
I conclude with great regret that the news media is an unregulated center of power in our society. Like all such centers, as Lord Acton noted, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
The news media is dangerously close to absolute power, and is deeply, irredeemably corrupt, at a time when I believe our national survival is (or soon will be) threatened by a radical and violent religion.
We are coming close to having to make a horrible choice: Limiting First Amendment freedom of the press, or national survival. The thought chills me to the bone.