By Warner Todd Huston
Last Sunday, from the pen of editorial page editor of the Seattle Times James Vesely, we got a pretty good indication of why the new media of the Internet is so swiftly taking over the traditional role of the old, dead tree media. One word describes it; arrogance. It is an arrogance of the assumed supremacy of the old media and the air of entitlement that it holds dear. It is the presumption that what they write is "truth," that newspapers are the arbiters of that truth, and that journalists are "democracy" personified and that without them we are naught but a "banana republic." And it is the sneering, discountenance with which they look upon the reading public as the great unwashed that has finally caught up with them. However, some are beginning to notice it and unless the dead tree media realizes this truth staring them in the face, they truly are a doomed industry.
Mr. Vesely wrongly imagines that Americans are not abandoning his beloved, old media in favor of the Internet because of the failed content of the old media. Vesely imagines that people are not "willingly turning from fiber to cyber" as a "replacement of … the methodology of reporting and editing" of the old media. Vesely thinks people are only turning to the Internet because it is faster and more "modern." He imagines that newspapers are "carefully edited" and that they speak truth and, that being true, people can’t possibly be turning away from his fellows because of content.
Here is is deluding himself. People are leaving the dead tree media in droves because they simply do not trust them anymore, their "methodology" has become corrupt and self-serving as well as ideologically homogenized all across the industry offering few avenues for differing opinion.
So, why are newspapers in decline? Amazingly, Vesley seems to imagine that the only reason newspapers are declining in circulation is because they are delivered by "a 13-year-old on a bicycle working after school." He thinks the method of delivery is the only reason the old media is in decline.
But what about that Internet, doohickey, anyway? What does Vesely think of it? It turns out he feels it is all just "opinions" that would "befuddle the finest espionage organization" to figure out. Vesely imagines that the Internet is nothing but "rumor."
Foremost, a decent newspaper is the enemy of rumor and a citizen of its place. Blogs are not the enemy of rumor, nor is talk radio or cable television. Rumor is not the substitute for truth, and it takes journalism to sift for truth.
Talk about clueless.
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Posted by Walt as Biased Media at 2:13 AM EST
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By Thomas E. Brewton
The "common good," Democrats’ current campaigning slogan, is a new name for the same old attack upon the moral virtues championed by Plato and Aristotle.
Academic propagandists of atheistic materialism have warped Plato’s dialogues into a formulaic skepticism aimed at discrediting Western civilization’s Judeo-Christian heritage.
A couple of illustrative examples:
A classic that used to be on most college reading lists illustrates the negative aspects of public opinion, the hook upon which liberals hang their demand for elimination of the electoral college and selection of the President solely by popular vote.
Plato’s short dialog, The Apology, recounts Socrates’ address to the Athenian assembly that was to decide whether his fate was to be death or exile. The democratic assembly, 501 Athenians chosen randomly by lot, and thus a good representation of public opinion, had already convicted Socrates of talking to young people in ways said to be subversive to the Athenian city-state.
Socrates outlines the charges of which he had been convicted and shows conclusively that the assembly, i.e., public opinion, had not understood what he actually had said, nor could it demonstrate that his activities were subversive. In fact, Socrates traced the public opinion against him to a small handful of individuals who had spread false rumors about him, more or less what our own political campaigns consist of.
The message of The Apology that liberal-progressive teachers today inculcate in their students is a false extrapolation from Socrates’ famous assertion that the untried life is unworthy of living, meaning that the true philosophic mind should always enquire about the truth of commonly accepted dogma of public opinion. This is taken by today’s liberal educators as an endorsement of radical efforts to undermine traditions of religion and morality, to say that students should question and reject the paradigm of the founding generations of our nation. In the words of the Baby Boomer student anarchists, "Don’t trust anyone over thirty."
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Posted by Walt as Cultural Issues at 7:35 AM EST
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By Warner Todd Huston
The recent outrage against Constitutional liberty by the Boston Police raises some very interesting questions. Can we voluntarily give up our Constitutional rights? Further, can government legally violate our rights even if we ask them to do so? These are questions that we all need to consider before allowing police into our homes, invited or no.
Last week The Boston Globe reported that the Boston police are about to launch a program in "high-crime neighborhoods" where a roving band of policemen will walk door-to-door and ask parents if they have permission to search the home for guns. These police squads intend to conduct searches without warrants, claiming that the invitation by the homeowner is all they need to commence the search.
Like all steps down the road to tyranny, the pavement here is being laid by folks with good intentions, officials who are, after all, only trying to "help" the community. The Commissar of Police, Edward Davis claims that he is giving the folks of Boston "an option" for what to do about gun violence in the city. The cops "ask permission" to enter and supposedly only do so when given the OK. They also target specific homes that have been fingered as troublesome by neighbors and other intelligence sources.
Some community leaders are professing their faith in this new program that is patterned after one instituted, but later abandoned, by the St. Louis police. Boston’s community leaders seem ready to give this a try because the program is supposed to be spurred by community interaction and tips to the Boston PD. It is interesting and instructive, however, to note that some reports about the demise of the St. Louis program claim that one of the reasons they shut it down there was because the St.
Louis PD began to rely more on their own intelligence and less on community tips. Meaning, the community was no longer involved and the police there began to act as if it was solely their own resources
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Posted by Walt as U.S. Constitutional Issues at 7:35 AM EST
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By Alan Caruba
The United Nations conference in Bali, attended by some 10,000 participants and observers, is likely to make future generations conclude that ours was deranged to be discussing how humans could have any affect whatever on the climate. They will, in retrospect, agree that the global warming theory was a lie whose agenda was to retard anything that might extend and enhance life on earth.
The Protocol is based entirely on a lie that predicts dramatic and imminent global warming. Global warmers insist that carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced, but carbon dioxide does not cause climate change. Climatologists will tell you that any rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not precede, but follows warming cycles.
The science is well known, but hucksters like the odious Al Gore and those behind the original Kyoto Protocol, with the media as accessories, have created a climate of crisis.
It’s a very good thing that our Senate voted unanimously in 1997 against binding America to the United Nations Kyoto Protocol on Climate Control and that both the Clinton and Bush Administrations refused to act on the proposed limits. The reason for the Senate resolution was to avoid “serious harm to the economy of the United States.”
A November 30 Bloomberg News article by Kristian Rix and Mathew Carr reported that Japan, Spain, and Italy face as much as $33 billion in fines as the result of having agreed to reduce so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions and failed.
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Posted by Walt as Environmental Issues, Global Warming at 12:59 AM EST
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By Alan Caruba
Historians and others love to make lists of the best and the worst of personalities and events, so permit me to offer a candidate as the Worst Ex-President Ever. I give you Jimmy Carter, anti-Semite, intellectual and moral weakling, and all-around bad person.
I think Jimmy will edge out Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor who made a botch of the Reconstruction after the Civil War and cannot even begin to compare with the largely unknown Harry Truman who succeeded Franklin Delano Roosevelt to see through to a successful conclusion of World War II, the implementation of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, and after other wise decisions, retired to his home in Independence, Missouri. Neither Truman, nor other former Presidents, constantly sought the public spotlight to voice criticism of those who followed him into the Oval Office.
Jimmy Carter, who gained the highest office largely because of the voter’s revulsion against the Watergate scandals and the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, cannot shut up. During his time in office he blamed the American people for a “malaise” that affected the economy that was largely in the dumps. It never occurred to him that cutting taxes and taking other measures might have helped stabilize or jump-start the economy.
He was in office in 1979 when the Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took our diplomats hostage. Other than a poorly planned, failed military mission to extricate them, the voters would have to wait 444 days for Ronald Reagan to take office before their release.
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Posted by Walt as U.S Foreign Policy, U.S. Political Issues at 2:13 AM EST
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By Alan Caruba
The libraries of the world are filled with books devoted to history and new ones are published on any almost daily basis, but if their lessons are ignored, it condemns nations and the peoples of the world to horrors that increase with the evolving technology of death.
A book that should be mandatory reading for all the current and aspiring leaders of the world is David A. Andelman’s “A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.”
“If there was a single moment in the twentieth century when it might have been different, this was the moment.” The gathering in Paris that followed the end of World War I and the defeat of Germany, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires did not merely fail to insure peace; it set in motion the events leading to World War II, the conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and the tinderbox that is today’s Middle East.
Most Americans, if they know anything about the last century, may associate the event that brought together the United States, England, France, Japan, and representatives of colonial and emerging nations with President Woodrow Wilson’s dream of creating a League of Nations. It was his dream to create an organization that would enforce international laws. WWI was to be “the war to end all wars.” With the exception of the hapless Herbert Hoover, the U.S. has not had such a dangerously naïve, arrogant, and failed presidency until Jimmy Carter.
Following the end of World War II, another such effort was made with the establishment of the United Nations. It has proven to be every bit the failure as the League and infinitely more corrupt.
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Posted by Walt as U.S Foreign Policy at 12:44 AM EST
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By Alan Caruba
“A petition seeking Endangered Species Act protection for a rare loon that breeds in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve has been accepted for review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service” noted a May 29, 2007 Associated Press article. “Conservationists hope an eventual listing of the yellow-billed loon will curb petroleum development in the 23-million acre reserve that covers much of Alaska’s North Slope.”
So, at a time when a $100 barrel of oil makes economies around the world quiver, the “conservationists” are more interested in a yellow-billed loon than in your ability to drive to work, pick up the kids at school, or just go anywhere in your car. Thank you, environmentalists everywhere, thank you for being so obscenely oblivious to reality.
However, yellow-billed loons are not sufficiently illustrative of alleged dangers to species in the frozen North. Polar bears, however, are. Polar bears are the poster children of global warming and we all “know” that all the ice is melting in the Arctic, the bears are drowning or just damn well running out of food because “human activity” is affecting an environment in which they have lived and thrived for millennia.
If you believe such nonsense, let me first remind you that the scientific name for polar bears is “Ursus maritimus”, bespeaking their distinctive ability to swim anywhere they want.
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Posted by Walt as Environmental Issues, Global Warming, Oil Production at 7:32 AM EST
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By Jim Kouri
In 1990, National Association of Chiefs of Police treasurer, Debbi Chitwood, suggested that a program be put into place where age-appropriate new gifts be selected, wrapped and sent to survivor children at Christmas time and at the time of each child’s birthday in honor of their mother or father who was killed in the line of duty.
Volunteering time on her weekends, a special computer program was devised by the American Police Hall of Fame archival records director to keep track of the ages and birthdays of the children.
Within a decade, the program has grown from a concept to a reality where the kids look forward to their gifts from the American Police Hall of Fame and write notes of thanks back which are shared with members, donors and friends.
Last year alone 833 survivor children were sent Christmas or holiday gifts and in recent years NACOP has added the names of children of disabled and paralyzed officers with the assistance of the National Association of Chiefs of Police. This is a program that warms the hearts of the kids, concerned citizens, and staff alike who have already begun to send out gifts for the 2005 Christmas season.
Sadly, a law enforcement officer is killed in the line of duty on an average of one every three days.
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Posted by Walt as General Commentary at 7:31 AM EST
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By Warner Todd Huston
The fields of DNA and gene manipulation research are incredibly exciting for the good that it can offer mankind. Imagine a day when the results of such research can assist mankind to treat previously untreatable diseases, maybe even prevent them? Wouldn’t it be tremendous to be able to alter the DNA of an unborn fetus to prevent its developing spina bifida or Down’s syndrome? Wouldn’t it be a Godsend if we could manipulate our genes in order to shut off the cancer cells that ravage us or rebuild broken spinal chords? Who would stand against such worthwhile gains in health, medicine and science? Of course, no caring human could oppose such work.
But that same work has its dark side and this is a subject that medical science is doing its level best to pretend does not exist. That dark side is not getting its due in the debate of the future of mankind through science. Unfortunately, it is not merely something to scoff at as unlikely because, for all our scientific knowledge, we are still, after all, men. Evil, selfishness, hatred and ignorance will remain with us whether we are free of cancer or know our full DNA sequence or not and those innate flaws inherent in man has, can and will corrupt the good that his science can do. The potential for evil is there no matter how wondrous that science can be.
The New York Times recently published a story about this very topic. Naturally, to further their own agenda, they only discussed a small portion of the potential evil that could result in the misuse of DNA research and left an awful lot of the debate unaddressed. In a story by Amy Harmon, the Times worried only abut racial prejudices being revived by DNA research ("In DNA Era, Worries About Revival of Prejudice") as that research begins to decode the small differences that accounts for skin color or other things that denote racial groups. From physical characteristics to propensity for race specific disease, DNA research is beginning to map these differences giving hope that, at least in the case of disease, those differences might lead to treatments and prevention. But, the Times worries that this research might also revive discrimination based on those differences. "The notion that race is more than skin deep," the Times reports, "could undermine principles of equal treatment and opportunity that have relied on the presumption that we are all fundamentally equal."
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Posted by Walt as Biased Media, Science at 7:47 AM EST
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By Jim Kouri
"I shudder to think how millions of California children will be led astray, how marriage will be destroyed, and how immorality will step on the neck of morality if Arnold Schwarzenegger signs five anti-family bills into law. The ‘Terminator’ has less than two weeks to sign or veto very bad bills!" said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families.
Thomasson is disappointed with California’s Christian pastors and elders. In the last five days, many individuals and several businesses have responded to CCF’s action alert. However, to date, only one church has faxed in veto letters to the liberal Schwarzenegger’s office in Sacramento.
"This is not right, since the majority of pastors in California oppose sexual indoctrination of schoolchildren (SB 777 and AB 394), oppose demeaning marriage (AB 43 and AB 102), and oppose forcing the homosexual-bisexual-transsexual agenda on businesses, organizations, and churches (AB 14)," said Thomasson.
"Distracted drivers cause car accidents; distracted pastors may accidentally assist anti-family bills to be signed into law. The Governor will notice our loud voice or our relative silence. The choice is [ours]," he added.
California’s leading pro-family organizations are urging Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to veto five bills they believe will harm children, marriage, and religious freedom that are on his desk. And the Governor is taking notice — he’s listed the five bills as among a dozen pieces of legislation upon which telephone callers to his State Capitol office can "vote."
Campaign for Children and Families (CCF), Capitol Resource Institute, California Family Council, and Traditional Values Coalition are all urging vetoes of two school sexual indoctrination bills (SB 777 and AB 394), two marriage-demeaning bills (AB 102 and AB 43), and a bill that forces homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexuality upon businesses, churches, and nonprofit member organizations such as the Boy Scouts (AB 14).
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Posted by Walt as Cultural Issues, Education at 7:45 AM EST
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