Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
When liberals talk about "informed democracy," it's usually a ruse to browbeat the already liberal media into moving further to the leftwrites Benjamin Duffy.
They claim that the press is doing a poor job of informing the citizenry - which it is - but then complain that the press isn't doing a good enough job of disseminating the liberal talking points.
a difference between asking "Do you think Bush was right to start a(n illegal) war?", "Do you think the U.S. Army was right to invade (Saddam Hussein's) Iraq?", and "Do you think the United States was right to overthrow a dictator (who had killed 300,000 of his fellow citizens)?" Note that each question changes even more by simply adding — or, alternatively, removing — the respective phrase in parentheses.) incongruous as it may be. As a matter of fact, I have reason to believe that in any case, these questions were reframed after they were asked in order to make Republicans look ridiculous — make them look more Taliban-like — but since I have no proof of this, I do not dwell into the issue. The conclusion (as I write later on): If you really want to get to know the population or a segment thereof (rather than make a caricature of them), it makes more sense to frame your queries as if they were multiple-choice questions.As I've mentioned before, I'm putting the finishing touches on my new book, American Taliban, which catalogues the ways in which modern-day conservatives share the same agenda as radical Jihadists in the Islamic world.
As Ann Althouse states, "It turns out this poll was designed to help him with that theory." ("As far as Research2000 is concerned," according to a commentator on Althouse's post, "they had Coakley over Brown 49-41 on January 14th. So they were wrong by 13 points 5 days before that election.")Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not?The exact reverse of this question might sound something like "Has Barack Obama done nothing wrong — not a single thing — has he, in fact, been right on the money every time during his first year in the White House?" Now, this may come as a surprise for America's (and the planet's) blame-America-firsters, but for one thing a number of people do not think the nation's commander-in-chief should act as the nation's apologist-in-chief (for instance bowing to foreign monarchs). For another, some of us remember Obama's wanting (or, rather, his followers wanting) to change the U.S. Constitution so that he could be reelected endlessly, winning more than two elections (apparently — in the best of worlds — ending up as president-for-life). How about the attempts to take over one sixth of the economy and to ram that law through Congress — and down the American people's collective throats — with no input from the opposition, from the American people, and, indeed, from his own party members (this, in direct contradiction — I mention this for all the people who love the idea of impeaching an American president for his alleged lies — of his campaign promises concerning CSPAN's cameras)?
Yes 39
No 32
Not Sure 29
For what? Who the heck knows.
Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?
Yes 63
No 21
Not Sure 16
That's the power of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, after one year of relentlessly claiming Obama is the second coming of Lenin ... and Hitler!
If anybody has made anybody seem like the second coming of Hitler, it isn't the Republicans with Obama; it is the Democrats (and their like-minded European brethren) with George W Bush.
How wrong (or how allegedly lame-brained) is it (for "homegrown teabaggers" or others) to refer to a man as a socialist when that man has taken over General Motors — whether or not you agree with that — and who has attempted— again, whether or not you agree with that — to take over a sixth of the economy? During which time, he and the Socialist — sorry, the Democratic — heads of the House and the Senate (remember when they passed the stimulus bill with no input from either the opposing party or the members of their own party?) tried to get the whole deal decided behind closed doors with a handful of actors, acting almost as if the country were a one-party state. (To return to the previous question, how inane does the threat of impeachment become in this case?) Notice that I haven't even mentioned Obama's support for (or lack of a stand against) known socialist strongmen such as the Castro brothers, Hugo Chávez, and their like-minded brethren…Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?It may well be that most of the writings concerning the wherabouts of Obama's birth sound delusional, but, as far as I can tell, James L Lambert's arguments are far from nonsensical…
Yes 42
No 36
Not Sure 22
We still have over a half of Republicans who don't think Obama was born in the US or think it's a matter open to debate.
There are two problems with the alleged deluded "Birther" conspiracy that are overseen by Kos (and everywhere else). They are, first, that the real, original "long" birth certificate never seems to have materialized (the certificate of live birth being, and please correct me if I'm mistaken, a recent production); second, that to believe that an American citizen born to a foreign father who lived much of his childhood abroad may indeed have been born in a foreign country is not that far-fetched.
and that fact is that Obama is a man, a person whose word should never be doubted, who is capable of no lying, no evil, no chicanery. If he tells you that, say, he is a Christian, then how dare you deny he is a religious man?! How dare you imply that he is a Muslim?! How dare you state he is a socialist?!Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?Again, there is a difference between "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?" and "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the United States to win?" — or, alternatively, asking "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to lose?" or "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the United States to lose?" Barack Obama has said several times that in this new, reset world of ours, there should be no losers and winners (or words to that effect), he has pointed out the many times the United States has allegedly been wrong (while making all due apologies), and, especially, he has been (or seemed) more concerned with giving Miranda rights rather than to learn more about the thugs planning (further) terrorist attacks.
Yes 24
No 43
Not Sure 33
Not just a quarter of Republicans believe this ludicrous premise, but another third think it's a matter open to debate. How do you negotiate with a party whose rank and file are that divorced from reality?
Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?This is called Kos's grotesque caricature weapon. Check the opposite question (asked to either Republicans or Democrats): "Do you believe that ACORN is an entirely honest organization which is deserving of the utmost trust?" Or how about this one: "Do you think ACORN played no tricks during the 2008 elections?" Those options we do not have, nor do we have (in a MCQ format) the option simply to say that ACORN cheated, without perhaps without going so far as having the ability to turn the election one way or the other. Answering No on that question therefore becomes akin to saying ACORN is honest and deserving of trust, and that is not something many people think or want to say… And so Kos feels he is allowed to caricature the results in a ridiculous way ("One in five Republicans think ACORN is so powerful as to magically make 10 million votes appear").
Yes 21
No 24
Not Sure 55
One in five Republicans think ACORN is so powerful as to magically make 10 million votes appear. Another 55 are open to the theory. In other words, just 24 percent of Republicans have an even passing relationship with reality.
Do you believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama?Guess what, Kos. We also think Scott Brown more qualified to be president of the United States! (Not to mention Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, and even… John McCain.) For one thing, Sarah Palin was mayor of a town and governor of a state (which she became in spite of her party machine) for a couple of years; how that makes one many times less (or more) qualified than head of a community organization and in the national senate (with the backing of his party machine), also for a couple of years, is beyond a few of us.
Yes 53
No 14
Not Sure 33
Sigh...
Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates White people?Again, think of the exact opposite of this question — in this case, "Do you believe Barack Obama is an unbiased uniter who loves white people?" —
Yes 31
No 36
Not Sure 33
I bet more people think Obama is racist, but were too afraid to tell a live operator the truth.
to see how the question is distorted. It is highly unlikely that most people — even Democrats — would answer Yes to the entire revised question. Even Democrats who might — who probably would — gladly say Yes to the first part of the revised question, would have trouble with the second part, sensing it goes too far. (This question is one of several that makes me believe that the questions have been changed since they were asked in order to make Republicans look more "Taliban-like" but, since I have no proof for that, assume that the question was asked as written here.)
There is more than a little evidence to believe that, for reasons good or bad, Obama is — to some extent — resentful of white America, not least his autobiographies, the "damn America" comment of his (former?) spiritual guide, and his "stupid" white policemen quote. Imagine a person being asked the (original) question above; if she answers No, she is effectively answering Yes to the revised question ("do you believe Barack Obama is an unbiased uniter who adores white people?"). If you do not believe the latter, you are in a dilemma in answering the original question and remaining honest.Do you believe your state should secede from the United States?What rot! First of all, notice that if anyone is saying anything far-fetched, it is Kos — who is effectively (read his comment again) equating opposition to Obama to being unpatriotic, traitorous, and cowardly. And the way for Kos to frame this is to say that Republicans (pretend to) love America "only when they approve of" who is in the White House, when in fact they are saying — as I have noted in the "socialist" and "impeachment" questions above — that they (might) no longer want to be part of a union if and when the government (never mind if the person in the White House is a Democrat or a Republican) threatens to take too much power…
Yes 23
No 58
Not Sure 19
42 percent of Republicans aren't really patriotic. They pretend to love America only when they approve of the president. These traitors don't believe in democracy, in our nation's founding ideals, or in our flag. To them, those colors run. They are cowards.
Note, secession sentiment is MUCH stronger in the South than elsewhere -- 33 percent want out, compared to just 52 percent who want to stay. In the Northeast, "just" 10 percent want out, in the Midwest, its 18 percent, and in the West, it's 16 percent. Can we cram them all into the Texas Panhandle, create the state of Dumbfuckistan, and build a wall around them to keep them from coming into America illegally?Notice how Kos reveals his (Stalinist?) masses-hoarding desires, allegedly uneducated masses for which the gulag-admirer (?) has nothing but contempt. The point with secession, Kos, would be to prevent contemptuous Koses like yourself from carrying out your emprison-'em-all-or-throw-'em-all-out desires.
Should Congress make it easier for workers to form and join labor unions?No comments here: Notice how Kos refrains from addressing an issue that he knows will hardly prove popular (more power to the unions!). Again, think of what goes unmentioned: imagine if this question had been framed using the controversial card check objective, labor's desire to dump secret ballots, and other bullying tactics — which was/is undoubtedly on most people's minds.
Yes 7
No 68
Not Sure 25
Would you favor or oppose giving illegal immigrants now living in the United States the right to live here legally if they pay a fine and learn English?Again, Kos refrains from comment. But the reason behind this answer, I surmise, is that once illegal immigrants are in, they've already broken the law — and should not be rewarded from so doing.
Favor 26
Oppose 59
Not Sure 15
Do you support the death penalty?Again, no comment from Kos.
Yes 91
No 4
Not Sure 5
Should openly gay men and women be allowed to serve in the military?A lot could be said on all of these questions. Note that what to a leftist is simply a "gay man or woman" (like a woman per se or an African-American or an Asian) is to many other people a "gay activist" and yes, it's true that we believe (and we have good reason to) that activism (homosexual or other) gets in the way, among other places, in schools and in the military. Moreover, a number of us believe that activists often mix rights up with privileges.
Yes 26
No 55
Not Sure 19
Should same sex couples be allowed to marry?
Yes 7
No 77
Not Sure 16
Should gay couples receive any state or federal benefits?
Yes 11
No 68
Not Sure 21
Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?
Yes 8
No 73
Not Sure 19
Oof. That's some serious neanderthal action going on. Gays can't serve their country, teach children, get married, or even have civil unions. That's the GOP agenda for gays, which makes the existence of the Log Cabin Republicans that much more of a mystery.
schools are failing, people feel that it is scandalous that there no longer is a concerted effort to teach the 3 R's (readin', writin', and arithmetic), and indeed they have in their stead brought in leftist social goals, not least of which is homosexual proselytizing, as in the mandatory reading of the book Heather Has Two Mommies and as with what has led to the ongoing scandal of Kevin Jennings. It's nor unfair here to say that the question that people heard was, "Should gay activists be allowed to teach in public schools (in which case the follow-up question becomes, to teach the 3 R's or to teach the GLSEN agenda)?"
although it seems an undeniable fact that he once failed to protect a 15-year-old from a child predator — all I can say is that parents have a right not to like what they read about Jennings and they have a right to think that all this social activism and all these agendas (whatever the cause, gay or any other, and whether they can be termed extremist or not) are not what schools are about, not primarily and not even secondarily. To quote Matt: I agree that every child should be valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation and that there should be no bullying in the schools, period. However, I do not feel that the schools should be promoting a gay lifestyle and or any particular lifestyle. They should stick to teaching the fundamentals of Reading, Writing, Math, Science, and History.Think about it this way: "Should openly Muslim men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?" Most people, Republican or otherwise, would say yes (even on army bases), I believe, as long as we are pretty much sure they do teach reading (and not the Koran), they do teach writing (and not jihad), and they do teach arithmetic (and not about the 72 virgins that believers will get as a reward for killing infidels).
Should sex education be taught in the public schools?"Less crazier"? First, this may come as a surprise to Kos, but humans have mated for tens of thousands of years (unless you accept the version that says humanity is 4,500 years old or so), and have done so without the need of teachers and schools (public or otherwise). This may also come as a(nother) surprise, but — again — some parents simply want the schools to teach, basically, the 3 R's and leave other things best done at home… Whatever you think about creationism and evolution, notice that in the second question, the parents are not asked whether public schools should teach creationism (or even if they should teach creationism alone, i.e., and nothing else) but whether they should teach what the Bible says — not an entirely indifferent matter.
Yes 42
No 51
Not Sure 7
Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?
Yes 77
No 15
Not Sure 8
In all of these questions, respondents from the South are slightly crazier, and those from the Northeast slightly less crazier, than the average. In these two questions, the differences are particularly exaggerated. In the South, the sex-ed question comes out 39-56, compared to 47-45 in the Northwest. For the creationism question, it's 82-9 in the South, compared to 70-23 in the Northwest.
Are marrigiages equal partnerships, or are men the leaders of their households?Is it truly beyond argumentation to say that abortion is akin to murder? As usual, Kos makes no argument against another position. All he does is say it's wingnutty, it's unbelievable, it's non-progressive, it's reactionary, it's crazy, etc… He states the politically correct position and assumes that all others are nutty, adding — in shock — that the very fact that there are undecided votes is a scandalous travesty.
Men 13
Equal 76
Not Sure 11
Should women work outside the home?
Yes 86
No 4
Not Sure 10
Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13
Do you believe the birth control pill is abortion?
Yes 34
No 48
Not Sure 18
Do you consider abortion to be murder?
Yes 76
No 8
Not Sure 16
Over a third of Republicans believe the birth control pill is abortion, which explains why nearly a third of them want contraceptive use outlawed. This is so wingnutty, it's hardly believable. But it's true, just a bare majority oppose outlawing contraceptives.
What we didn't ask was whether the 76 percent who consider abortion to be murder would advocate executions for women who have them. Since 91 percent of respondents support the death penalty.This, again, is thinking that Republicans — that people in general — are robots (come to think of it, that does seem to be what many élites do happen to think, doesn't it?) who if they think one thing (A) must think another thing (B — but certainly not C) as well. For one thing, all murderers need not automatically be assigned the death penalty — it depends, or it may depend, on the circumstances — and the usual reason for standing for this position, in any case, comes not from a desire to punish a given woman but to prevent society — i.e., its doctors — from offering the procedure, and thus encourage the woman to change her behavior. (Note that I say this not as someone who believes sine qua non that abortion is murder but as someone who believes sine qua non that conservatives, of whatever bent, should not be grotesquely caricatured.)
Do you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is though Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith?Although that is hardly an unreasonable conclusion to make, notice that hell is not mentioned anywhere in the question, nor is any type of hellish (or devilish) language. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but offhand, I think it is not unfair to say that Christians do not believe unbelievers should go to hell; they believe they will go to hell, which (they further believe) is nothing if not an unfortunate state of events. Offhand, Christians — certainly not, today's Christians — do not believe that they should help unbelievers go to hell, or act actively (and zealously) to send them there — which (are you listening, Kos?) is all the difference between Christians and conservatives on the one hand, and the Taliban and other members of militant Islam on the other.
Christ 67
Other 15
Not Sure 18
Two-thirds of Republicans assume anyone that is not a Christian is going to hell. It certainly makes it easier for them to dehumanize their enemies, either real or perceived.
a simple lie than a complex truth
— Alexis de Tocqueville
One of the hit items on the social media turns out to be the main character's tirade in the opening scene of The Newsroom's Episode 1, sometimes referred to — seemingly with the utmost glee — as "The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History".
TV show is fiction, with the entire story and every scene set up, with a central character (a Democratic idealist) giving a brilliant speech with unimpeachable arguments that manages to bring out the truth (sorry, to bring out the Truth with a capital T, nay, more — to bring out nothing less than thuh Reh-ve-lay-tion),
shaming his clueless opponents (and everyone else) in the process —
indeed, silencing the whole room — and, in typical Hollywood fashion,
leaving everyone on a higher plane of truth."Oh my GodThis works exceptionally well, provided everybody with a differing opinion (or better yet, with facts) agrees to refrain from responding. In the real world, of course, real people have to put up with differing arguments, with give'n'take, and with opponents providing replies and counter-arguments (see, for instance, Larry Elder and Taleeb Starkes below); sometimes even brilliant speakers have to listen to what others (and, no, not just to blindly mindless patriots) have to say, and sometimes the brilliant speakers' brilliant arguments prove to get the short end of the the shtick.
what if the Soviets weren't really our enemies?!
(i.e., what if our only enemies were ourselves?!)
Oh my God
what if the Iranians aren't really our enemies?!
(i.e., what if our only enemies are ourselves?!)
That means Americans opposing Soviets or Islamists can only be bigots; bigots and… paranoids! We are, we must be, better than those clueless and hate-filled Americans!"
• Will McAvoy: It's not the greatest country in the world, professor, that's my answer. …/… [turns to Lewis] AndHm. Really? Is that so? Doesn't this part of the speech rest entirely on how exactly we, on how far to go to, define "having freedom"? This is clear-cut, you say? Maybe you, maybe we, shouldn't be too sure.with a straight face, you're going to tell students that
I suspect liberals are envious of Europe not so much for its high taxes and generous welfare states (which aren’t actually that much more generous than our own if you add it all up correctly), but for its more open authoritarianism.To take France as an example, Andrew C. McCarthy writes in the National Review that
Right-wing propaganda, you wonder? Let's head over to the New York Times, then: in an article entitled Where ‘In Bed With Media’ Can Be Taken More Literally, Scott Sayare adds thatUnbound by any First Amendment, the French government exerts pressure on the media to suppress bad news. We do not hear much about the steady thrum of insurrection in the banlieues: the thousands of torched automobiles, the violence against police and other agents of the state, the pressure in Islamic enclaves to ignore the sovereignty of the Republic and conform to the rule of sharia.
The line between politicians and the news media can be blurry in France, where the fates of some journalists have long been hitched to those in the government they pester or please. … in a country where much of the Paris elite share a common background, attended the same schools and go to the same parties, the traditional commingling of journalists and politicians has endured.Have you heard of the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate — whereby "popular magistrates" acting as guardians of the people's liberty can (lawfully) "curb the tyranny of kings"? The author of articles like It’s Time to Start Teaching Our Kids Disrespect To “Authority”, Bojidar Marinov, writes (warning: strong religious language at the link):
Daniel Carton, a former reporter in France [and an outspoken critic of conflicts of interest in French journalism], blames the news media for not doing more to resist such close ties.
… For decades, newspapers have relied heavily on state subsidies. The public media, which account for perhaps half of mainstream television and radio news, are still run by political appointees. Private media outlets belong to companies or investors with demonstrated political leanings or business connections to the state, undermining journalistic impartiality.
… Private publications are also beholden to the state, at least financially. The government provided $1.5 billion in subsidies to them [in 2011].
The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate … would be completely useless outside the US, where local “magistrates”In the Washington Post, the Volokh Conspiracy's Ilya Somin explains Why Most Exercises of Government Power are Non-Consensual (and Why it Matters):are simply employees of the central government. In the UK, for example, the resistance of local officials to tyranny would be nothing less than rebellion no different than the rebellion of private individuals; a lesser magistrate is simply not a magistrate anymore if he fails to obey the will of his sovereign, the centralized state. Thus, in its pure form, the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate works as a deterrent to tyranny only where tyranny has already been pushed back and thus room for independent action has been legally secured; and in our modern world, this means only a few polities in the world, limited to the US, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, and may be South Africa – and these polities trace their liberties back not to bloodless reforms but to violent revolutions which forced the central government to agree to limit its powers.
The Declaration of Independence famously states that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” But, sadly, this is almost never the case in the real world. If it is indeed true, as Abraham Lincoln famously put it, that “no man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent,” that principle has more radical implications than Lincoln probably intended. Few if any of those who wield government power measure up to that lofty standard."The key difference between America and the rest of the world, in regards to freedom and liberty," adds Matthew Cina,
is where we believe our freedom comes from. To the rest of the world, even with countries who modeled their constitution after ours, their freedom comes from the government. … We believe that our rights come from a place untouched by man and a government, even by consent, can pass any laws they want and we would still be entitled to our rights. So who is more free? The people whose rights can be stripped with the stroke of a pen or the people whose rights can never be taken away?But, granted, this may all seem a tad theoretical. Shall we, therefore, get a bit more specific?
Although Sweden does not feature among the countries listed by Will McAvoy, I guess that nation could easily have figured as another sovereign state with freedom — in view of the fact that the Scandinavian model always features so prominently in liberals' talking points.
Since the end of World War II, and largely as a result of it, Germany has been much more restrictive of speech than other Western democracies. It is not, strictly speaking, a country of free expression. It long banned the Communist party, Scientology, and (until last year) Mein Kampf. State investigators regularly use video cameras to watch demonstrations for extremism.
Belgium has freedom? For seven decades — like in France
and many other places (not least Sweden) — the élites have hidden the
extent to which collaboration with the (often but not always occupying) Third Reich took place under World War II (in
the 1980s, a graphic novel called Jaunes faced censorship for evoking King
Leopold III's alleged collaboration with the Nazis during the 1940s occupation).Canada is barely a functioning democracy at all: Its governmental structure, if described objectively, is far more similar to what we would expectNote to liberals and to the makers of "The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History": That would be a lot of countries that do not (really) have freedom.in a corrupt African state with decades of one-party rule. Jeffrey Simpson , who might be called [the] Canadian David Broder, has even written a book entitled The Friendly Dictatorship, which sports on its cover a doctored photo of [then-Prime Minister] Jean Chrétien in a Pinochet-style military tunic. Simpson argues not only that Chrétien is the “Sun King” of Canada, but that the government itself is designed to be for all intents and purposes a secular monarchy.
a Québec native is going to jail for failing to… register his cat! The Ottawa Sun:Dan Smith, 65, is searched against a police cruiser by an officer at the Gatineau Police Station after refusing to pay a fine and court costs after being found guilty last summer for not having a license for a cat. … Smith, using a cane because of arthritis and carrying a plastic bag of prescription drugs for various maladies, walked to the cruiser outside, was frisked and asked to hand over the plastic bag before he got into the back seat.(Of course, to leftists like Aaron Sorkin and Jeff Daniels, isn't this little more but a(n unfortunate) glitch in an otherwise exemplary system where capitalists, common clueless citizens, and other trouble-makers and assorted enemies of the people can be stopped in their steps by the politicians and by the authorities and brought to reason—i.e., controlled, and punished?)
To quote Mark Steyn himself: At New Year Mohammedans targeted infidels — and ZDF said "Nothing to see here". Even as the Euro-media's cover-up is headline news across the Continent, in Calgary Mohammedans target infidels — and the Canadian media do the exact same thing.As bad as this is, none of this seems as bad compared to what happened (to what still is happening?!) in another "free" country, usually considered the freest of the lot—the United Kingdom. In the 16 years
between 1997 and 2013 … at least 1,400 girls from the age of eleven were raped by gangs of men, nearly all of whom were immigrants (mostly from Pakistan) or sons of immigrants, in just one English city: Rotherham, population 275,000.
But British authorities kept silent.
In 2014, the reason finally was revealed: the perpetrators were Muslim, and British authorities were therefore afraid to publicize — or often even investigate — the crimes. They feared being branded Islamophobic and racist. Politicians on the Left and Right acknowledged this fact.
… The British Home Secretary, Theresa May, told Parliament that “institutionalized political correctness” was responsible for the lack of attention given to the mass rape.
In other words, faced with the choice of protecting over a thousand girls from repeated gang rape and protecting Muslims from being identified as the rapists, British authorities chose to protect multiculturalism and “diversity.” In the competition between multiculturalism and one of the most elementary instincts and obligations of higher civilization — the protection of girls and women from sexual violence — higher civilization lost.
Police incompetence was a factor, but not the primary reason. The primary reason was political correctness. It turns out that the perpetrators were all, or nearly all, of “Pakistani heritage” and the girls were all, or nearly all, white.
… The New York Times and other left-wing media have thoroughly reported this story and the fact that political correctness is to blame for what was done to these girls. Yet they are oblivious to the fact that they are the very ones who created the moral monsters known as political correctness, multiculturalism, and “diversity” — the doctrines that forbid judging non-whites, Muslims, and others by the same moral standards by which whites and Christians are judged.
Dennis Prager takes us back to the "free" countries on the continent today:These left-wing doctrines made 16 years of gang rapes of English girls possible.
… the mayor of Cologne … like the British authorities, has opted for multiculturalism over human and women’s rights; for fighting Islamophobia over fighting to protect women. A related example is Ralf Jaeger, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, the German state in which Cologne is located. The left-wing minister said: “What happens on the right-wing platforms and in chat rooms is at least as awful as the acts of those assaulting the women.”
All the isms of the left — multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, socialism, Marxism, egalitarianism — distort the individual’s and society’s moral compass. But, as the minister’s comments make clear, none do so more than the Left’s loathing of conservatives and conservative values.
As with multiculturalism, the left-wing priority of destroying the Right has distorted the Left’s moral compass. How could anyone in his right mind say that right-wing platforms and chat rooms are “at least as awful” as women being sexually attacked and even raped by gangs of men? The answer is that you cannot be in your right mind; you have to be in your left mind.
In this perspective, Breitbart's Oliver JJ Lane (along with National Review's Andrew Stuttaford) reports on a brand-new scandal involving Germany's national public service broadcaster:Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), which was recently forced into a humiliating apology for their silence on migrant violence and sex assault[,] is being drawn into a fresh scandal after one of their former bureau chiefs admitted the company takes orders from the government on what it reports. He said journalists received instructions to write news that would be “to Ms. Merkel’s liking”.Needless to say, this isn't anything that would bother the makers of The Newsroom, to have media echoing what the government is saying (as long as that government is headed by a non-Republican, such as a good guy leftist like Barack Obama), and this, indeed, explains their extreme hatred of sites like Fox News—the likes against which Will McAvoy's rant is partially directed.
Former head of ZDF Bonn Dr. Wolfgang Herles [pointed out] that ordinary Germans were totally losing faith in the media, something he called a “scandal”. He said:
“We have the problem that – now I’m mainly talking about the public [state] media – we have a closeness to the government. Not only because commentary is mainly in line with the grand coalition (CSU, CDU, and SPD), with the spectrum of opinion, but also because we are completely taken in by the agenda laid down by the political class”.Worse than the mainstream, government controlled and poll-tax funded media in Germany just agreeing with the ruling coalition, the stations actually took orders on what was and was not to be reported on.
[For instance,] “Today, one is not allowed to say anything negative about the refugees” said Dr. Herles, concluding: “This is government journalism and that leads to a situation in which people no longer trust us. This is a scandal.”
As an aside, Charlie Martin may have put his finger on
what attracts Democrats and Hollywood leftists to Europe when he wrote
about the lesson that he learned after living for a number of years in southwestern Germany (a country he loves and misses): The longer I was there, the more I realized that the whole country thought of themselves as subjects of the government; intrusions I'd resent were ganz normal. When I'd arrived in Germany, I'd at first felt it was freer than the U.S., with sex shops in the mall and Main Street bordellos in small rural towns [in addition to no speed limits on the Autobahn]; the longer I was there, the more it felt smothering.
• Will McAvoy: And yeah, you… sorority girl. Just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is:Most of us are familiar the adage attributed to Mark Twain, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Fewer of us know Georges Fischer's saying: "Statistics are like bikinis; they show a lot, but they hide the essential" (Les statistiques, c'est comme les bikinis : ça montre beaucoup, mais ça cache l'essentiel).
Related: • Misleading Statistics — Would the EU ReallyIn that perspective, let us pause for me to ask you a question:
Dominate the Olympics in Medals Won If It Were "United"?
• The Misleading Statistics of Gun Control
• Mass shootings in the U.S. have fallen so much in the past century
that the political left has had to redefine what a mass shooting is
• Facts Which Europeans and American Leftists Conveniently Ignore
My first question is this: why is a nation whose entire ideals revolve around private enterprise getting judged for its public services?In any case, how true do the statistics happen to be?
The incidence of [the diseases measured] are highly related to diet and lifestyle. In fact, it is well established thatCoyote Blog goes further, and, as you will see, he will proceed to tackle the origin of Will McAvoy's infant mortality numbers in "The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History":the US has a comparatively high incidence rate of these diseases, much higher than France. This makes it entirely possible that this mortality difference is entirely due to lifestyle differences and disease incidence rates rather than the relative merits of health care systems. In fact, this study is close to meaningless.
… you have to be careful. The US has far more surgeries than most other countries per capita, so we have more surgical deaths. Also, medical error data is notoriously difficult to compare country to country because reporting standards and processes are so different.
In the US, when the government measures medical errors, it is a neutral third party to the error. [Well, this was before Barack Obama entered the White House and introduced Obamacare.] In Europe, the government, as healthcare provider, is often the source of the error, calling into question how aggressive these countries may be in defining "an error."
Infant mortality data is a good example of such a trap. The US often looks worse than European nations on infant mortality because it is defined as infant deaths as a percentage of live births. But the US has the most advanced neo-natal capabilities in the world. Many pregnancies that would result in a "born dead" in other countries result in a live birth in the US. Since these rescued births are much more problematic, their death rate is much higher.Indeed, in another post, Coyote Blog says he is sure that
you have seen various rankings where the US falls way behind other western nations in terms of infant mortality. This stat is jumped on by the left as justification for just how cold and heartless America is, and just how enlightened socialized medicine must be. However, no one seems to bother to check the statistic itself (certainly the media is too incompetent to do so, particularly when it fits their narrative). Statistics like this that are measured across nations are notoriously unreliable, as individual nations may have different definitions or methods for gathering the data.Coyote Blog, Craig Newmark, and the American Enterprise Institute's Mark J Perry go on to quote a medical doctor:
… in fact, the main factors affecting early infant survival are birth weight and prematurity. The way that these factors are reported — and how such babies are treated statistically — tells a different story than what the numbers reveal.Comparisons — or, should we say, misleading comparisons — with Hong Kong, Japan, Belgium, France, and Switzerland are also mentioned by Dr Linda Halderman:
Low birth weight infants are not counted against the "live birth" statistics for many countries reporting low infant mortality rates.
According to the way statistics are calculated in Canada, Germany, and Austria, a premature baby weighing [under] 500g is not considered a living child. But in the U.S., such very low birth weight babies are considered live births. The mortality rate of such babies — considered "unsalvageable" outside of the U.S. and therefore never alive — is extraordinarily high; up to 869 per 1,000 in the first month of life alone. This skews U.S. infant mortality statistics.
When Canada briefly registered an increased number of low weight babies previously omitted from statistical reporting, the infant mortality rose from 6.1 per 1,000 to 6.4 per thousand in just one year.
According to research done by Canada's Bureau of Reproductive and Child Health, "Comparisons of infant mortality rates by place and time should be adjusted for the proportion of such live births, especially if the comparisons involve recent years."
Norway boasts one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. But when the main determinant of mortality — weight at birth — is factored in, Norway has no better survival rates than the United States.
Some of the countries reporting infant mortality rates lower than the U.S. classify babies as "stillborn" if they survive less than 24 hours whether or not such babies breathe, move, or have a beating heart at birth.Shall we let the American Thinker's Rick Moran have the last word?
Forty percent of all infant deaths occur in the first 24 hours of life.
In the United States, all infants who show signs of life at birth (take a breath, move voluntarily, have a heartbeat) are considered alive.
If a child in Hong Kong or Japan is born alive but dies within the first 24 hours of birth, he or she is reported as a "miscarriage" and does not affect the country's reported infant mortality rates.
Because we don't have socialized medicine — yet [Infant mortality figures for US are misleading appeared before that great victory called Obamacare] — heroic efforts to save newborns are common in America while these same infants are considered "unsalvageable" in other countries and not counted against their mortality statistics.
No; upon thought, let the last word be about general medicine, and let
all four reports come from articles in France's (left-leaning)
"newspaper of record," Le Monde, at least two of which were featured on the front page: 
In April [2016], Hillary Clinton said she was sorry for what she described as the unintended consequences of the landmark 1994 crime bill signed into law by her husband. Clinton's past support for the law has come under fire from some African-Americans, who say that it has contributed to mass incarceration of young blacks.Also, just as liberals always assume that the data, such as medical statistics, are the same in every country, they take it as a given that countries such as China and Cuba and Russia are telling the truth regarding the number of prisoners (political or other) their prisons hold (or, as we have seen, the number of live babies that are born). How good, how diligent, and how tenacious, are those countries' one-party officials, and how likely are their leaders to truthfully report whatever findings they receive, whether it is to their own people or to the international community? And — as we saw in section 1 of this post — the question applies just as much to the "free" countries of Western Europe.
• Will McAvoy: We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real,Start by noting how this third section of the rancorous rant making up "The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History" is ended with a piece of bitter harrumphing and bitter satire meant to shame people (and—especially?—silence them?). Just as the second section, above, was started with bitter satire (Just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day) meant to shame clueless losers of little worth. This might be because you could be forgiven for believing that the entire rant amounts to a (drama queen's) call for a strongman to take over, or for a strongman in power to take even more radical decisions.
A) Leading in the Number of Incarcerated Citizens per Capita (i.e., Leading in the Number of Racists)The answer is you cannot have an honest discussion about police conduct without an honest discussion of black crime.
Though blacks are 13% of the population, they commit 50% of the nation’s homicides, and almost always the victim is another black person, just as most white homicides are against other whites. In 2012, according to the Center for Disease Control, police killed 123 blacks, while, by the way, killing over twice that many whites. But that same year blacks killed over 6,000 people — again, mostly other blacks.
just about everyone knows, but too few talk about publicly, in majority black cities, violent black on black crime is rampant. A Department of Justice study from 1980-2008 revealed that blacks accounted for almost half of the nation’s homicide victims (47.4%) and more than half of the offenders (52.4%) all while only being 13% of America’s population.This is part of a list of the five biggest problems facing black Americans.
The Tuskegee Institute conducted a study of all known lynchings of blacks that occurred between 1882-1968. During this 86-year span, which is essentially the post-Civil War era up to the Civil Rights era, 3,446 Blacks where reportedly lynched. Presently, black-on-black murder eclipses the number of blacks lynched over the course of 80 years roughly every six months.
"Where do things like
racism and police brutality rank?" wonders the introduction. The five issues are listed by Starkes, author of the Amazon bestseller Black Lies Matter (Why Lies Matter to the Race Grievance Industry), and "They may surprise you." (See also Larry Elder on Black Fathers Matter, Chloe Valdary on Don't Judge Blacks Differently, and Heather Mac Donald on Are the police racist?) In the liberal telling of America's story, there are only two perpetrators of official misdeeds: conservatives and "America" writ large. Progressives, or modern liberals, are never bigots or tyrants, but conservatives often are. For example, one will virtually never hear that the Palmer Raids, Prohibition, or American eugenics were thoroughly progressive phenomena. These are sins America itself must atone for.For instance, reformers wanting to "change the mindset" and behavior led the fight against alcohol during Prohibition, which led in turn to the rise of the American state and Prohibition's successor, the war on drugs — which has led to the increased numbers of incarcerated citizens, many of them blacks. (Remember the Lao Tse quote from 2,500 years ago?) Commenting on Lisa McGirr's The War on Alcohol (Prohibition and the Rise of the American State), Julia Vitullo-Martin writes that
… as anti-alcohol crusaders lost their first war, they turned to another less controversial one: the war on drugs, which is very much still with us, contributing to overcrowded prisons, damaged neighborhoods, and ruined lives.Remember, these are not conservatives; these are our trademarked leftists with good (with the best of) intentions who want to create a utopia by changing hearts and minds.
that shows that two thirds of behavioral sciences experiments did not,
could not, replicate the findings of original research teams, meaning
that "two out of three experiments in behavioral psychology have a fair
chance of being worthless."
Richard Smith, who edited the British Medical Journal for more than a decade, told The Independent
there was no evidence that peer review was a good method of detecting
errors and claimed that “most of what is published in journals is just
plain wrong or nonsense”.Science is facing a "reproducibility crisis" where more than two-thirds of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments, research suggests.
… "It's worrying because replication is supposed to be a hallmark of scientific integrity," says Dr Errington.
Concern over the reliability of the results published in scientific literature has been growing for some time.
According to a survey published in the journal Nature last summer, more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments.
… The problem [is] with the way the scientific literature had been "tidied up" to present a much clearer, more robust outcome.
"What we see in the published literature is a highly curated version of what's actually happened," [says Marcus Munafo].
"The trouble is that gives you a rose-tinted view of the evidence because the results that get published tend to be the most interesting, the most exciting, novel, eye-catching, unexpected results.
"What I think of as high-risk, high-return results."
The reproducibility difficulties are not about fraud, according to Dame Ottoline Leyser, director of the Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.
That would be relatively easy to stamp out. Instead, she says: "It's about a culture that promotes impact over substance, flashy findings over the dull, confirmatory work that most of science is about."
She says it's about the funding bodies that want to secure the biggest bang for their bucks, the peer review journals that vie to publish the most exciting breakthroughs, the institutes and universities that measure success in grants won and papers published and the ambition of the researchers themselves.
Democrats are more likely to believe in paranormal activity. They’re also more likely to believe in reincarnation and astrology. I have personally known liberals who think crystals have healing powers who nonetheless believe that the internal combustion engine doesn’t actually rely on magical horse power.Maybe the last word should go to Walter Russell Meade, who, regarding a New York Times article on Ghost Hunting in Norway, points out, in When God Goes Away, Superstition Takes His Place, that people "who think themselves too rational for religious belief end up believing in 'astral forces', ghosts and other phenomena."
… When I hear people talk about science as if it’s something to “believe in,” particularly people who reject all sorts of science-y things (vaccines, nuclear power, etc. as discussed above), I immediately think of one of my favorite lines from Eric Voegelin:
“When God is invisible behind the world, the contents of the world will become new gods; when the symbols of transcendent religiosity are banned, new symbols develop from the inner-worldly language of science to take their place.”This will be true, he added, even when “the new apocalyptics insist that the symbols they create are scientific.”
In other words, the “Don’t you believe in evolution!?!” people don’t really believe in science qua science, what they’re really after is dethroning God in favor of their own gods of the material world (though I suspect many don’t even realize why they’re so obsessed with this one facet of the disco ball called “science”). “Criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticisms,” quoth Karl Marx, who then proceeded to create his own secular religion.
communist atheists … scoffed at the credulity of religious believers even as they worshipped the infallible insights of Stalinmurdering tens of millions of people in the process.
Similarly, the Nazis presented their faith as an alternative to the 'outgrown superstitions' of historic Christianty.As you can see, the more we dig, the more unpleasantness we find. The government's and the politicians' part in the fight for "rational belief" against religion. As we forget that one function of religion — yes, it too — is to serve as a part of the checks and balances against total power.
For an in-depth and dispassionate study of people of intelligence versus people who believe in angels, go to Devotees of Science Versus Followers of Religion (Are Only the Latter to Be Taken to Task for Their Alleged Superstitions?)
We have here two “facts” that, by
themselves, “prove”, or ought to prove, and that behind the shadow of a
doubt, that America is egoistical, that Washington is power-hungry,
that Uncle Sam is war-mongering, that Americans are blind, and that the
rest of the world is in distress because of Uncle Sam's despicable
policies. (Or, that at the very least, its leader — except when he or
she happens to be a Democrat, of course — and/or the leader's policies
are racist, greedy, bellicose, and self-centered.) most European nations, namely France, Germany, and the U.K. are purposefully downsizing their militaries in favor of relying on the U.S. to come defend them incase of an incident. Even more to the point, half the reason the U.S.'s military budget is so expensive, besides the technology that is literally decades past the competition, is because we take care of our soldiers. A Chinese soldier is paid one-ninth that of a U.S. soldier, and even then, the Chinese soldier gets drastically smaller healthcare or Veteran benefits. If the U.S.'s big military budget comes from futuristic technology, taking care of our soldiers, and single-handedly protecting the western world, I think it's worth the bill.As for Megan McArdle, she adds that
The freeloading countries don’t even send a fruit basket to Washington to say thanks. In fact, as a rightish American who’s spent a bit of time abroad, I can personally attest that many of those NATO members’ citizens feel free to disparage our massive military budget, as if their smaller budgets were some sort of moral sacrifice rather than an unearned benefit paid for by U.S. taxpayers.Which, indeed, is what the usual outrage in The Newsroom monologue is all about.
For an in-depth and a more detailed account of the figures devoted to foreign aid and military budgets, check out Lilliputian Foreign Aid Percentages Coupled with Gargantuan Military Budget Amounts (What, If Anything, Is Hiding Behind Two Allegedly Damning Statistics About Uncle Sam?)Here are some additional statistics that you rarely hear about, statistics that — for some inexplicable reason — The Newsroom does not mention in its "Three Most Honest Minutes In Television History":
Americans make up about 5% of the world's population and give about 35% of the aid. … At a minimum, in order to discount the largesse of the United States, one must carefully exclude gigantic categories of aid, such as military aid, food aid, trade policies, refugee policies, religious aid, private charities and individual giving.That's from (the much-hated) Ann Coulter, so 5% giving about 35% of the world's aid meme should probably be dismissed (how convenient), as it doesn't fit into the ensuing rant about America no longer being a great country.
if you look at rates of “voluntary private social expenditure” among nations, it turns out that Americans are easily the most generous people in the developed world.
Wow, people in the United States are so generous that their voluntary giving amounts to 10.2 percent of gross domestic product. The only other nations that even crack 5 percent of GDP are the Netherlands, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
… It’s also worth noting that these numbers actually understate the charity gap between Americans and folks from other nations. Economic output in the United States is about 30 percent higher than it is in the rest of the developed world, so charitable giving by Americans actually represents a much bigger slice of a much bigger pie.
None would admit that they didn’t have “free” medical care — they had American-funded medical care.Ann Coulter's figures are confirmed several years later as the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard reports that Americans are world's most charitable, top 1% provide 1/3rd of all donations. The
new Almanac of American Philanthropy … found that Americans out-donate Britain and Canada two-to-one and nations like Italy and Germany 20-to-one. What's more, more than half of every single income class except those earning less than $25,000 donate to charity. The much maligned top 1 percent in the U.S. economy fork over one third of all donations made.Adds the Philantrophy Roundtable:
A large minority of Americans—45% in total—don’t realize that their country is all by itself at the front of the pack in the practice of making voluntary donations to others.Wouldn't that large minority of Americans include Aaron Sorkin, and Jeff Daniels, and the writers of The Newsroom (and its "Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History" scene) — among (many) other leftists and Hollywood types?
For the actual hard numbers, see the last chart in the section that follows this one, Statistics on U.S. Generosity. You’ll see that the level of charitable offerings in the U.S. ranges from roughly twice what takes place in lands like Britain and Canada to almost 20 times the rate of Italians and Germans.Wouldn't those unappreciative Americans include — even if they are older (at least physically) — Aaron Sorkin and Jeff Daniels and the writers of The Newsroom, among (many) other leftists and Hollywood types? Again, the Philantrophy Roundtable's numbers are among the (many) statistics that have no place in "The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History."
Interestingly, younger Americans ages 18-39 (who often think of themselves as more globally aware) are actually far less likely than compatriots 40 and over to appreciate how much their country differs from others on this front.
Another area where Americans are distinctive is in attitudes toward fixing social problems. Our strong preference is to pull the lever of private aid wherever possible, instead of relying on government.
This is partly just a response to what we see around us: in crucial areas like medical care, disaster relief, college education, family life, addiction treatment, sharing the arts, expanding home ownership, and so forth, the most effective actors are often charitable and voluntary groups, not state agencies.
Predictably, the biggest split on this question is by political viewpoint. Overall, men and women alike prefer private aid as their first choice, as do people of all ages and religions.
But while Republicans and Independents prefer philanthropy over government by more than 2:1, Democrats run against the trend by picking government over philanthropy by 51% to 31%.Notably in… schooling, the place where children are taught such subjects as… literacy, math, and science (might you remember we mentioned those subjects above? In section 2 of this post?).
The overwhelming share of that $360 billion is donated by individuals. Not everyone gives, of course, but in this country those who don’t are decidedlyAnd with that, Jeff Jacoby brings us back to defense spending:in the minority. Nearly seven out of 10 American households donate to at least one charitable cause each year, at an average annual rate of about $2,600.
Philanthropic giving is a quintessentially American behavior, and always has been. It is also a radiant example of American exceptionalism. The new [“The Almanac of American Philanthropy”] ranks 14 leading industrial countries by the amount of charity their citizens give yearly (calculated as a percentage of GDP). Americans were by far the most charitable — roughly twice as generous as Canadians, Spaniards, and the Irish, for instance, and more than 20 times as apt to give as Germans and Italians.
As Karl Zinsmeister writes in the Almanac’s lively and enlightening introduction, “philanthropy is a huge part of what makes America America.” Huge in its moral and social impact, of course, but also huge as a matter of economics. The nonprofit sector in the United States employs 11 percent of the US workforce and supplies 6 percent of national GDP — and that doesn’t include the economic impact of nearly 8 billion hours of service by 63 million American volunteers, an impact that last year was worth an estimated $184 billion. America’s formidable “military-industrial complex,” Zinsmeister notes, isn’t nearly so formidable when compared with the American philanthropy complex: Nonprofits surpassed defense as a share of the US economy more than two decades ago.
… “Indeed, private US philanthropic aid of all sorts sent overseas now substantially exceeds the official foreign aid of the US government,” Zinsmeister writes.
… “In the United States I am even more struck by the innumerable multitude of little undertakings than by the extraordinary size of some of their industrial enterprises,” marveled Alexis de Tocqueville upon traveling through America in the 1830s. He wrote of his “daily astonishment” at the “immense works” carried out by the abundance of voluntary associations Americans formed.
Nearly two centuries later, the vast diversity of private charity in this country is as astonishing and fruitful as ever.
Waging wars on poverty, not poor people? Haven't we already disposed of that argument in the previous section? Haven't American citizens always spent more on charity (both in America and abroad), with the (free-market) conservatives regularly beating the (statist) leftists in the amount and the size of the gifts?
We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and we cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars. Acted like men.
We aspired to intelligence; we didn't belittle it; it didn't make us feel inferior.
We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn't scare so easy.
built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, … we cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy … reached for the stars, acted like men,that was accomplished, more often than not, by private capitalists in the free market
and, often but not always, trusting in a Higher Power. Government and
bureaucrats might have something to do with it, and even a lot,
sometimes (the space program), but didn't said innovations still take
place in the most free-market nation on Earth?Progressives critique the fiscal conservative/Tea Party/libertarian position by purposely misrepresenting it as anarchy. When fiscal conservatives say "We want smaller government," progressives reply, "Oh, so you want no government?"
… Fiscal conservatives have never called for no government — that's the anarchist position, and contemporary anarchism is actually dominated by extreme leftists, not extreme conservatives. Instead, fiscal conservatives clearly and consistently call for limited government, or for smaller government -- but not for the absence of government altogether.
So when President Obama and his mentor Elizabeth Warren justify their call for tax hikes by pointing out that all entrepreneurs benefit from communal infrastructure, they're committing the classic Straw Man Fallacy by arguing against anarchy — a position that their opponents do not hold.
Should businesses pay enough taxes to support the nation's basic physical infrastructure? Yes. Of course. And they already do. But should they pay taxes to fund every progressive social fantasy? That's open for debate, and that's not the point Obama and Warren were making. Overtly, at least.But let us get back to "The Three Most Honest Minutes In Television History":
being informed by leftists in the mainstream media, even revered leftists, did not, or did not necessarily seem to, have much to do with it.When liberals talk about "informed democracy" [and] claim that the press is doing a poor job of informing the citizenry — which it is — [they are really complaining] that the press isn't doing a good enough job of disseminating the liberal talking points.Steven Crowder has a 13-minute video that takes on "The Three Most Honest Minutes In Television History" (precisely like this post does, but with a slightly different argumentation), while Dr Walter Campbell adds (with more passion and more religious vocabulary than I have so far):
“War on Poor People,” that’s what we have? If so, blame the class warfare and welfare state created by those that Sorkin supports and adores as heroes on the left. You want to start a “War on Poverty,” then deregulate, and reduce the tax burden on those doing the work and those starting the businesses that employ people. Make a competitive environment for business, instead of casting them as the enemy, and you will have jobs and prosperity, and sense of self worth instilled in your citizenry.
You don’t “fight” poverty anyway, you increase prosperity. There’s a real difference — but the significance of that difference is lost on left wing idealists who live in Hollywood and DC and have no comprehension of starting and running a small business, and don’t have the time in their egocentric lives to even take an academic interest in the beliefs of those who founded, and made this country great, or who fight for its greatness still today.
• Will McAvoy: [to moderator] Enough?Jeff Daniels is woefully ignorant (or rather Aaron Sorkin who apparently wrote the monologue) of what Freedom actually means, and is completely oblivious to things like socialism, government regulation, personal liberty, etc. and what they mean relative to that word “Freedom.” He also seems blissfully unaware of immigration statistics and the enormous number of people still desperate to come to the US …
… If Sorkin really wants to return to American greatness, maybe he should start at the start, and look at the men and words of its foundation, and search for the heart of what made us great, in the words and deeds of the men who fought and died creating and protecting it, instead of plying leftist propaganda in pseudo-intellectual elitist centrist wrapping, and calling it a return to the “good old days.” The “good old days” weren’t always good, but their core values were: a country that cherished the rights of the individual over the rights of the state, that trusted God, not Government, as their ultimate arbiter of morality.