« Video: The National Debt Road Trip | Main | North Korea's latest nuclear test and the 'no sense of crisis' Obama administration »
May 24, 2009
On Propaganda, free speech and slime attack's from the far-left
Topics: Political News and commentariesToday's must read, by Frank Miele, managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake, addresses the "liberal" far-left media's propaganda and use of obscene references to gleefully smear American citizens exercising their right of free speech: Propaganda, free speech and the slime attack.
[...] History is either a gentle teacher or a mocking scold.Continue reading ...Before the fact, history is a warning not to repeat the mistakes of the past, but after the fact, history cries out with harsh reproach: How could you have been so stupid as to let this happen -- AGAIN!
I am reminded of that dichotomy by a story in the newspaper in which "the former president asserted that in the past 15 years 'every dictator who has ascended to power has climbed on the ladder of free speech and free press' and then 'suppressed all free speech except his own.'"
He could be talking about Hugo Chavez of Venezuela certainly, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. If it weren't for the time frame, you could throw in Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, and numerous others.
Only the ex-president who was being quoted wasn't President George W. Bush, as you might assume, or even any other living president; it was Herbert Hoover, and the story appeared in the Daily Inter Lake on Nov. 8, 1937, at a time when the world was coping with Hitler, Mussolini and the rest of the rat pack.
Hoover noted, in a speech at Colby College in Maine, that free speech, free press and free debate are the 'very life stream of advancing liberalism," which reminds us healthily that "liberalism" was not always a dirty word to Republicans. Technically, liberalism is a branch of political philosophy that esteems individual liberty and equality as the most important of political goals, and limited government as a close third. By such reckoning, it should be a universal American philosophy, but instead the word has been hijacked by the far left and stripped of its association with liberty. Indeed, it has been transmogrified into almost its opposite by being merged with the vague notion of social justice, so that government is now seen by modern liberals as the main tool with which individuals can be cudgeled into action or inaction for "the greater good."
Moreover, as a recent column of mine lamented, liberals have a tendency these days to promote free speech only when it toes the party line. Straying away from groupthink can have the regrettable fallout of being ostracized as a socially inept Neanderthal, as we saw in the case of Miss California not too many weeks ago.
The efforts of political parties and social movements to gain sway over the national media in general is lumped under the rubric of propaganda. Hoover takes dead aim at what a headline writer called "the poison of propaganda" and said "we must incessantly expose intellectual dishonesty and the purpose that lies behind it."
Describing propaganda as "a sinister word meaning half-truth or any other distortion of the truth," Hoover said it works by "tainting of news, by making synthetic news and opinions and canards. It promotes the emotions of hate, fear and dissension."
It's almost like the president was peering into a crystal ball and pulling in a cable feed from MSNBC. Anyone who has ever witnessed one of Keith Olbermann's 'special comments' on that channel can precisely identify that synthesis of "news and opinion and canards' that worried Hoover. And if you don't see enough "hate, fear and dissension coming from Olbermann, you can throw in his frequent guest Janeane Garofalo for good measure.
Posted by Abdul at May 24, 2009 7:07 PM
Articles Related to Political News and commentaries:
