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Required Reading
Powerline’s Scott Johnson has this brief, outstanding summary of the greatest political scandal in our nation’s history up today. This is absolutely required reading.
At the time, I thought Fast & Furious was the greatest political scandal in our history. Getting American law enforcement officers killed with weapons that our own government sold to criminal gangs in a foreign country in an effort to change popular opinion sufficiently to demand that we change the 2nd Amendment of our own Constitution. Holy Toledo.
But this scandal, in which officials of our own government attempt to overturn an election by using the power of their unelected offices, with active assistance from the media – my God. When appointed bureaucrats decide that they consent to democracy only when it goes their way, then how far are we from typical third world socialism?
At first, I thought the term “Deep State” was a bit overwrought. I was wrong. This is not hyperbole. This is an immediate threat to freedom and democracy around the world (imagine the world without American democracy). This ends either with one party rule, or it ends with torches and pitchforks. Unless our government successfully excises this “Deep State” cancer, which is now widely metastatic. Regardless, I think this is enormously important, and I don’t see how it can end well. Somebody, please tell me I’m over-reacting. Please?
Published in General
Every single discussion with a Democrat about gun policy is like this, and it’s a much easier topic.
Just to be clear, parts of gun policy are actually quite hard to understand, which ends up compounding how stupid Democrats sound when they discuss it.
The Deep State depends on the media to help brainwash the citizenry into going along with their coup. It’s not just the Deep State that needs to be destroyed. Our media needs to be burned to the ground as well.
But through legitimate market forces. Because we have that First Amendment thing, and we do want to respect the Constitution.
Ep. 1328 Are the Media the Enemies of the People?
https://tomwoods.com/ep-1328-are-the-media-the-enemies-of-the-people/
No Hard Feelings; the Media Just Want to Destroy You
https://tomwoods.com/no-hard-feelings-the-media-just-want-to-destroy-you/
There are Republicans that defend the media. Discuss.
What do you mean by “defend?”
As a staunch First Amendment advocate, I’ll defend the right of anyone to report the news — and with as much bias and opinion thrown in as they like. In that sense, I suppose I’m a defender of the media, even though I think they’e awful left-leaning scoundrels.
Is that what we’re talking about?
Yes, my loyalty to the constitution prevents me from advocating serious harm against the media. The left thinks nothing of trying to shut down conservative media, but we’re supposed to play fair. Always.
The view seems to be “The other guys break the law all the time, but if we follow the rules, they’ll look upon our obedience and change their sinful ways.”
They won’t of course.
And I don’t know what the solution is.
I think a good first step would be to bring lawsuits against social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter. Don’t let them hide behind the excuse that they’re not publishers. There is more than enough evidence to show that they exercise ideological control over what can be seen by users.
But who will bring those lawsuits? Republicans?
Twitter exists mainly as an outlet for journalists to peddle lies. Journalists depend on Twitter to help peddle their lies. Theirs is a symbiotic relationship. Breaking the power of the media is going to require breaking the power of Twitter.
Yes. Their rhetoric makes it sound like they can’t hold a complicated thought about what is going on. The leadership in aggregate on this is terrible.
On this we agree: the farce of “platform” protection for left-leaning tech giants should end. Either they are responsible for their content like any other publisher, or the end viewpoint discrimination to preserve their protected platform status. This is appropriate, and I think it will happen, eventually.
Excellent discussion, here. Conservaterians podcast.
Social Jussie Warriors via @ricochet
http://ricochet.com/podcast/the-conservatarians/social-jussie-warriors/
We need to neutron bomb the media. Kill the cancer cells, but leave the institution intact so new, healthy cells (fair-minded media people) can grow.
I think the solution is the 2020 election.
On the one hand you have Leftists frothing at the mouth, warning of all kinds of imaginary harms inflicted on this country by Trump.
On the other hand you have some among the conservatives who are paranoid, thinking that a coup is in the offing because someone in the White House breathed the words “25th Amendment.”
I say bring on the 2020 presidential and congressional elections.
That’ll settle it . . . . . . . . . for 2 years.
Prison time or exorbitant fines for journalists who lie, libel, or slander? Make them suffer. Don’t let them just memory-hole the last offense as they prep a new one.
Our Journalist class is awful, but face no consequences for their misdeeds. That is a problem.
On the gripping hand you have “conservatives” who hate the President, will happily assist the Deep State in getting rid of Trump, and actually want to see the 25th Amendment used against him.
They are the left’s “useful idiots.”
We already have laws regarding libel, slander, and fraud. They aren’t particularly applicable when dealing with political bias, because there are lots of ways to slant the news without making an explicit or provable lie, and slander and libel laws are limited when the victim is a public official.
I strongly believe that the answer is not to crack down on the press. Yes, force the so-called platforms (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) to behave more like platforms and less like publishers, but don’t go putting leftist journalists in prison. That’s third-world stuff.
Well over 90% of journalists, all they do is either promote statism or run interference for it. I’ve explained my guesses as to why they do this ad nauseum here.
Anyone that actually thinks they are on the right needs to realize that this is a big problem.
What we really need are journalists that understand the menace of Keynesianism. That’s the root of it. Discretionary central bank policy quit working 30 years ago. Basically everything the Republicans and Democrats do, just makes it worse. Then everyone wonders why we have such kooky politicians in power.
If they break applicable laws and don’t suffer consequences, that’s also third-world stuff.
As I’ve said elsewhere, people who want to change the physical world become engineers and architects. People who want to change the culture become prominent in either a political or a media sense. Because that’s how you change laws and minds, respectively, and those are the levers with which we move the culture.
And people who want to change the culture tend, pretty much by definition, to be progressives. So it’s hardly surprising that the prominent forces in media lean left.
It’s a problem, but also a fact of life. Expose them, compete with them, and hope that workable ideas eventually hold sway.
Yes. So take them to court. But don’t be too quick to decide when an actual law is being broken, and when someone is exercising his legitimate right to report the news in a way that supports his leftist agenda.
It is perfectly legal to say, for example, that Donald Trump is a lying incompetent who is going to destroy America, and that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is a brave voice of truth and reason in a country consumed by corruption. You can even slip that into a news article, if your editor lets you get away with it. That isn’t a crime.
It’s stupid and wrong, but not a crime.
I keep thinking back to my J-school days. I remember one of our profs admonishing that if you were covering an event, and the organizers offered you doughnuts, do not take the doughnuts!
To even accept a doughnut would affect your bias.
That’s how seriously they treated bias back in the 80s. And this was at a state university.
Those professors are spinning in their graves.
At the TV station where I worked, I once saw the head of the news department accept the doughnuts. He even suggested I take some. I was mortified. It was as if the Tempter himself were suggesting I dispense with all my ethics for a pastry.
I appreciate what you’re saying.
I’ve also read that the idea of a neutral, dispassionate press is a fairly late invention, and that the press has, historically, been pretty blatantly partisan.
I think we have to ask ourselves: do we want to try to make the press something it has rarely (perhaps never?) been and that human nature arguably mitigates against? Or do we want to see it more clearly for what it is, and live in an imperfect world in which we at least are conscious of the imperfection?
I think I’d rather see the press exposed than reformed.
I’m sure we can find some instances of libel. The pertinent bit of evidence is whether there was “actual malice” involved in the libelous offense.
And I have a sense that there is. Lots.
Exposed and reformed. Why wouldn’t you want reform?
link
We. Are. Doomed.
So what? Trump is still president. And even if Congress were able to remove Trump from office via a two-thirds vote of the US Senate (if they used impeachment) and a two-thirds vote of the US House (if they used the 25th amendment), Mike Pence would be president.
So, even under this paranoid vision of what is to come we end up with a result that results in the replacement of one Republican with another.
That’s not enough to support the Stalinist move of putting journalists on the rack.
Well, sure, I’d love to see both. But I am skeptical that the press will ever be objective — or, for that matter, that it has ever been objective. So I’m much more interested in people understanding its weaknesses than in attempts to make it into something it’s unlikely to be.
Public skepticism, in short, seems the best solution to a smugly dishonest press.
Well, yes. That makes sense.
Perhaps targeted assassinations of prominent left-leaning media figures would work.*
* parody
Thank God that 30 million people listen to “Hate Radio” everyday. There is no such thing outside of the United States.
I assume you mean “talk radio,” but are characterizing it as “hate radio” because “hate” is such a wonderfully broad brush with which to paint those with whom you disagree.
UPDATE: After I posted this, more than one person helpfully pointed out to me that Rufus was just kidding with the “hate radio” bit. I, proud as I am of my own dry wit, missed it completely and, like a complete rube, took the bait. I apologized to Rufus in a subsequent post. Ruf and I agree on a lot of things, though he’s a little too — something, I forget what — for me, so I rarely reward anything he says with a “like.” I guard my “likes” pretty jealously, trying to avoid, well, that pearls-before-swine thing. Not that I’m saying Ruf is a swine. Nothing like that. But, still. You know.
I think you missed the sneer quotes.
I think he’s just ironically noting what the left (and certain “useful idiots” on the right) call it.