Category Archives: Propaganda

Freedom Fighters Vs. Freedom Deniers; Truth Vs. Untruth

Conservatism, Journalism, libertarianism, Liberty, Media, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Pseudo-intellectualism

If economic historian Tom Woods and XM radio host Mike Church made it onto Freedom Watch’s often-misnamed Freedom-Fighters panel, I would be inclined to tune in more often. These men have fidelity to truth and reality. It was on display during an appearance on Judge Napoliaton’s Fox Business show.

More often than not, I switch off. Sure, the occasional freedom fighter finds his way onto the segment, but the Freedom Fighters Panel is set-up, in general, in the mold followed by every other cable and network show. It’s positively postmodernist. Present the public with two competing “perspectives” or worldviews. By doing so, you mislead Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber into thinking that indeed there are two realities, and that he may decide which one is more compelling.

The truth is that truth is immutable; it is not relative. There is, moreover, too little truth in media. Truth cannot afford to be diluted or presented by its adherents as dueling with untruth.

Gasbag Gasparino/Nancy Skinner/Caroline Heldman/Tara Dowdell/—these Fox News fixtures no more represent truth or promote it than does your average Holocaust denier.

Except, that—although I know nothing about the Dewey Decimal Classification—I believe that in a library, Holocaust denying literature would not be classified under history. If I am correct in this last assumption, why classify the reality defying bunk spewed by the likes of Nancy Skinner, Caroline Heldman, Tara Dowdell, Carl Jeffers, Joe Sibila, Erika Payne, “Charlie” Rangel, and other assorted TV mouths, as versions of the truth? For that is what the panel format suggests.

Naturally, the dueling “perspectives,” political-panel format is quite compatible with the aims of CNN, MSNBC, and other progressive media outlets.

UPDATE II: One more Media Matters con man (A Liberal’s Moral Compass)

Classical Liberalism, Founding Fathers, Ilana Mercer, Journalism, Justice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Morality, Natural Law, Propaganda, Rights, South-Africa

The following is excerpted from y “One more Media Matters con man,” now on WND.COM:

“Terry Krepel authors a website called ConWebWatch. ‘The focus of ConWebWatch,’ Krepel declares on the site, is ‘the ConWeb—large, well-funded, Internet-based conservative ‘news’ organizations [such as] NewsMax, WorldNetDaily and CNSNews.com.’ (I’ve inserted words in parenthesis so as to alert the reader to the edit. Accurate reporting should enable readers to distinguish editorial from authorial input.)

As a biographical note, Krepel adds that he ‘became employed by Media Matters for America in July 2004.’ At his Huffington-Post perch, Krepel is duly described as a ‘Media Matters senior editor.’ Media Matters for America purports to be a ‘progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.’

Our ace writer ought to have stated that he has been employed at Media Matters since 2004. ‘I became employed’ thus might be ugly English for, ‘I was once but am no longer employed by Media Matters.’ Conversely, perhaps this is a fellow whose intelligible written English is confined to the words ‘racial discrimination’?

Himself Krepel describes as ‘a veteran of 17 years in professional journalism as a newspaper writer, designer and editor. I know the ins and outs of the business and how it can be used and misused—and I see how the conservative Internet media is misusing journalism.’

His mission Krepel defines as documenting ‘the distortions, excesses and hypocrisy of these conservative media sites.’ Almost daily Krepel will dissect what Joseph Farah, Erik Rush, Aaron Klein, Jerome Corsi and others on WND.com and CNSNews.com have to say.

His method, crows Krepel, is to ‘hoist the conservative media on the petard of hypocrisy, accuracy and objectivity’ by ‘using their own words.’

Untrue; at least in my case.

Krepel has libeled me, but not by ‘using [my] own words'” … Disputes about democracy notwithstanding, there can be no disagreement over Krepel’s crappy journalism.”…

The complete column is “One more Media Matters con man,” now on WND.COM.

My new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon.

A newly formatted, splendid Kindle copy is also on sale.

UPDATE I (Sep. 2): With the same ease with which Krepel left-off quotations around my original words—so as to seamlessly introduce his interpretations of those words—so too could this purveyor of crappy journalism have suddenly “added” the required quotations, once exposed. In anticipation, I have captured the original (June 12) Krepel item. The omission begins with, “Washington and Westminster,” and ends with “the disaster that is post-apartheid South Africa.” Here it is in the original:

UPDATE II: A LIBERAL’S MORAL COMPASS. Terry Krepel thinks he has hit a home run on the Facebook thread at “One more Media Matters con man.” There, Krepel implies that Eugene Terre’Blanche deserved to die, even though the old man was the non-aggressor at the crime scene, and had served his time in jail for his past transgressions (which I am not here adjudicating).
Heaven’s! I’m speechless. All Krepel has demonstrated is that left-liberals (like himself) are every bit as blood thirsty and bereft of a moral compass as the neoconservatives they often critique.
Every remotely sane individual can see where this kind of sentiment leads. And every libertarian can see why the US is in such terrible moral shape. There is no difference between affiliates of the political factions as far as ethics go. “So long as my guy is killing off the guys I dislike—I’m WINNING”: That’s the pervading mindset. Justice be damned.

UPDATED: Is ‘Multidisciplinary’ the Academic Equivalent of ‘Multiculturalism’?

Ancient History, Education, Free Markets, Human Accomplishment, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, Propaganda, The West

Looking over the impressive resume and interests of an academic—an acquaintance of a friend— in the applied sciences, the following occurred to me: In the world of the boffins and scientists of research and development (R&D), “multidisciplinary” education is the equivalent of “multiculturalism.”

“Multidisciplinary” education seems to be the buzzword—key to showing how “relevant” and contextualized you and your field of endeavor really are in a hip and evolving world.

My suspicion was reinforced while watching a C-Span segment in which a leading female head of department at MIT engineering waxed fat about what fun she was having designing “work spaces” that “brought together” just about every other department in the world (social work, education).

The aim of all the fun? Coaxing America’s lazy kids into thinking of science and math as fun. (A better, more-sustainable approach would be to teach America’s already dumbed-down, increasingly dispensable secondary-school students that most things worth learning are never plain fun, but are a function of effort and practice, i.e. a good deal of rote. The fun comes when the tough stuff has been mastered.)

Naturally, engineer and physician will collaborate in the design of a prosthetic limb. But the trend observed goes beyond preaching about practical cooperation in bringing beneficial products to markets, something that already occurs spontaneously in the market.

Like “multiculturalism,” the “multidisciplinary” concept is an ideological construct designed to bring about “change.”

What kind of change?

“Intellectual disciplines,” historian Keith Windschuttle has written, “were founded in ancient Greece and gained considerable impetus from the work of Aristotle who identified and organized a range of subjects into orderly bodies of learning. … The history of Western knowledge shows the decisive importance of the structuring of disciplines. This structuring allowed the West to benefit from two key innovations: the systematization of research methods, which produced an accretion of consistent findings; and the organization of effective teaching, which permitted a large and accumulating body of knowledge to be transmitted from one generation to the next.” (The Killing of History, Keith Windschuttle, Encounter, pp. 247-250)

The concept of the intellectual discipline is inseparable from Western canon and curriculum.

Yet this has been the aim—and, arguably, the signal achievement—of the postmodern tradition: to completely dismantle one of the greatest achievements of Western Civilization: the intellectual discipline. (This is why your fun-addicted kids “study” not history, but so-called “social sciences” or “cultural studies” in secondary and tertiary educational institutions.)

Is “Multidisciplinary” yet another one of those clever catchphrases that couches a contempt for the traditional Western notion of an intellectual disciplines?

UPDATE (Aug. 30): CHINA. I’m always amazed that Americans would call China militant, when it is the US that is starting and conducting wars all over the world. Our esteemed reader below sounds a little like Donald Trump, which is not a good thing.

A Storm in a Nanny State

Democracy, Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Journalism, Liberty, Media, Private Property, Propaganda, The State

Take this post to be part of the blog series, “What They Do In Dictatorships.” In a highly evolved Managerial State such as ours, where the population has been cowed into submission, storms—even—Category 1 storms—give rise to forced evacuations. Just about half the country has been terrorized, or threatened into fleeing. It’s called “leadership,” and subjects seem to apprecaite being coaxed from their homes by lazy bureaucrats and oink-sector workers who’d rather run themselves, than stick around and do the job taxpayers pay them to do: rescue taxpayers.

In “bad” dictatorships—Libya being the latest one the US and its allies have just voided of a dictator—people might have been left in their homes. OMG. The horror! But not in the US, because the American Managerial State is so much more efficient in encroaching on its citizens than are these tin-pot dictators, whom we have built-up into mega-monsters in our infantile, Disneyfied minds.

In any case, the crappy media in this country forms a cartel of cretins. Such is the nature of this monopoly that all news outlets can safely decide to hype one story—in this case, the storm that petered out—and none of these media see the need to hedge their bets, or moderate the level of hysteria on this most fickle of topics: weather.

Here’s the definition of a “Category 1 storm”:

They “usually cause no significant structural damage; however, they can topple unanchored mobile homes, as well as uproot or snap trees. Poorly attached roof shingles or tiles can blow off. Coastal flooding and pier damage are often associated with Category 1 storms. Power outages are typically widespread to extensive, sometimes lasting several days. Even though it is the least intense type of hurricane, the storm can still produce plenty of widespread damage and can be a life-threatening storm.”