Standing Up To Politically Correct Socialism On Campus

By

       Zeno Potas

      In the United States, the disease of political correctness has taken root in our colleges and most universities are being taken over by this expression of Leftism. The Socialist's creed is “Speech I like is protected. Speech I don't like oppresses me and should be forbidden and anyone with whom we disagree must be silenced! punished! Fired!.” It’s always confusing when people use the terminology of one point of view to advance the opposite point of view. They use the language of individualism to promote collectivism and deny people their individuality. They use the language of diversity to promote non-diversity and exclude unwelcome viewpoints.

      To enforce this ideal student thugs take over administration offices with impunity, shout down speakers with whom they differ, and many faculty members support them. This is completely counter to the entire purpose behind freedom of speech. Repetition is propaganda so it should be no surprise that young people steeped in this authoritarian worldview from the moment they arrive on campus eventually begin to echo it. Certain speakers must not be allowed on campus! Certain viewpoints make us feel unsafe!

      There is one professor that has recently come into the spotlight and has yet to be terminated. Dr. James “Duke” Pesta of the University of Wisconsin is standing up for the first amendment of the Constitution by refusing to buckle under and he tells that to his students this the first day they walk into his classroom. He hands out a form to every student to read and sign. If they do not agree with it, they can drop the class immediately. He has no use for “students who only want their own preconceived ideas validated.” These are his words:

     "In this course, we study literature from cultures that existed before you were born. Their world is not our world. Their beliefs may not be our beliefs. No one asks you to believe or endorse any premise, attitude, precept, theology, political system, or ideology contained in these books or expressed in class.”

      "We will not malign or trivialize these texts because they do not always parrot our values. We will not assume these books are racist, sexist, or homophobic because of the period in which they were written, or because of the race, class, gender, or religion of the authors. People who approach alien cultures with such preconceived notions are bigots masquerading as critically sophisticated advocates, often in the name of ‘social justice.’ Persons who so diminish the past are neither social nor just, especially when they compel students to adopt their biases.”

With that said,

• Please drop the class immediately if you are triggered by free speech, the free exchange of ideas, or people who express and defend ideas or opinions that differ from your own.

• Please drop the class immediately if you are triggered by open, direct, and adult discussion of issues, including but not limited to issues of faith, war, violence, race, gender, and sexuality.

• Please drop the class immediately if you are triggered by recurring encounters with heterosexuality, traditional gender identities, sympathetic representations of Christianity (or religion in general), positive examples of free markets or capitalism, or unapologetic encounters with patriotism, hierarchies, or meritocracy-based institutions or attitudes.

• Please drop the class immediately if you feel entitled to censor the thoughts or words of others or insist they tailor their language or attitudes to your preferences.

    

      Today, the sad truth is that universities once known as open forums for free thought are now hostile to it. Indoctrination by far left professors and their skewed take on history and life in general has sucked the truth out of reality. In the name of "diversity" and "tolerance," American universities, once a jewel of free thought and intellectual inquiry, have become places Americans who cherish liberty and cherish America increasingly fear to send their children for fear of losing them to Socialist Communist ideology. How long Dr.Pesta can continue bucking this Leftist environment should be closely watched by all true American Patriots.

Enemy of the People - An Unbiased Response

By


       M. Richard Maxson

      A free press is essential to keeping the citiznry informed and the power of the government in check but what if the press is not actually free? What if the press has been consolidated into a small number of entities that publishes only the views of their elitist owners? What if other points of view are ignored or vilified? This is the state of the western media in 2018. As well renown journalist Dan Rather stated, “Real Journalism died in the 1990's,” but how did this happen?

      The rise of the internet has played a part but it was in that decade that real journalism was dealt a final death blow with the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that began deregulation and convergence which led to the emergence of multinational media conglomerates and as these multinational media conglomerates grew larger and more powerful it has become increasingly difficult for small, local media outlets to survive. The mergers eliminated scores of independent news organizations resulting in a concentration of media ownership. Today, six corporate conglomerates (Disney, CBS Corporation, 21st Century Fox, Viacom, Time Warner, and Comcast) own the majority of mass media outlets in the United States. Consolidation of the western press has created what is known as “media imperialism” which is a critical theory regarding the perceived effects of globalization on the world's media which is often seen as dominated by American media and culture. This new type of corporate imperialism has made almost all the western nations subsidiary to the media products of some of the most powerful countries or companies

      The Telecommunications Act enabled this handful of corporations to expand their power, and with little competition they eliminated their news bureaus from around the world. There was no longer a need to check the facts of a story as they all were carrying, basically, the same story. According to American historian, Howard Zinn, such mergers "enabled tighter control of information." American journalist, Chris Hedges argues that corporate media control "of nearly everything we read, watch or hear" is an aspect of what political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls inverted totalitarianism

      Since the media is owned by the wealthy and by groups of people with a strong influence, these owners use the media as a safety tool to protect and project their own views and agendas. This is clarified using the “propaganda model.” It is a conceptual model in political economy that seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social, and political policies are "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda. Part of the propaganda model is self-censorship through the corporate system also known as corporate censorship - that reporters and especially editors share or acquire values that agree with corporate elites in order to further their careers. Those who do not are marginalized or fired.

     Many critics of the media say liberal or elitist left wing bias exists within a wide variety of media channels, especially within the mainstream media, including network news shows of CBS, ABC, and NBC, cable channels CNN, MSNBC and the former Current TV, as well as major newspapers, news-wires, and radio outlets, especially CBS News, Newsweek, and The New York Times. These arguments intensified when it was revealed that the Democratic Party received a total donation of $1,020,816, given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), while the Republican Party received only $142,863 via 193 donations from employees of these same organizations

Media bias in the United States occurs when the US media systematically skews reporting in a way that crosses standards of professional journalism.

      Journalists were surveyed at national media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the broadcast networks. The survey found that the large majority of journalists were Democratic voters whose attitudes were well to the left of the general public on a variety of topics, including issues such as abortion, affirmative action, social services, and gay rights. The survey concluded firstly that journalists coverage of controversial issues reflected their own attitudes and secondly that the predominance of political liberals in newsrooms pushed news coverage in a liberal direction. This suggested this tilt as a mostly unconscious process of like-minded individuals projecting their shared assumptions onto their interpretations of reality, a variation of confirmation bias or mob mentality. The continued denials of bias by these individuals are because they actually don't realize that they are biased.

      Retaining only like-minded individuals suggests that media perform as a sentry not for the community as a whole, but for groups having sufficient power and influence to create, control, and project their own personal beliefs as truths. Many news outlets make no pretense of being unbiased, and give their readers or listeners the news they want, leading to what has been called post truth politics.

     Post-truth politics (also called post-factual politics and post-reality politics) is a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored. Post-truth differs from traditional contesting and falsifying of facts by relegating facts and expert opinions to be of secondary importance relative to appeal to emotion. A defining trait of post-truth politics is that campaigners continue to repeat their talking points, even if these are found to be untrue.

       As of 2018 political commentators have identified post-truth politics as ascendant in many nations, notably the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe among others. U.S. and western commercial media encourage controversy only within a narrow range of opinion, in order to give the impression of open debate, and do not report on news that falls outside that range. In a study of 116 mainstream U.S. papers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, study author Jim A. Kuypers stated that the mainstream press in America tends to favor liberal viewpoints. Reporters who they thought were expressing moderate or conservative points of view were most often were labeled as holding a minority point of view regardless of the truth. 
 

      A study by political scientists Tim Groseclose of UCLA and Jeff Milyo of the University of Missouri at Columbia attempted to quantify bias among news outlets using statistical models, and found a liberal bias. The authors wrote that "all of the news outlets we examine[d], except Fox News's Special Report and the Washington Times, received scores to the left.

      Across the United States over 100 editorials are defending themselves and attacking President Trump for his statement that the press is “the enemy of the people” He is also constantly complaining about “fake news,” and the media doesn't like that label either. He is not a politician and does not speak like one. His words may be confusing but the idea is correct. “Fake News”* is propaganda however subtle. The press is not “the enemy of the people” unless the press is, consciously or unconsciously, pushing a one-sided agenda as Pravda did in the old Soviet Union. While this has been described as a contemporary problem, some observers have described it as a long-standing part of political life that was less noticeable than before. It is a fact that six corporations control roughly 90% of the media and they and they alone tell the world what is true and what is not. This IS NOT a free press. This situation is a disaster for the Republic. 

 

*Fake news is news reported with opinions and speculation. It is when a journalist selectively chooses and ignores facts, and interprets or paraphrases those facts to reach an unwarranted conclusion that conveniently validates his own views.

Protect the Constitution

By

       George Sontag

"Republics decline into democracies and democracies

degenerate into despotisms." -- Aristotle

       As children, the young Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and the Marquis de Lafayette did something our children don’t do today,they did study the past. They studied how ancient civilizations governed, what the world’s most brilliant philosophers thought and why man acts as he does across time.

      In the 21^st century United States The education system also known as “government schools” have opted to put the study of human history on the back burner. It seems subjects like black history and social justice is more important than the reading the teachings of great scholars and thinkers whose truisms are the basis for all humanity. This Progressive agenda, that preaches that the past is obsolete, professes that all writings, including the Constitution and subjects such as civics, are unimportant. 

 

      In this way the Progressive left are transforming America by transforming the rules. They use the term “post-constitutional" to describe the current era in which we live. What is post-constitutional? There are couple of characteristics. In the past, law was the great leveler. We could all agree on the basics. Law is no longer a fixed, largely agreed upon principle. Instead it is becoming something elastic, subjective, defined by the latest best argument cooked up at Harvard Law School or Yale.

      Outright hostility to the Constitution becoming mainstream. In our law schools law professors are busy dismantling the Constitution because of their dislike of it and the people who wrote it, than they are teaching what it actually says. After all, why teach what it actually says when your Progressive agenda is to replace it?

      Close-minded liberals have the intellectual arrogance to think they should decide for all of us which ideas are to be heard and which are not. They try to portray everything that happened in America’s past as evil and backward. This reeks of totalitarianism, which has crept in gradually and has taken root in our society. In our media, in all that we see and hear, the propaganda of Progressive Socialism is overwhelming. Their drum pounds 24/7 so it should be no shock that millennials lean to the Left when they constantly have liberalism shoved down their throats by their schools, their favorite musicians, and Hollywood.

      H. L. Mencken famously said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” While it was true at the time, it’s even more accurate now. Is it any wonder that this country is sliding down the slope towards Socialism?  The Constitution cannot protect our rights if we do not protect the Constitution. Freedom is not free, and the Constitution is just some words on paper if we do not do anything to those who attempt to subvert it.

Corporate Propaganda Is The Enemy of the People

By

 M. Richard Maxson

      It was a bad week for American mainstream journalism. The string of errors followed a pattern of earlier false and misleading reporting and other violations of journalistic standards, a sorry record that has been the hallmark of the corporate press. Anyone who has any minimal concerns about journalistic accuracy should demand an accounting as to how major U.S. media outlets continue filling so many people’s brains with totally false news.

      Opinion and insinuation is NOT news. Media corporations are doing the opposite of what journalists ought to do: Rather than informing the public about what happened and providing minimal transparency and accountability for themselves and the high-level officials who caused this to happen, they are hiding behind meaningless, obfuscating statements crafted by P.R. executives and lawyers.

      Journalists should be on the same team as the truth. Instead, many cherry-pick facts to push their own narratives and personal interest, particularly on television and on social media. So, how can journalists and news outlets so flamboyantly act offended when they’re attacked as being “Fake News” when this is the conduct behind which they hide when they get caught disseminating incredibly consequential false stories?

      The major U.S. media outlets fill so many people’s

brains with totally false news. Virtually every false story published goes only in one direction: to be as inflammatory and damaging as possible on the Trump-Russia story and about Russia particularly. No Russian Facebook ad or Twitter bot could possibly have anywhere near the impact as CNN and others when it comes to deceiving people with blatantly inaccurate information.At some point, once “mistakes” all start going in the same direction, toward advancing the same agenda, they cease looking like mistakes.

      This type of recklessness and falsity is now a clear and highly disturbing trend — one could say a constant — when it comes to reporting on Trump, Russia, and WikiLeaks. It is reporting(?) like this — and the subsequent corporate efforts to obfuscate — that have made the U.S. media so disliked and that fuel and empower Trump’s attacks on them.

      A socio-cultural-political structure is in place wherein

the individual is bombarded, to the point of psychical saturation, with self-serving, elitist manufactured media content. This attitude is a systemic problem in the press, and especially at CNN. The calls for violence and action against current administration official reeks of totalitarianism. By its nature, totalitarianism conspires to keep the conscience in a state of angst, oblivious to reality. Is it any wonder that the president has called the current US media as “enemies of the people?”

     At yesterday's press conference CNN representative Jim Acosta demanded the press secretary codemn the president's remarks – her response was spot on truth...

“It’s ironic, Jim, that not only you and the media attack the president for his rhetoric when they frequently lower the level of conversation in this country. Repeatedly, repeatedly the media resorts to personal attacks without any content other than to incite anger.”

      She went on to say the media have attacked her personally “on a number of occasions” before specifically calling out rhetoric she said aired on CNN. “Including your own network said I should be harassed as a life sentence. That I should be choked. ICE officials are not welcomed in their place of worship,” Sanders said.

      “When I was hosted by the Correspondents’ Association, which almost all of you are members of, you brought a comedian up to attack my appearance and call me a traitor to my own gender,” Sanders said. “As far as I know, I’m the first press secretary in the history of the United States that’s required Secret Service protection.”

     Sanders said the media “continues to ratchet up the verbal assault against the president,” noting that the administration has a “role to play” but the media are also responsible for the discourse in America.
The administration has been very clear on this as the press secretary has stated........

      “Look, the President is simply calling out a very direct and false accusation lodged against him. There was nothing more than an individual trying to put their bias into their reporting, and something that, frankly, has gotten a little bit out of control. We've seen it time and time again over the last couple of weeks. A number of outlets have had to retract and change, and rewrite, and make editor's notes to a number of different stories -- some of them with major impacts, including moving markets. This is a big problem and we think it's something that should be taken seriously.”

      “You cannot say that it's an honest mistake when you're purposefully putting out information that you know to be false, or when you're taking information that hasn't been validated, that hasn't been offered any credibility, and that has been continually denied by a number of people, including people with direct knowledge of an instance. There's a very big difference between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American people -- something that happens regularly.”

      The first amendment guarantees a free press, but what if the press is not free, but merely a propaganda tool for the special interest cabals that lurk in the shadows? No matter your views on those political controversies, no matter how much you hate Trump or regard Russia as a grave villain and threat to our cherished democracy and freedoms, it has to be acknowledged that when the U.S. media is spewing constant false news this, is a grave threat to our republic and our cherished freedom.