We’re going to mix it up a bit this week, and take a break from the usual Tories, Luddites and Liberals fare, so that I can share a bit of myself with you. Here, then, are some Hobbies and Habits, along with some personal history. Truly exceptional (or otherwise interesting) recommendations are highlighted:
BOOKS
I read quite a bit. I love history but also enjoy fiction, so I tend to mix things up by reading a couple of non-fiction books, then reading a “blockbuster” or a “summer novel.” My favorite non-fiction book is probably Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow. I had no real idea of just how important Alexander Hamilton was to this country. He was just phenomenal, and is a personal hero of mine. I am working on a synopsis of his extraordinary accomplishments to share with you at some point in the future. My all-time favorite book of fiction is Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. Simply awesome. Some recent non-fiction books I’ve read:
The Forgotten Man, by Amity Schlaes
Alexis de Tocqueville, A Life, by Hugh Brogan
The American Patriot’s Almanac, by W. Bennett and John Cribb
His Excellency (a George Washington bio), by Joseph J. Ellis
The Great Upheaval, by Jay Winik
American Sphinx (a Thomas Jefferson bio), by Joseph J. Ellis
James Madison, by Garry Wills
America The Last Best Hope, Volume II, by William J. Bennett
Benjamin Franklin, by Edmund S. Morgan
John Adams, by David McCullough
1776, by David McCullough
America The Last Best Hope, Volume I, by William J. Bennett
Recent fiction books I’ve read:
The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield
The Interpretation of Murder, by Jed Rubenfeld
The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown
I am currently reading:
Immortal Words, by Terry Breverton
The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson
…and these are “on deck”:
Who Really Cares, by Arthur C. Brooks
Grant, Memoirs and Selected Letters, The Library of America
A Country of Vast Designs, by Robert W. Merry
American Lightning, by Howard Blum
Sin in the Second City, by Karen Abbott
Subscriptions: We subscribe to both of the local daily newspapers, plus The Wall Street Journal, National Review, Vanity Fair and Playboy. I also read columnists like Thomas Sowell, George Will, Larry Elder, Suzanne Fields, Dennis Prager, Paul Greenberg and yes, Ann Coulter. They can be found at TownHall.com, which offers a free subscription via email. I also subscribe to PatriotPost.us, which is just phenomenal and always gives me something to think about. It, too, is a free subscription.
COIN COLLECTING
We have almost completed a U.S. Type Set, which is essentially a collection of every type of American coin ever made. The set is incomplete, however, as we still need several of the gold coins. They are kind of pricey, so it may take a while to finish our collection. I started the collection in part to get Jake and Will interested in history, and it really jump-started my own passion for it. Here are some of my favorite U.S. coins:
1798 Draped Bust Large Cent – It’s from the 1700’s (!)
1804 Draped Bust Half Cent – Lewis and Clark took off to explore America
1826 Capped Bust Half Dollar – On July 4th, 1826, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died fifty years to the day after signing the Declaration of Independence
1864 Two Cent – Just a cool design
1883 Liberty Head Nickel – The back features a “V,” for Five, but no “Cents.” An enterprising scam artist named Josh Tatum plated them in gold and passed them off as $5 gold pieces. Thus was the term “You ain’t Joshing me,” was, um, coined…
MOVIES
I am a cinephile, or a major Movie Buff. We own over 300 movies, and we generally rent several movies a week, usually on weekends. If I have to pick a favorite movie, it is probably The Godfather, Part II. I also really like Little Big Man, and for goofy fun I really dig Sean of the Dead. Here are some recent favorites for your consideration:
The Hurt Locker
Moon
District 9
Sherlock Holmes
Surveillance
I Love You, Man
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
The Reader
Bottle Shock
Tell No One (French)
Superbad
Slumdog Millionaire
Marley and Me
GUNS
I used to hunt a bit – deer, duck, geese, rabbit, and squirrel – but I haven’t been out in years. It isn’t something I’ve imparted to my sons and I’m not sure that I will. However, I do like guns and I have a lifetime concealed carry permit. My sons and I are just beginning to explore gun safety and marksmanship. There is a local gun club I am looking at and we’ll probably join it in the near future. Here is what I own and shoot:
.45 semi-auto pistol (model 1911-A1)
5.56mm AR-15 semi-auto rifle (w/ ACOG)
.243 single-shot rifle (breech load w/ scope)
.357 Magnum revolver (7-shot)
12-gauge pump-action shotgun
.50 caliber muzzle loader
SPORTS and LEISURE
I grew up playing football, baseball and basketball, but really only follow football (I’m in a fantasy football league – Go, Mean Machine!) and some college basketball (primarily the NCAA Tournament). I also enjoy golf. Golf is my passion. Although I’m not terrific at it, I’m a 12 or 13 handicap and usually shoot in the mid-80’s. I have two golf “dreams” that I’m sure are shared by a million other golfers: Make a hole-in-one (been close) and shoot a round in the 70’s (been very close). I have played at Sawgrass and, yes, I did manage to stick the green on the par 3 17th. The other course I would really like to play some day is Pebble Beach. I am a pretty fair dart-thrower, a decent pool player (we have a table in the basement) and I’ve been playing in a Bridge game for close to twenty years (best card game ever, by the way). I also enjoy playing Poker, though I don’t play on a regular basis anymore.
Proudest Athletic Achievement: Sports give us a lot of pleasure and enjoyment, but I suppose my favorite sports memory was when I was selected Most Valuable Player by my high school football teammates. I guess my picture is still hanging on a wall with all the other Lawrence North High School football MVP’s in the stadium locker room. Those were great guys, and good times. (I played linebacker, always linebacker, and my high school dreams of pro football stardom were sidelined by a dislocated shoulder as a Senior.)
MILITARY
I was in the U.S. Air Force from January 1983 to January 1987. After completing basic training at Lackland AFB (I was a squad leader) I attended Precision Measurement Electronics Laboratory (PMEL) training in Denver, CO. I would return to Lowry AFB twice more for advanced technical training, first in Physical/Dimensional Measurement and later for Optical Measurement. Other than the technical training at Lowry, I spent my four years working in a PME Laboratory at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, MS. It wasn’t bad; we were about 90 minutes from the Florida panhandle to the east, and “The City,” aka New Orleans, to the west. I wouldn’t trade the time I spent in the military for anything; I learned more, and grew more as a person, than I ever would have thought possible in just four years.
Highlights: I was named Keesler AFB DCM Airman of the Year in 1984, was promoted below-the-zone to Senior Airman, and was honorably discharged as a Sergeant.
Ironic Note: I was married to Ginger Ferguson in 1983, and in 1984 we welcomed a son, Zachary, into the world. He was born in July, in Biloxi, Mississippi at the Keesler AFB hospital. Ginger and I divorced in 1987, and about 20 years later, Zach, having joined the Air Force and completed basic training, received news that his first duty station was going to be…Keesler AFB. He’s still there; he’s an Air Force firefighter, married, with twins on the way.
CAREER
I’ve been with ITT in Ft. Wayne, IN since they recruited me while I was in the Air Force and joined them in January 1987. I started out as a calibration technician, was sent to an HVAC school to learn environmental chamber maintenance, was moved into the Phys/D lab, and in 1997 was named supervisor of the Calibration Lab at the Pontiac Street facility. In 2005 I was recruited to help start a Resource Management group, which is just what it sounds like: A group that looks to optimize company assets by maximizing the utilization of existing resources and planning for future technical needs. I won’t bore you with all the details – it isn’t at all as glamorous as it sounds, lol – but I will say that we’ve developed an amazing business model, and I wish I owned it. Our metrics have shown “hard” cost savings of one million dollars or more in each year of our existence, and we will exceed that once again this year.
ITT is a great place to work. Sure, there have been a few ups and downs, but I think of it as a quintessential American corporation and I am proud to have been associated with them. We do a number of things, and we do them extraordinarily well. When you see satellite pictures of the weather, it’s from our imagers in space. We provide our troops with secure tactical communication systems in the field. Ever hear of “night-vision goggles?” That’s us. Our water technology helped pump Katrina out of New Orleans.
FAMILY
Nancy Marie and I have been married for twenty years. We have two sons, Jacob Thornton and William Winston. Nancy is the brains of the outfit: She has a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. She likes reading, watching “Days of Our Lives,” pro football, college basketball, and taking the boys to church. Jake attends Bishop Dwenger High School and is interested in becoming a doctor. He’s a regular “Renaissance Man.” He plays trumpet and piano, speaks a little French, and is a talented artist and writer. Will is “Joe Athlete.” He plays football and soccer for St. Charles, and plays tennis in the summer. He is also a very good student: He has consistently been on the Honor Roll, and has received High Honors for the last couple of years. Education is a very high priority in our household, but we also like to have fun. Recent vacations have been to Virginia Beach, Ft. Walton Beach, the Outer Banks, and Myrtle Beach. We also go to the movies, go to the pool, and play golf on occasion. We have a salt-and-pepper mini-Schnauzer named Lucy, who is the sweetest dog in the world. I should have named her Shadow, because she follows me wherever I go. Nancy calls her my “stalker.” In general, life is good. We live, quite happily (knock on wood), in a fairly average house in a golf-course community.
My Mom, Patty, and step-Dad, Dale, live in Greenfield, IN, and are great. Both are retired, although Dale went back to work part-time. I have the greatest sister in the world, Jodi, who shares a house in Greenfield with her husband, David, sons Eric and Connor, and two dogs, Annie and Izzy. I have numerous cousins, many of whom keep in touch, and their parents, my Aunts and Uncles, who I love dearly but don’t see nearly enough. My grandparents are gone, and I miss them every day.
ONWARD AND UPWARD
That’s it; that’s basically who I am and what I like. I’m not sure why I decided to share all of the flotsam and jetsam of my life, but I do hope that perhaps it gives you an insight into where I’m coming from amidst this discussion of ours. Please feel free to comment and I will attempt to answer or address whatever it is that you want to talk about.
A note on Tories: Moving forward, this blog will become more topical. There is much to discuss and, thus far, I feel that we have only laid the groundwork. These are target-rich times and I think it is imperative that we shine a little light on the important issues of the day. Do please join me.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
The Big Tent
So, how can it be that a political party is able to find so much support amongst a citizenry whose collective interests are clearly not being served? Is the Democratic Party willing to sacrifice national security for unbridled individual liberty? And is that the major appeal of the individuals it attracts?
I submit that the success of the Democratic Party is due to “The Big Tent” approach to politics. The Big Tent Approach works for two reasons. First, the Democrats make a concerted effort to appeal to everyone. As you can imagine, many are excited about the prospect of belonging to any group that will have them. You know them, I know them, and the Democratic Party most certainly knows them.
The second reason for the popularity of the Big Tent Approach is the complete and utter ostracization of those who do not choose to join the Democratic circus. Those who are not politically correct enough to support the myriad liberal causes are labeled “Right-wingers,” or religious fanatics, or Republicans. All are considered to be One And The Same. This, of course, makes it easier to target them, to identify them as “outsiders,” and to give the more clever Democrats a neat and tidy demographic onto which they can unleash their not inconsiderable rhetoric. I doubt that it’s occurred to them, but this “broad brush” approach is kind of like declaring war against all fish without considering how important fish are to the ecological system, how fish are an important staple in the diets of a great many people, or how there are a tremendous number of fish in the sea who are extremely capable hunters themselves.
Curiously, no one in the Democratic Party ever seems to acknowledge (or care) that it is more difficult to serve a thousand masters (the Democratic constituency) than it is to serve a single voice (Constitutional law). What is it they used to say about trying to please everyone? Not to fear: The Democratic Party will listen to absolutely anybody’s opinion, as long as that opinion isn’t religious in nature (or, heaven forbid, evangelical).
If you are not in the Big Tent, you are portrayed as a zealot and all-around party pooper. So says the Democratic Party, and this message is endlessly repeated in their personal echo chamber, the “mainstream” media. What do you suppose they would find if they were to investigate the Democratic demographic?
I’m no journalist, but even I was able to find out a few things about the Democratic demographic. Although it is hard to nail down, the evidence suggests that their “hardest” core constituency
consists of non-white, manual laborers with a grade school education and a Union card. If they participate in an organized religion, it is usually Catholicism. This is a very narrow view, however, I'm pretty sure that there are Republicans somewhere who are clever enough to use these few descriptors to paint all Democrats as toothless rubes -- or, say, Luddites -- if they really wanted to.
But I digress...
We know that the Democrats' constituency occupy a “Big Tent,” as they like to say; full of every manner of American. OK, so, shall we pretend for a moment that we are committed members of the mainstream media intelligentsia and take a peek under that canvass?
For starters, it’s a good thing that liberals value the individual; in the Democratic Party each constituent is unique -- just like everyone else. Under the Big Top you will find Idealists, Socialists, and Environmental Extremists mingling with Trial Lawyers, NAMBLA and the NEA. On stage in the middle ring there is Blame America First warming up for Big Government and the Entitlements (whose chief talent seems to be the ability to sing songs that have no apparent end). The Anti-Gun, Anti-War, Anti-Death Penalty-yet-Pro-Choice crowd have gathered ‘round. Meanwhile, the Gay Marriage Lobby is dancing with Judicial Activism while Class Warfare and Affirmative Action are having a wildly animated conversation nearby. Big Labor is here, small but stentorian (like Noam Chomsky, Bill Maher and Al Franken). Status Quo is talking amiably to itself -- about “Change” (the same as last year, and the year before that, and the year before that). The Demagogues and the Obstructionists are in a heated argument, although both sides are staking out the same position (much like the Journalists and the College Professors). The Global Warmists are trying to keep cool by fanning themselves with falsified data. Illegal Immigrants and Convicted Felons are crowding at the doors, clamoring to get in. “Soon, soon,” they are promised. Meanwhile, the ACLU is making a point of ignoring the posted occupancy levels.
Did I leave anyone out?
As you can see, there is a place for practically every special interest inside the “Big Tent.” Really, all you have to do is put your own particular self-interest(s) ahead of national interests -- that is, focus on the “small picture” -- and you’ll be made to feel right at home. Indeed, critical thinking is best left at the door.
One last thought, or two, on the Democratic Party:
During the 1972 Presidential campaign, Governor George McGovern of South Dakota was the Democratic candidate. He spoke of “change”:
“We reject the view of those who say, ‘America – love it or leave it.’ We reply, ‘Let us change it so we may love it the more.’”
During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama reportedly said:
“My fellow Americans, we are the greatest nation on earth, and here I am, sincerely, asking you to help me change it.”
These simple statements, for many, sum up the true feelings of those on the Left, encompassing the notion that they can not and will not love America until she is remade in an image and an ideology that they would choose for her. This would, naturally, include a big, “Nanny State” government –- Socialist, of course -– with a “living” Constitution that is as broadly interpreted as it is pliable; quotas, subsidies, and entitlements, with the attendant class warfare rhetoric built right in to rationalize any sense of shame or embarrassment resulting from being a recipient of wealth redistribution schemes; an embrace of secularism, because, again, if we remove Religion from the equation we can also reduce or eliminate any kind of shame or embarrassment associated with so-called “aberrant behavior”; and, we wouldn’t do anything without reaching a global consensus, which of course, means we wouldn’t do anything, period, because such a consensus would be impossible owing to our penchant for letting the tail wag the dog.
So, there would be no more Wars, no more Rich or Poor -- though we would ostensibly be “rich in Love” -- no more Hunger, Disease, Famine or Pestilence. Global Warming would go away, as would Guns, the Death Penalty, and Prison Overcrowding. Animals and Trees would have the same rights as humans, and America would have the friendship and respect of the entire planet.
Of course, Capitalism would die (at long last). Why work if you don’t have to? Critical, objective thought would have no place in our society, and since there would be no real reward for risk-taking we could say goodbye to Innovation. Advances in Medicine would die on the table and Agriculture as we know it would wither on the vine. So too, by extension, would Productivity and any meaningful GDP.
But all is not lost: We would eventually discount outdated notions such as self-reliance, perseverance and accountability, and instead ask what our country can do for us. We wouldn’t have to concern ourselves with foreign policy, either; we would soon become the milquetoasts of the world and have policy dictated to us. But, hey! We’d all be living under the same Big Tent, so how bad could it be?
Democrats themselves don’t really stand for anything tangible; rather, they are poseurs for virtually everything, with standards that evolve and adapt as the time and situation dictate. In short, they are Opportunists, willing to promise whatever it takes to acquire and maintain power. But it doesn’t seem to matter; the important thing is -- always, always, always -- the Party, and everyone is invited into the Big Tent, absolutely no questions asked other than, “Can we count on your vote?”
Our Declaration of Independence tells us that we have a right, and a duty, “to alter or abolish” any form of government which becomes destructive to our inalienable rights, and it exhorts us to institute a new government, laying its foundation on those principles “that shall seem most likely to effect our Safety and Happiness.” I happen to think as old Ben Franklin did, that our republic may not be the best form of government, but that it is the best that has ever been tried. I also think that a Party or an ideology that tries to serve a thousand masters is not only ineffective and foolhardy, but also dangerous.
I submit that the success of the Democratic Party is due to “The Big Tent” approach to politics. The Big Tent Approach works for two reasons. First, the Democrats make a concerted effort to appeal to everyone. As you can imagine, many are excited about the prospect of belonging to any group that will have them. You know them, I know them, and the Democratic Party most certainly knows them.
The second reason for the popularity of the Big Tent Approach is the complete and utter ostracization of those who do not choose to join the Democratic circus. Those who are not politically correct enough to support the myriad liberal causes are labeled “Right-wingers,” or religious fanatics, or Republicans. All are considered to be One And The Same. This, of course, makes it easier to target them, to identify them as “outsiders,” and to give the more clever Democrats a neat and tidy demographic onto which they can unleash their not inconsiderable rhetoric. I doubt that it’s occurred to them, but this “broad brush” approach is kind of like declaring war against all fish without considering how important fish are to the ecological system, how fish are an important staple in the diets of a great many people, or how there are a tremendous number of fish in the sea who are extremely capable hunters themselves.
Curiously, no one in the Democratic Party ever seems to acknowledge (or care) that it is more difficult to serve a thousand masters (the Democratic constituency) than it is to serve a single voice (Constitutional law). What is it they used to say about trying to please everyone? Not to fear: The Democratic Party will listen to absolutely anybody’s opinion, as long as that opinion isn’t religious in nature (or, heaven forbid, evangelical).
If you are not in the Big Tent, you are portrayed as a zealot and all-around party pooper. So says the Democratic Party, and this message is endlessly repeated in their personal echo chamber, the “mainstream” media. What do you suppose they would find if they were to investigate the Democratic demographic?
I’m no journalist, but even I was able to find out a few things about the Democratic demographic. Although it is hard to nail down, the evidence suggests that their “hardest” core constituency
consists of non-white, manual laborers with a grade school education and a Union card. If they participate in an organized religion, it is usually Catholicism. This is a very narrow view, however, I'm pretty sure that there are Republicans somewhere who are clever enough to use these few descriptors to paint all Democrats as toothless rubes -- or, say, Luddites -- if they really wanted to.
But I digress...
We know that the Democrats' constituency occupy a “Big Tent,” as they like to say; full of every manner of American. OK, so, shall we pretend for a moment that we are committed members of the mainstream media intelligentsia and take a peek under that canvass?
For starters, it’s a good thing that liberals value the individual; in the Democratic Party each constituent is unique -- just like everyone else. Under the Big Top you will find Idealists, Socialists, and Environmental Extremists mingling with Trial Lawyers, NAMBLA and the NEA. On stage in the middle ring there is Blame America First warming up for Big Government and the Entitlements (whose chief talent seems to be the ability to sing songs that have no apparent end). The Anti-Gun, Anti-War, Anti-Death Penalty-yet-Pro-Choice crowd have gathered ‘round. Meanwhile, the Gay Marriage Lobby is dancing with Judicial Activism while Class Warfare and Affirmative Action are having a wildly animated conversation nearby. Big Labor is here, small but stentorian (like Noam Chomsky, Bill Maher and Al Franken). Status Quo is talking amiably to itself -- about “Change” (the same as last year, and the year before that, and the year before that). The Demagogues and the Obstructionists are in a heated argument, although both sides are staking out the same position (much like the Journalists and the College Professors). The Global Warmists are trying to keep cool by fanning themselves with falsified data. Illegal Immigrants and Convicted Felons are crowding at the doors, clamoring to get in. “Soon, soon,” they are promised. Meanwhile, the ACLU is making a point of ignoring the posted occupancy levels.
Did I leave anyone out?
As you can see, there is a place for practically every special interest inside the “Big Tent.” Really, all you have to do is put your own particular self-interest(s) ahead of national interests -- that is, focus on the “small picture” -- and you’ll be made to feel right at home. Indeed, critical thinking is best left at the door.
One last thought, or two, on the Democratic Party:
During the 1972 Presidential campaign, Governor George McGovern of South Dakota was the Democratic candidate. He spoke of “change”:
“We reject the view of those who say, ‘America – love it or leave it.’ We reply, ‘Let us change it so we may love it the more.’”
During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama reportedly said:
“My fellow Americans, we are the greatest nation on earth, and here I am, sincerely, asking you to help me change it.”
These simple statements, for many, sum up the true feelings of those on the Left, encompassing the notion that they can not and will not love America until she is remade in an image and an ideology that they would choose for her. This would, naturally, include a big, “Nanny State” government –- Socialist, of course -– with a “living” Constitution that is as broadly interpreted as it is pliable; quotas, subsidies, and entitlements, with the attendant class warfare rhetoric built right in to rationalize any sense of shame or embarrassment resulting from being a recipient of wealth redistribution schemes; an embrace of secularism, because, again, if we remove Religion from the equation we can also reduce or eliminate any kind of shame or embarrassment associated with so-called “aberrant behavior”; and, we wouldn’t do anything without reaching a global consensus, which of course, means we wouldn’t do anything, period, because such a consensus would be impossible owing to our penchant for letting the tail wag the dog.
So, there would be no more Wars, no more Rich or Poor -- though we would ostensibly be “rich in Love” -- no more Hunger, Disease, Famine or Pestilence. Global Warming would go away, as would Guns, the Death Penalty, and Prison Overcrowding. Animals and Trees would have the same rights as humans, and America would have the friendship and respect of the entire planet.
Of course, Capitalism would die (at long last). Why work if you don’t have to? Critical, objective thought would have no place in our society, and since there would be no real reward for risk-taking we could say goodbye to Innovation. Advances in Medicine would die on the table and Agriculture as we know it would wither on the vine. So too, by extension, would Productivity and any meaningful GDP.
But all is not lost: We would eventually discount outdated notions such as self-reliance, perseverance and accountability, and instead ask what our country can do for us. We wouldn’t have to concern ourselves with foreign policy, either; we would soon become the milquetoasts of the world and have policy dictated to us. But, hey! We’d all be living under the same Big Tent, so how bad could it be?
Democrats themselves don’t really stand for anything tangible; rather, they are poseurs for virtually everything, with standards that evolve and adapt as the time and situation dictate. In short, they are Opportunists, willing to promise whatever it takes to acquire and maintain power. But it doesn’t seem to matter; the important thing is -- always, always, always -- the Party, and everyone is invited into the Big Tent, absolutely no questions asked other than, “Can we count on your vote?”
Our Declaration of Independence tells us that we have a right, and a duty, “to alter or abolish” any form of government which becomes destructive to our inalienable rights, and it exhorts us to institute a new government, laying its foundation on those principles “that shall seem most likely to effect our Safety and Happiness.” I happen to think as old Ben Franklin did, that our republic may not be the best form of government, but that it is the best that has ever been tried. I also think that a Party or an ideology that tries to serve a thousand masters is not only ineffective and foolhardy, but also dangerous.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Judicial Activism
What, exactly, is “judicial activism”? Judicial activism occurs when a judge (or a court) takes the law that applies in a particular case -- such as a statute or a Constitution -- and changes it to produce a result which appeals to the worldview of the particular judge. This can be done by creating a constitutional right that does not exist, or by ignoring one that already does exists.
To understand judicial activism, we should also understand its counterpart, judicial restraint. Judicial restraint does not mean being overly respectful of every standing statute; what about those which are clearly unconstitutional? Striking down statutes which conflict with the Constitution and supporting those which align with the Constitution are hallmarks of judicial restraint. Conversely, when judges ignore the Constitution in order to uphold ill-conceived and unconstitutional statutes because those statutes support their personal opinion on public policy matters, they should and must be considered a judicial activist.
Another way to spot judicial activists is to examine their decision-making process, usually dispensed via briefs on why they ruled or voted a particular way. When judges cite foreign courts, multinational treaties and international law as mitigating (or overarching) factors in their decisions, they are clearly judicial activists. When judges cite “useful decisions” by the Privy Council of Jamaica, the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe and the Supreme Court of India, as U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer did in a 1999 case involving allowable delays of execution, it becomes clear that they are judicial activists.
The single most important influence on American law should be the U.S. Constitution. However, many on the left, particularly (and predictably) those in academia, see nothing wrong with using foreign law to “inform their judgment” or “broaden the context” of an issue before a United States Court. They see nothing wrong with citing legal precedents of foreign courts or even applying them to American jurisprudence. This tendency to internationalize issues that come before them is useful because it suits their worldview, it supports their agenda, and it allows them to rationalize their personal preferences for how they wish things to be. The fact that many of these things are contra-constitutional is a minor obstacle to overcome; they are the judges, are they not?
To make matters worse, judicial activists aren’t shy about taking on legislatures to get what they want. Perhaps W. James Antle III, writing in Intellectual Conservative.com, says: “The powers vested in the judiciary may require courts to issue unpopular decisions or even to rule that laws commanding majority support are unconstitutional. But this does not empower judges to summarily overturn laws they disagree with on policy grounds and replace them with something closer to their own views; to do so would be to overstep the legitimate powers of the judiciary and usurp those properly belonging to the legislature.”
The problem is, “legislating from the bench” has become more prevalent and more intrusive than you might think. In Montoy v. State of Kansas, a case that went before the Kansas Supreme Court in 2005, the court held that the state legislature was violating the Kansas Constitution by failing to provide suitable funding for Kansas public schools. The Kansas Constitution provides that the legislature "shall provide for intellectual, educational, vocational, and scientific improvement by establishing and maintaining public schools, educational institutions and related activities which may be organized and changed in such matter as may be provided by law." Section 6b grants the legislature the power to make “suitable provisions” for finance of education. The Court did not invoke a long-standing legal doctrine but rather re-cast the word "suitable" as a legal term for the Court to interpret rather than the legislature. In determining what suitable means, the court usurped the legislature's power by making a fundamentally legislative determination as to how to allocate the state's budget. In effect, the court has taken away the people of Kansas’ ability to control spending through their elected representatives.
In Kelo v. New London, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled 5 to 4 that state and local governments could use eminent domain to take private property against the owners' will for use in private development. Eminent Domain is most commonly used when the acquisition of real property is necessary for the completion of a public project, such as a road, and the owner of the required property is unwilling to negotiate a price for its sale. In this case the public project was not a road, but a series of development projects attached to the relocation of Pfizer to New London.
The question before the court, then, was how to balance New London development against the protection provided by the Fifth Amendment, which states that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
So, how did the “due process of law” play out in Kelo v. New London?
Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens stated: "The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including -- but by no means limited to -- new jobs and increased tax revenue." On the dissenting side, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote: "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”
In other words, it’s the “little guy” who gets squashed by the judicial activism of liberal judges. (In case you’ve missed it thus far, the larger point of this blog is to highlight the irony –- and the hypocrisy –- of the “little guy” getting creamed by liberal politics and the policies they engender.)
Finally, no discussion of judicial activism would be complete without taking a look at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Stretching from Guam to Arizona, the Ninth Circuit Court is the largest federal circuit in the nation. It is also the circuit most overturned by the Supreme Court.
This is the court that ruled the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional, assisted suicide was constitutional, and the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms applied only to states, not individuals. They also declared that cross-dressers constitute a persecuted class of people and are therefore eligible for asylum in the United States, allowed that some religious groups have the right to smoke marijuana on federal lands, and prohibited authorities from searching gas tanks at the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2000, the court said a job applicant can not be rejected because his health problems would be worsened by working at the place he is applying.
Most recently, the Ninth has determined that an “injunction would be appropriate” to force the United States Navy to limit its use of sonar. This is a result of lawsuits brought by environmental groups on behalf of whales, who, they feel, are at risk from the high-frequency sound waves emitted by sonar. Sonar allows the Navy to safely navigate underwater and track enemy submarines. The Navy says it already minimizes the exposure of marine line to sonar and that it has seen no evidence of sonar-induced injuries to whales.
Who else would we expect, but the Ninth Circuit Court, to interject themselves into the United State’s military chain of command?
Don’t think judicial appointments are important? Fourteen of the 28 Ninth Circuit Court judges were appointed by President Clinton, and these include his Oxford roommate and a classmate from Yale. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has 11 circuit court nominees awaiting Senate confirmation, three of whom were nominated 18 months ago.
In November, 2007, President Bush said: "Today I announced seven more outstanding judicial nominees for the district and circuit courts. And I look forward to working with the United States Senate to confirm these good men and women as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the Senate has failed to act on many of my other nominees. ... This leads to what are called 'judicial emergencies' - vacancies that cause justice to be degraded or delayed."
Could it be that the Democrat-controlled 110th Congress were stalling the confirmation process? Well, each year the Federal appellate courts decide more than 30,000 cases, meaning that for most criminal appeals, for most civil appeals, and on most constitutional issues, the decisions of these courts will be the law of the land. If you were a leftist, would you want a conservative POTUS installing judges? Ah, but let us acknowledge the difference between what we want and what is right.
We cannot allow the checks and balances so carefully constructed by the Founding Fathers to be ignored or cast aside. There are important reasons for having a separation of powers within our government, not the least of which is to avoid a gathering tyranny from any one branch.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, in 1821, that "The germ of destruction of our nation is in the power of the judiciary, an irresponsible body - working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall render powerless the checks of one branch over the other and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
That sentiment is echoed today. In Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide View of Judges, Robert Bork writes: “What judges have wrought is a coup d’etat – slow moving and genteel, but a coup d’etat nonetheless.”
Fortunately, some among us appreciate the importance of restraint.
"Judges must be constantly aware that their role, while important, is limited. They do not have a commission to solve society's problems, as they see them, but simply to decide cases before them according to the rule of law,” said Chief Justice John Roberts. “When the other branches of government exceed their constitutionally mandated limits, the courts can act to confine them to the proper bounds. It is judicial self-restraint, however, that confines judges to their proper constitutional responsibilities.”
These are words well worth remembering.
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
“What Exactly Is Judicial Activism?” by Thomas L. Jipping, CNS Commentary from the Free Congress Foundation, March 7th, 2001
“Judge Bork: Judicial Activism is Going Global,” by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, Fox News, September 11th, 2003
“Judicial Lawmaking and its Threat to Freedom,” the Girard Press, November 8th, 2006
W. James Antle III
http://www.wikipedia.com/
http://www.pbs.org/
http://www.foxnews.com/
“Judges Hold No Rank In Military Chain of Command,” by Phyllis Schlafly, Feb 18th, 2008
To understand judicial activism, we should also understand its counterpart, judicial restraint. Judicial restraint does not mean being overly respectful of every standing statute; what about those which are clearly unconstitutional? Striking down statutes which conflict with the Constitution and supporting those which align with the Constitution are hallmarks of judicial restraint. Conversely, when judges ignore the Constitution in order to uphold ill-conceived and unconstitutional statutes because those statutes support their personal opinion on public policy matters, they should and must be considered a judicial activist.
Another way to spot judicial activists is to examine their decision-making process, usually dispensed via briefs on why they ruled or voted a particular way. When judges cite foreign courts, multinational treaties and international law as mitigating (or overarching) factors in their decisions, they are clearly judicial activists. When judges cite “useful decisions” by the Privy Council of Jamaica, the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe and the Supreme Court of India, as U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer did in a 1999 case involving allowable delays of execution, it becomes clear that they are judicial activists.
The single most important influence on American law should be the U.S. Constitution. However, many on the left, particularly (and predictably) those in academia, see nothing wrong with using foreign law to “inform their judgment” or “broaden the context” of an issue before a United States Court. They see nothing wrong with citing legal precedents of foreign courts or even applying them to American jurisprudence. This tendency to internationalize issues that come before them is useful because it suits their worldview, it supports their agenda, and it allows them to rationalize their personal preferences for how they wish things to be. The fact that many of these things are contra-constitutional is a minor obstacle to overcome; they are the judges, are they not?
To make matters worse, judicial activists aren’t shy about taking on legislatures to get what they want. Perhaps W. James Antle III, writing in Intellectual Conservative.com, says: “The powers vested in the judiciary may require courts to issue unpopular decisions or even to rule that laws commanding majority support are unconstitutional. But this does not empower judges to summarily overturn laws they disagree with on policy grounds and replace them with something closer to their own views; to do so would be to overstep the legitimate powers of the judiciary and usurp those properly belonging to the legislature.”
The problem is, “legislating from the bench” has become more prevalent and more intrusive than you might think. In Montoy v. State of Kansas, a case that went before the Kansas Supreme Court in 2005, the court held that the state legislature was violating the Kansas Constitution by failing to provide suitable funding for Kansas public schools. The Kansas Constitution provides that the legislature "shall provide for intellectual, educational, vocational, and scientific improvement by establishing and maintaining public schools, educational institutions and related activities which may be organized and changed in such matter as may be provided by law." Section 6b grants the legislature the power to make “suitable provisions” for finance of education. The Court did not invoke a long-standing legal doctrine but rather re-cast the word "suitable" as a legal term for the Court to interpret rather than the legislature. In determining what suitable means, the court usurped the legislature's power by making a fundamentally legislative determination as to how to allocate the state's budget. In effect, the court has taken away the people of Kansas’ ability to control spending through their elected representatives.
In Kelo v. New London, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled 5 to 4 that state and local governments could use eminent domain to take private property against the owners' will for use in private development. Eminent Domain is most commonly used when the acquisition of real property is necessary for the completion of a public project, such as a road, and the owner of the required property is unwilling to negotiate a price for its sale. In this case the public project was not a road, but a series of development projects attached to the relocation of Pfizer to New London.
The question before the court, then, was how to balance New London development against the protection provided by the Fifth Amendment, which states that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
So, how did the “due process of law” play out in Kelo v. New London?
Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens stated: "The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including -- but by no means limited to -- new jobs and increased tax revenue." On the dissenting side, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote: "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”
In other words, it’s the “little guy” who gets squashed by the judicial activism of liberal judges. (In case you’ve missed it thus far, the larger point of this blog is to highlight the irony –- and the hypocrisy –- of the “little guy” getting creamed by liberal politics and the policies they engender.)
Finally, no discussion of judicial activism would be complete without taking a look at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Stretching from Guam to Arizona, the Ninth Circuit Court is the largest federal circuit in the nation. It is also the circuit most overturned by the Supreme Court.
This is the court that ruled the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional, assisted suicide was constitutional, and the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms applied only to states, not individuals. They also declared that cross-dressers constitute a persecuted class of people and are therefore eligible for asylum in the United States, allowed that some religious groups have the right to smoke marijuana on federal lands, and prohibited authorities from searching gas tanks at the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2000, the court said a job applicant can not be rejected because his health problems would be worsened by working at the place he is applying.
Most recently, the Ninth has determined that an “injunction would be appropriate” to force the United States Navy to limit its use of sonar. This is a result of lawsuits brought by environmental groups on behalf of whales, who, they feel, are at risk from the high-frequency sound waves emitted by sonar. Sonar allows the Navy to safely navigate underwater and track enemy submarines. The Navy says it already minimizes the exposure of marine line to sonar and that it has seen no evidence of sonar-induced injuries to whales.
Who else would we expect, but the Ninth Circuit Court, to interject themselves into the United State’s military chain of command?
Don’t think judicial appointments are important? Fourteen of the 28 Ninth Circuit Court judges were appointed by President Clinton, and these include his Oxford roommate and a classmate from Yale. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has 11 circuit court nominees awaiting Senate confirmation, three of whom were nominated 18 months ago.
In November, 2007, President Bush said: "Today I announced seven more outstanding judicial nominees for the district and circuit courts. And I look forward to working with the United States Senate to confirm these good men and women as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the Senate has failed to act on many of my other nominees. ... This leads to what are called 'judicial emergencies' - vacancies that cause justice to be degraded or delayed."
Could it be that the Democrat-controlled 110th Congress were stalling the confirmation process? Well, each year the Federal appellate courts decide more than 30,000 cases, meaning that for most criminal appeals, for most civil appeals, and on most constitutional issues, the decisions of these courts will be the law of the land. If you were a leftist, would you want a conservative POTUS installing judges? Ah, but let us acknowledge the difference between what we want and what is right.
We cannot allow the checks and balances so carefully constructed by the Founding Fathers to be ignored or cast aside. There are important reasons for having a separation of powers within our government, not the least of which is to avoid a gathering tyranny from any one branch.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, in 1821, that "The germ of destruction of our nation is in the power of the judiciary, an irresponsible body - working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall render powerless the checks of one branch over the other and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
That sentiment is echoed today. In Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide View of Judges, Robert Bork writes: “What judges have wrought is a coup d’etat – slow moving and genteel, but a coup d’etat nonetheless.”
Fortunately, some among us appreciate the importance of restraint.
"Judges must be constantly aware that their role, while important, is limited. They do not have a commission to solve society's problems, as they see them, but simply to decide cases before them according to the rule of law,” said Chief Justice John Roberts. “When the other branches of government exceed their constitutionally mandated limits, the courts can act to confine them to the proper bounds. It is judicial self-restraint, however, that confines judges to their proper constitutional responsibilities.”
These are words well worth remembering.
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
“What Exactly Is Judicial Activism?” by Thomas L. Jipping, CNS Commentary from the Free Congress Foundation, March 7th, 2001
“Judge Bork: Judicial Activism is Going Global,” by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, Fox News, September 11th, 2003
“Judicial Lawmaking and its Threat to Freedom,” the Girard Press, November 8th, 2006
W. James Antle III
http://www.wikipedia.com/
http://www.pbs.org/
http://www.foxnews.com/
“Judges Hold No Rank In Military Chain of Command,” by Phyllis Schlafly, Feb 18th, 2008
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Rock the Vote
Between the power of Labor Unions, and the Education system, and a media biased toward liberalism lay the heart of any great democracy: The Vote. While voting may seem like the most straightforward and pure expression of a representative government, there are those – the usual suspects – who continually, and persistently try to subvert the system for their own personal political gain. Naturally, I am referring to Democrats.
There are numerous political action groups, on both the left and right side of the political spectrum. But note the key difference between the two: While Conservatives encourage (and rely on) an educated and well-informed electorate to make choices for themselves, Liberals want to be entrusted with the power to make all of the choices for an uneducated and ignorant electorate. This perhaps explains why union members pay dues that are redirected to candidates they do not support, and why we have incompetent (or at least “unengaged”) educators whose curriculum does more to indoctrinate a liberal mindset than to impart a working understanding of math or science, or to instill a comprehensive understanding of our history, our culture, and the principles on which our nation was founded.
To further the left-wing worldview there are well-organized and well-funded political action groups like MoveOn.org, the Daily Kos, People for the American Way, and the various iterations of Rock the Vote, which act as “community organizers” whose primary goal in life is to grab the “young and dumb” and persuade them to vote for liberal, Democratic candidates. At the top of this heap is ACORN.
The Association of Community Organization for Reform Now is, according to their website, “the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families working together for social justice and stronger communities.” While they claim to be non-partisan, the actions of ACORN suggest that they routinely engage in corrupt practices and illegal activities designed to increase Democratic voter registration and suppress Republican voter registration. Here are but a few examples:
- 2003: ACORN submitted 5,379 voter registration cards; over 60% of them were invalid, and at least 1,000 were believed to be attempts to register voters illegally.
- 2004: An ACORN employee admitted to forging signatures and registering three of her friends to vote 40 times.
- 2005: The Virginia State Board of Elections admonished ACORN when an audit revealed that 83% of sampled registrations carried false or questionable information, including Social Security numbers that existed for other people, listed non-existent or commercial addresses, or were for convicted felons.
- 2006: Eight ACORN employees were indicted on federal election fraud charges for forging signatures and submitting false information.
- 2007: Four ACORN employees were indicted in Kansas City for identity theft and filing false registrations during the 2006 elections.
At least two former ACORN employees have accused the group of illegalities in Florida. Former field operative Mac Stuart, who worked in Miami, claimed that ACORN failed to deliver registration cards that were marked “Republican,” accepted applications from felons, and routinely falsified information. Former consultant Joe Johnson quit two weeks before the 2004 election because he was concerned that ACORN was not turning in complete voter registration cards.
In Minnesota, ACORN employee Josh Reed was charged with a felony when voter registration cards were found in the trunk of his car after he was stopped for a traffic violation. Voter registration cards were also found in Albequerque during a drug investigation that was targeting an ACORN employee. Perhaps most egregiously, ACORN workers in Ohio registered a known illegal alien terrorist, Nuradian Abdi, who had plotted to blow up a Columbus mall.
Ever true to it’s character, in 2007 ACORN submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in opposition to Indiana’s voter identification law. The law, requiring Indiana residents to present identification before voting – as is required to rent a car, board an airplane, or cash a check – was presented as some kind of discrimination against poor, mostly minority citizens. Fortunately, common sense prevailed and the SCOTUS found Indiana’s law to be constitutional in early 2008.
In 2009, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles went undercover, with Mr. O’Keefe posing as a pimp to Ms. Giles’ prostitute. The two went to an ACORN Housing office in Baltimore and pretended to be interested in having ACORN help them get a house so they could set up a brothel using under-aged girls. Did the ACORN workers have any advice?
Turns out they did. For starters, they received a lot of tax advice, which primarily consisted of how to set up their business in order to dodge any federal scrutiny of the 13 young Salvadoran girls the “pimp” and “prostitute” were planning to smuggle into the country to staff their “brothel.” Everything from suggestions for fraudulent tax code designations to hide the nature of their business -- they should list their occupations as “artists” -- to making sure they taught the young Salvadorans the importance of “keeping their mouths shut.”
All of this and much, much more was recorded by Giles and O’Keefe, and a good jumping-off point is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtTnizEnC1U . There is more here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QV7kNMrsvI , and for even more on ACORN, you can check out http://biggovernment.com/ .
Of course, no discussion of ACORN would be complete without mention of the fact that one of President Barack Hussein Obama’s few legitimate claims of accomplishment was his work as a “community organizer” for an ACORN affiliate. But that leads us into a discussion about guilt-by-association, which is a topic we will examine at a later date, in far more detail.
There are plenty of other left-wing “organizers” out there working to influence our election processes, and it’s pretty much the same old story. Take for example The Media Fund (TMF), a tax-exempt campaign organization that the FEC fined $580,000 for violating federal campaign laws. It seems TMF failed to register and file disclosure reports as a federal political committee and knowingly accepted contributions in violation of federal source and limit prohibitions. Of the $59 million dollars raised by TMF, $55 million had come from labor organizations, corporations and individuals who were prohibited from contributing or whose contributions exceeded the $5,000 dollar limit. The FEC noted that “Most of the solicitations targeted the defeat of George W. Bush, and some of the solicitations targeted the election of John Kerry.” A TMF education mailer “contained express advocacy, referring to the ‘need’ for a particular kind of president, followed by identification of John Kerry as that type of candidate.” Other mailers “contained express advocacy because the advertisements attacked the character, qualifications and fitness for office of George Bush, or supported the character, qualifications and fitness for office of John Kerry.”
There are numerous instances of the Left trying to do “whatever it takes” to tip elections in their favor, but perhaps the most infamous examples of recent attempts by the Democratic Party to steal elections involved the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. They were so determined to win that no vote went unchallenged and no lawyer was left unemployed in their crusade. There were lawsuits, injunctions, depositions, claims and counter-claims, exhortations of “Voter fraud!” and all manner of kangaroo courts constructed in the media, designed to cast suspicion upon the validity of the various elections in which Republican candidates prevailed. It seemed that there was no limit to the lengths the Democratic Party would go to thwart an unfavorable outcome; the electoral process itself was put on trial.
They did fail, for the most part, but their tactics were successful in the Washington state Governor’s race of 2004 and the 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota, two high-profile elections in which the Democratic candidates won under what can only be described as highly suspect circumstances. I’m afraid that some elections, particularly those in left-wing provinces, are predetermined from the start.
John Fund has written a book called “Stealing Elections,” in which he details voter fraud scandals in Miami, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee, from Maryland to Mississippi, and from Texas to California. An interesting aside is that 8 of the 19 hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were registered to vote in either Virginia or Florida.
Think the stakes aren’t high? When Al Franken was finally sworn in as the junior senator from Minnesota, in 2009, the Democrats had the filibuster-proof majority they have coveted for so long and they have been able to do whatever they’ve wanted to do. The crowning jewel, of course, is the brand new, unconstitutional entitlement program coming to a healthcare system near you.
Voting is a right of every citizen of good standing and is critical to ensuring that the “Voice of The People” is heard. To protect against voter fraud we must verify that every voter registration document is legitimate and we must require that every voter be able to provide a state- or federal-issue picture I.D. in order to cast their vote. We cannot continue to treat our national elections like 5th grade Field Day referendums. Your vote is a compact with America’s past, present, and future, and we must be far more serious and grown-up about our elections; anything less and we’re ignoring a danger that threatens to unravel our republic.
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
“Voter ID Fraud Doesn’t Exist Says ACORN,” by Amanda Carpenter, 11/26/07
http://www.rottenacorn.com/
“In Closing” by John McCaslin, 11/30/07
There are numerous political action groups, on both the left and right side of the political spectrum. But note the key difference between the two: While Conservatives encourage (and rely on) an educated and well-informed electorate to make choices for themselves, Liberals want to be entrusted with the power to make all of the choices for an uneducated and ignorant electorate. This perhaps explains why union members pay dues that are redirected to candidates they do not support, and why we have incompetent (or at least “unengaged”) educators whose curriculum does more to indoctrinate a liberal mindset than to impart a working understanding of math or science, or to instill a comprehensive understanding of our history, our culture, and the principles on which our nation was founded.
To further the left-wing worldview there are well-organized and well-funded political action groups like MoveOn.org, the Daily Kos, People for the American Way, and the various iterations of Rock the Vote, which act as “community organizers” whose primary goal in life is to grab the “young and dumb” and persuade them to vote for liberal, Democratic candidates. At the top of this heap is ACORN.
The Association of Community Organization for Reform Now is, according to their website, “the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families working together for social justice and stronger communities.” While they claim to be non-partisan, the actions of ACORN suggest that they routinely engage in corrupt practices and illegal activities designed to increase Democratic voter registration and suppress Republican voter registration. Here are but a few examples:
- 2003: ACORN submitted 5,379 voter registration cards; over 60% of them were invalid, and at least 1,000 were believed to be attempts to register voters illegally.
- 2004: An ACORN employee admitted to forging signatures and registering three of her friends to vote 40 times.
- 2005: The Virginia State Board of Elections admonished ACORN when an audit revealed that 83% of sampled registrations carried false or questionable information, including Social Security numbers that existed for other people, listed non-existent or commercial addresses, or were for convicted felons.
- 2006: Eight ACORN employees were indicted on federal election fraud charges for forging signatures and submitting false information.
- 2007: Four ACORN employees were indicted in Kansas City for identity theft and filing false registrations during the 2006 elections.
At least two former ACORN employees have accused the group of illegalities in Florida. Former field operative Mac Stuart, who worked in Miami, claimed that ACORN failed to deliver registration cards that were marked “Republican,” accepted applications from felons, and routinely falsified information. Former consultant Joe Johnson quit two weeks before the 2004 election because he was concerned that ACORN was not turning in complete voter registration cards.
In Minnesota, ACORN employee Josh Reed was charged with a felony when voter registration cards were found in the trunk of his car after he was stopped for a traffic violation. Voter registration cards were also found in Albequerque during a drug investigation that was targeting an ACORN employee. Perhaps most egregiously, ACORN workers in Ohio registered a known illegal alien terrorist, Nuradian Abdi, who had plotted to blow up a Columbus mall.
Ever true to it’s character, in 2007 ACORN submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in opposition to Indiana’s voter identification law. The law, requiring Indiana residents to present identification before voting – as is required to rent a car, board an airplane, or cash a check – was presented as some kind of discrimination against poor, mostly minority citizens. Fortunately, common sense prevailed and the SCOTUS found Indiana’s law to be constitutional in early 2008.
In 2009, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles went undercover, with Mr. O’Keefe posing as a pimp to Ms. Giles’ prostitute. The two went to an ACORN Housing office in Baltimore and pretended to be interested in having ACORN help them get a house so they could set up a brothel using under-aged girls. Did the ACORN workers have any advice?
Turns out they did. For starters, they received a lot of tax advice, which primarily consisted of how to set up their business in order to dodge any federal scrutiny of the 13 young Salvadoran girls the “pimp” and “prostitute” were planning to smuggle into the country to staff their “brothel.” Everything from suggestions for fraudulent tax code designations to hide the nature of their business -- they should list their occupations as “artists” -- to making sure they taught the young Salvadorans the importance of “keeping their mouths shut.”
All of this and much, much more was recorded by Giles and O’Keefe, and a good jumping-off point is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtTnizEnC1U . There is more here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QV7kNMrsvI , and for even more on ACORN, you can check out http://biggovernment.com/ .
Of course, no discussion of ACORN would be complete without mention of the fact that one of President Barack Hussein Obama’s few legitimate claims of accomplishment was his work as a “community organizer” for an ACORN affiliate. But that leads us into a discussion about guilt-by-association, which is a topic we will examine at a later date, in far more detail.
There are plenty of other left-wing “organizers” out there working to influence our election processes, and it’s pretty much the same old story. Take for example The Media Fund (TMF), a tax-exempt campaign organization that the FEC fined $580,000 for violating federal campaign laws. It seems TMF failed to register and file disclosure reports as a federal political committee and knowingly accepted contributions in violation of federal source and limit prohibitions. Of the $59 million dollars raised by TMF, $55 million had come from labor organizations, corporations and individuals who were prohibited from contributing or whose contributions exceeded the $5,000 dollar limit. The FEC noted that “Most of the solicitations targeted the defeat of George W. Bush, and some of the solicitations targeted the election of John Kerry.” A TMF education mailer “contained express advocacy, referring to the ‘need’ for a particular kind of president, followed by identification of John Kerry as that type of candidate.” Other mailers “contained express advocacy because the advertisements attacked the character, qualifications and fitness for office of George Bush, or supported the character, qualifications and fitness for office of John Kerry.”
There are numerous instances of the Left trying to do “whatever it takes” to tip elections in their favor, but perhaps the most infamous examples of recent attempts by the Democratic Party to steal elections involved the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. They were so determined to win that no vote went unchallenged and no lawyer was left unemployed in their crusade. There were lawsuits, injunctions, depositions, claims and counter-claims, exhortations of “Voter fraud!” and all manner of kangaroo courts constructed in the media, designed to cast suspicion upon the validity of the various elections in which Republican candidates prevailed. It seemed that there was no limit to the lengths the Democratic Party would go to thwart an unfavorable outcome; the electoral process itself was put on trial.
They did fail, for the most part, but their tactics were successful in the Washington state Governor’s race of 2004 and the 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota, two high-profile elections in which the Democratic candidates won under what can only be described as highly suspect circumstances. I’m afraid that some elections, particularly those in left-wing provinces, are predetermined from the start.
John Fund has written a book called “Stealing Elections,” in which he details voter fraud scandals in Miami, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee, from Maryland to Mississippi, and from Texas to California. An interesting aside is that 8 of the 19 hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were registered to vote in either Virginia or Florida.
Think the stakes aren’t high? When Al Franken was finally sworn in as the junior senator from Minnesota, in 2009, the Democrats had the filibuster-proof majority they have coveted for so long and they have been able to do whatever they’ve wanted to do. The crowning jewel, of course, is the brand new, unconstitutional entitlement program coming to a healthcare system near you.
Voting is a right of every citizen of good standing and is critical to ensuring that the “Voice of The People” is heard. To protect against voter fraud we must verify that every voter registration document is legitimate and we must require that every voter be able to provide a state- or federal-issue picture I.D. in order to cast their vote. We cannot continue to treat our national elections like 5th grade Field Day referendums. Your vote is a compact with America’s past, present, and future, and we must be far more serious and grown-up about our elections; anything less and we’re ignoring a danger that threatens to unravel our republic.
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
“Voter ID Fraud Doesn’t Exist Says ACORN,” by Amanda Carpenter, 11/26/07
http://www.rottenacorn.com/
“In Closing” by John McCaslin, 11/30/07
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Labor Unions
If we start by examining some of the industries with major labor representation, we quickly see some similarities: Government workers. Teachers. Mailmen. Transit workers. Plumbers. Foodservice employees. Are these occupations inherently dangerous? Do those who work in these fields face uncommonly high mortality rates? Are they being taken advantage of by “The Man”? Or, are their unions designed merely to secure their jobs and give them an entirely undeserved advantage when negotiating their salaries, benefits and tenure?
The American education system is represented by Unions which overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party. In return, the Democratic Party supports the agenda of those unions.
Has this alliance been a success, and if so, for whom? What is the current state of the American education system?
We covered that in a previous chapter, but the short answer is: Not so good.
Having looked for (but not finding) a correlation between governmental spending and academic performance, what about the other side of the Education coin? What do we see when we examine the leadership of those who teach our children?
The NEA, or the National Education Association, is the largest labor union in America, with an annual budget of some 400 million dollars. In 2007. the NEA spent $80 million of that budget (about 20%) on “contributions, gifts and grants” to support left-wing and non-education-related causes. Among the recipients of the NEA union dues are ACORN, Democratic GAIN, Democratic Leadership Council, GLAAD, NAACP, National Council of La Raza, RainbowPUSH Coalition, the Sierra Club and, ironically, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Is it unreasonable to ask whether these organizations have more to do with the advancement of left-wing political causes or the education of our students?
The American automobile manufacturing sector is financially beholden to the United Auto Workers Union (UAW), which overwhelmingly supports the Democratic Party. In return, the Democratic Party supports the agenda of those unions. Again, let’s ask: What is the current state of the American automobile manufacturing sector?
In an attempt to continue forward under a long series of ill-advised contracts with the autoworker’s unions, automakers first undertook a sort of “second mortgage” by entering into an endless season of rebates and 0% financing. Hemorrhaging cash, the Big Three had to be aware that without a new business model, they were merely delaying the inevitable. However, instead of fixing the foundation or replacing the rotten wood they planted shrubs and painted the house.
Enter the U.S. Government.
After summoning the CEO’s to D.C. for a brow-beating -- where the irony was almost as thick as the hypocrisy -- Congress approved a bail-out – with strings attached. To the shock of absolutely no one actually paying attention, the Administration demonstrated a complete disregard for actually addressing the problems. Instead, the CEO of GM was fired, 50% of the company was handed over to the UAW, and numerous product lines were shut down.
Insert “As GM goes, so goes the Country” joke right about >here<. Chrysler, meanwhile, was betrothed to Fiat in what can only be described as a shotgun wedding. The U.S. Government is watching over the engagement and, it is assumed, will preside over the ceremony. The Ford Motor Company, apparently seeing the writing on the wall, said “Thanks, but No Thanks” to a U.S. Government bailout and is working its way back to solvency as of this writing. In case you missed it: Nissan is the #1 automaker in America. Another powerhouse is the Service Employees International Union. As their name implies, these guys represent everyone from bank tellers to fast food workers to janitors to security guards, and they are one of the biggest, baddest unions around. As such, they are on the cutting edge of the push for the Employee Free Choice Act, aka “Card Check.” This legislation essentially allows SEIU and other unions to organize within private businesses based upon employees signing an authorization card rather than by secret ballot. What this means is that the employees will no longer be able to cast their vote in private, like, say, in every other election held in the civilized world, but instead can be confronted by Union “representatives” and intimidated into signing an authorization card on-the-spot. Does this make it easier to create unions out of whole cloth? But of course. Why else would they be willing to throw out one hundred years of Labor law and precedent? Labor Unions also use their enormous pension funds to pressure corporations, via shareholder proposals and proxy votes, to support labor objectives ahead of initiatives to increase profit and/or shareholder value. For example, the AFL-CIO is pressing companies to offer more generous benefits to their employees, and wants to require companies to disclose political contributions so Big Labor shareholders can see if the company is supporting candidates whose views don’t align with that of Big Labor. A great gig, if you can get it. It’s a lot like three foxes and a hen sitting around discussing what to have for dinner. Such is the unbridled power of the Union. Much like the Mafia -- and this is no random analogy -- unions often use the power of their “collective” to strong-arm companies into a Faustian “bargain” which slowly but assuredly drains the company to the point where they are compelled to look overseas for more competitive environs. It happens every day, and it’s only getting worse. So, who are the other “foxes” in this equation? Who is in bed with these “capos” of industry? Why, the Democratic Party, of course. When was the last time you saw a major Labor endorsement go to the Republican Party? When was the last time you saw the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Teamsters, the Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), the American Federation of Teachers, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), Amalgamated Transit, Plumbers and Pipefitters, the UAW, the AFL-CIO, the NEA or any other union endorse the Republican Party? Ironically, many among the rank-and-file don’t agree with the politics of their Labor Management; after all, not all card-carrying union members are Democrats. Yet, about 95% of all Union Political Action Committee monies end up being funneled into the Democratic Party. Some might argue that such a practice is a form of taxation without representation, and others might point out that these tactics clearly violate the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, but Unionism has an answer, as always. You can bet that neither Big Labor or the Democratic Party get something for nothing out of their alliance, so what do they get from each other? About what you would expect: Political support for the Democrats and political expediency for Big Labor’s agenda. There are so many shady aspects that color Big Labor that when I hear or read about labor unions, I don’t think about how they were once needed to fight for better and safer working conditions -- OSHA and the many and various Environmental Safety & Health programs have long rendered the “knight in shining armor” routine stale. Instead, I see Big Labor and their Democratic partners-in-crime as run-of-the-mill crooks, as parasites who abuse their position by taking advantage of the Working Man to fund one crooked deal after another. I may be oversimplifying things, but if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck…it’s probably a duck. REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING “The New Labor Activism,” The Wall Street Journal, 1/8/08 “Union Blessings,” Chart, The Wall Street Journal, 2/16/08 http://www.teachersunionexposed.com/
http://www.opensecrets.org/
The American education system is represented by Unions which overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party. In return, the Democratic Party supports the agenda of those unions.
Has this alliance been a success, and if so, for whom? What is the current state of the American education system?
We covered that in a previous chapter, but the short answer is: Not so good.
Having looked for (but not finding) a correlation between governmental spending and academic performance, what about the other side of the Education coin? What do we see when we examine the leadership of those who teach our children?
The NEA, or the National Education Association, is the largest labor union in America, with an annual budget of some 400 million dollars. In 2007. the NEA spent $80 million of that budget (about 20%) on “contributions, gifts and grants” to support left-wing and non-education-related causes. Among the recipients of the NEA union dues are ACORN, Democratic GAIN, Democratic Leadership Council, GLAAD, NAACP, National Council of La Raza, RainbowPUSH Coalition, the Sierra Club and, ironically, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Is it unreasonable to ask whether these organizations have more to do with the advancement of left-wing political causes or the education of our students?
The American automobile manufacturing sector is financially beholden to the United Auto Workers Union (UAW), which overwhelmingly supports the Democratic Party. In return, the Democratic Party supports the agenda of those unions. Again, let’s ask: What is the current state of the American automobile manufacturing sector?
In an attempt to continue forward under a long series of ill-advised contracts with the autoworker’s unions, automakers first undertook a sort of “second mortgage” by entering into an endless season of rebates and 0% financing. Hemorrhaging cash, the Big Three had to be aware that without a new business model, they were merely delaying the inevitable. However, instead of fixing the foundation or replacing the rotten wood they planted shrubs and painted the house.
Enter the U.S. Government.
After summoning the CEO’s to D.C. for a brow-beating -- where the irony was almost as thick as the hypocrisy -- Congress approved a bail-out – with strings attached. To the shock of absolutely no one actually paying attention, the Administration demonstrated a complete disregard for actually addressing the problems. Instead, the CEO of GM was fired, 50% of the company was handed over to the UAW, and numerous product lines were shut down.
Insert “As GM goes, so goes the Country” joke right about >here<. Chrysler, meanwhile, was betrothed to Fiat in what can only be described as a shotgun wedding. The U.S. Government is watching over the engagement and, it is assumed, will preside over the ceremony. The Ford Motor Company, apparently seeing the writing on the wall, said “Thanks, but No Thanks” to a U.S. Government bailout and is working its way back to solvency as of this writing. In case you missed it: Nissan is the #1 automaker in America. Another powerhouse is the Service Employees International Union. As their name implies, these guys represent everyone from bank tellers to fast food workers to janitors to security guards, and they are one of the biggest, baddest unions around. As such, they are on the cutting edge of the push for the Employee Free Choice Act, aka “Card Check.” This legislation essentially allows SEIU and other unions to organize within private businesses based upon employees signing an authorization card rather than by secret ballot. What this means is that the employees will no longer be able to cast their vote in private, like, say, in every other election held in the civilized world, but instead can be confronted by Union “representatives” and intimidated into signing an authorization card on-the-spot. Does this make it easier to create unions out of whole cloth? But of course. Why else would they be willing to throw out one hundred years of Labor law and precedent? Labor Unions also use their enormous pension funds to pressure corporations, via shareholder proposals and proxy votes, to support labor objectives ahead of initiatives to increase profit and/or shareholder value. For example, the AFL-CIO is pressing companies to offer more generous benefits to their employees, and wants to require companies to disclose political contributions so Big Labor shareholders can see if the company is supporting candidates whose views don’t align with that of Big Labor. A great gig, if you can get it. It’s a lot like three foxes and a hen sitting around discussing what to have for dinner. Such is the unbridled power of the Union. Much like the Mafia -- and this is no random analogy -- unions often use the power of their “collective” to strong-arm companies into a Faustian “bargain” which slowly but assuredly drains the company to the point where they are compelled to look overseas for more competitive environs. It happens every day, and it’s only getting worse. So, who are the other “foxes” in this equation? Who is in bed with these “capos” of industry? Why, the Democratic Party, of course. When was the last time you saw a major Labor endorsement go to the Republican Party? When was the last time you saw the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Teamsters, the Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), the American Federation of Teachers, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), Amalgamated Transit, Plumbers and Pipefitters, the UAW, the AFL-CIO, the NEA or any other union endorse the Republican Party? Ironically, many among the rank-and-file don’t agree with the politics of their Labor Management; after all, not all card-carrying union members are Democrats. Yet, about 95% of all Union Political Action Committee monies end up being funneled into the Democratic Party. Some might argue that such a practice is a form of taxation without representation, and others might point out that these tactics clearly violate the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, but Unionism has an answer, as always. You can bet that neither Big Labor or the Democratic Party get something for nothing out of their alliance, so what do they get from each other? About what you would expect: Political support for the Democrats and political expediency for Big Labor’s agenda. There are so many shady aspects that color Big Labor that when I hear or read about labor unions, I don’t think about how they were once needed to fight for better and safer working conditions -- OSHA and the many and various Environmental Safety & Health programs have long rendered the “knight in shining armor” routine stale. Instead, I see Big Labor and their Democratic partners-in-crime as run-of-the-mill crooks, as parasites who abuse their position by taking advantage of the Working Man to fund one crooked deal after another. I may be oversimplifying things, but if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck…it’s probably a duck. REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING “The New Labor Activism,” The Wall Street Journal, 1/8/08 “Union Blessings,” Chart, The Wall Street Journal, 2/16/08 http://www.teachersunionexposed.com/
http://www.opensecrets.org/
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Education
Few countries spend what America spends, per student, on education, yet we are nowhere near the top when it comes to test scores. Why is that? We’re spending nearly $10,000 per secondary school student; could it be that we aren’t spending enough on education?
According to the latest (2006) Programme for International Student Assessment, American students ranked 33rd among industrialized countries in Math literacy, and 27th in Science. Reading literacy was not reported due to an error in the 2006 test instruction booklets, but in the previous assessment American students were 20th.
If we look at educational spending among the participant countries, we see that a few nations, such as Switzerland and Norway, spend more than the United States does on education, but what about Finland, South Korea, the Slovak Republic and Hungary, who spend much less than we do yet produce students with greater math and science literacy?
If educational expenditure is no predictor of academic performance, then what is?
Maybe our shortcomings are a result of our having no national standards, no national objectives, and by extension, no national expectations. Perhaps it’s because ignorant school boards and entrenched teachers’ unions routinely impede innovation. Or, could it have something to do with the overall quality of the people responsible for doing the teaching?
I have personally had many wonderful teachers, and some of them have had a profound impact on my life. However, there are trends among the education class that are too powerful to ignore. For example, students who choose education as their major have the lowest SAT scores of any other major, and those who graduate with an education degree score lower on graduate school admissions tests than any other major. In other words, as a group, the folks who end up teaching our children aren’t exactly the “sharpest tools in the shed.”
What is it about our Schools of Education that draws the least capable students? Is this why we have math teaching techniques such as those found in “Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers,” with topics such as “Sweatshop Accounting,” “Chicanos Have Math in Their Blood,” “Multicultural Math,” and “Home Buying While Brown or Black,” the latter with discussions on racial profiling, the war in Iraq, corporate control of the media and environmental racism. Is this why some fifth-graders are taught from a textbook with the seemingly straightforward title “Everyday Math,” but which asks the students study questions such as “If math were a color, it would be _____ because _____” and “If it were weather, it would be _____ because _____”?
Within this context, is it unreasonable to wonder just how much our children are being focused on actual mathematics? Are history classes peppered with multiplication tables? Is long division being taught in literature classes? What is being taught in science classrooms?
These roadblocks to a classical education don’t end with secondary education; a whole new set of problems confront our youth when they go off to college.
In a New York Times Op-Ed piece, Stanley Fish, distinguished professor, author, and hero of the academic Left, warned that the pervasive leftist politics of many of our professors and administrators are posing a threat to the quality, integrity, and academic independence of colleges across the country.
Citing “Indoctrinate U,” a documentary by twenty-something film-maker Evan Maloney that shines a light on the classroom politics and blatant bias at major universities, Mr. Fish summed up the film as portraying mainstream universities in America as “places of indoctrination where a left-leaning faculty teaches every subject, including chemistry and horticulture, through the prism of race, class and gender; where minorities and women are taught that they are victims of oppression; where admissions policies are racially gerrymandered; where identity-based programs reproduce the patterns of segregation that the left supposedly abhors; where students and faculty who speak against the prevailing orthodoxy are ostracized, disciplined and subjected to sensitivity training; where conservative speakers like Ward Connerly are shouted down; where radical speakers like Ward Churchill are welcomed; where speech codes mandate speech that offends no one; where the faculty preaches diversity but is itself starkly homogeneous with respect to political affiliation; where professors regularly use the classroom as a platform for their political views; where students parrot back the views they know their instructors to hold; where course reading lists are heavy on radical texts and light on texts celebrating the Western tradition; where the American flag is held in suspicion; where military recruiting personnel are either treated rudely or barred from campus; where the default assumption is that anything the United States and Israel do is evil.”
Mr. Fish concedes that he knows “professors who use the classroom as a stage for their political views,” and adds that “Academics often bridle at the picture of their activities presented by Maloney and other conservative critics, and accuse them of grossly caricaturing and exaggerating what goes on in the classroom. Maybe so, but so long as there are those who confuse advocacy with teaching, and so long as faculty colleagues and university administrators look the other way, the academy invites the criticism it receives in this documentary.”
So, what are those in academia doing to right their ship? Lowering their standards. The University of California, for example, is considering sweeping changes to their admissions process. The key changes being proposed are to lower the current requirement of a 3.0 GPA to 2.8, and to eliminate the requirement for certain (SAT II) subject tests. What is their goal? To deliver less intelligent, but more impressionable students into the hands of left-wing professors with a political axe to grind and the autocratic power to do so within an educational system that is failing to create critical thinkers? No; they already have that. What they seek is Diversity.
Like most other institutions of higher learning, UC wants to increase their diversity and they see the reduction or elimination of academic standards as the key to boosting the admission of blacks and Hispanics (who, on average, do worse on standardized tests than whites and Asians). What they don’t want anyone to know, and what we’re supposed to ignore, is that almost all students, regardless of race, color or creed, are more likely to graduate from college when they attend campuses where their grades and test scores are generally the same as their peers. Isn’t graduation -- you know, the standard measure of our effectiveness in successfully educating our students -- the point?
In the end, all attempts to attain an artificial level of diversity, particularly by ignoring all objective measurements of academic ability, only helps the university, not the student. The notion of diversity-as-societal-change-agent is just another example of the misguided Liberal pathology, and of the institutionalized self-interests which comprise so much of the Leftist ideology. And, like most of the Liberal “platform,” it’s had just about zero scrutiny.
Remember all the brouhaha regarding the Liberals’ grand scheme for “diversifying” our primary and secondary schools by bussing our children all over the place? Yeah…me neither. But isn’t it interesting that the Left was able to pull off such a stunt to begin with, and then suffer no damage to their reputation (or "voting base") whatsoever? Imagine if our education systems were staffed and managed by an overwhelmingly Conservative majority, and they had said, “Instead of addressing the apparent disparity in the quality of the public education dispensed in ‘black schools’ versus that of ‘white schools,’ we’ve decided that it would be easier to just transport your children away from their home and away from their neighborhood schools to a different school across town.” And, if they were really honest: “We know this does not address the core problems, and we know the long morning bus rides won’t be a lot of fun, and we know the extra time, aggravation, and apprehensiveness are not conducive to improving your child’s educational experience, but we do feel that it is worth it because we will be increasing the Diversity of the school system, at large.”
Wow. Can we look back on that -- yet??? -- and ask ourselves, “What the Hell were we thinking?”
Teaching is a difficult profession, and a noble one, but perhaps it’s time to take a step back, reassess where we are, and where we want to be. Where do we want to be? Where do we start?
Let’s take back our education system by insisting on school vouchers so our children can attend elementary, junior and senior high schools where teachers want to teach and children want to learn. Let us also get back to basics; instilling the curriculum found in E.D. Hirsch’s “Core Knowledge” curriculum (or something very similar) would be an excellent start. In high school, let’s identify students whose aptitudes lend themselves to either higher education or to vocational systems and direct their studies accordingly. Not everyone wants or needs to attend a college or university to achieve competence and satisfaction in their preferred field of endeavor, so let’s stop herding everyone down the “college” path and start paying attention to the natural inclinations of our young adults. If we do those things which help them to attain a core competence in their area(s) of interest, all of society will benefit.
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
Programme for International Student Assessment, http://www.pisa.oecd.org/
“Even the Left Admits that Classroom Politics are a Problem” by John Zmirak, 11/7/07
“Academic Slums” by Walter E. Williams, 12/19/07
“Politics in the Post-Gutenberg Age” by Suzanne Fields, 1/7/08
“What Ails Schools? No National Standard” from The Atlantic, excerpted in The Informed Reader, The Wall Street Journal, 1/10/08
“Dumbing Down Higher Education” by Linda Chavez, 1/11/08
“Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality” by Charles Murray
The Core Knowledge Curriculum by E. D. Hirsch
According to the latest (2006) Programme for International Student Assessment, American students ranked 33rd among industrialized countries in Math literacy, and 27th in Science. Reading literacy was not reported due to an error in the 2006 test instruction booklets, but in the previous assessment American students were 20th.
If we look at educational spending among the participant countries, we see that a few nations, such as Switzerland and Norway, spend more than the United States does on education, but what about Finland, South Korea, the Slovak Republic and Hungary, who spend much less than we do yet produce students with greater math and science literacy?
If educational expenditure is no predictor of academic performance, then what is?
Maybe our shortcomings are a result of our having no national standards, no national objectives, and by extension, no national expectations. Perhaps it’s because ignorant school boards and entrenched teachers’ unions routinely impede innovation. Or, could it have something to do with the overall quality of the people responsible for doing the teaching?
I have personally had many wonderful teachers, and some of them have had a profound impact on my life. However, there are trends among the education class that are too powerful to ignore. For example, students who choose education as their major have the lowest SAT scores of any other major, and those who graduate with an education degree score lower on graduate school admissions tests than any other major. In other words, as a group, the folks who end up teaching our children aren’t exactly the “sharpest tools in the shed.”
What is it about our Schools of Education that draws the least capable students? Is this why we have math teaching techniques such as those found in “Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers,” with topics such as “Sweatshop Accounting,” “Chicanos Have Math in Their Blood,” “Multicultural Math,” and “Home Buying While Brown or Black,” the latter with discussions on racial profiling, the war in Iraq, corporate control of the media and environmental racism. Is this why some fifth-graders are taught from a textbook with the seemingly straightforward title “Everyday Math,” but which asks the students study questions such as “If math were a color, it would be _____ because _____” and “If it were weather, it would be _____ because _____”?
Within this context, is it unreasonable to wonder just how much our children are being focused on actual mathematics? Are history classes peppered with multiplication tables? Is long division being taught in literature classes? What is being taught in science classrooms?
These roadblocks to a classical education don’t end with secondary education; a whole new set of problems confront our youth when they go off to college.
In a New York Times Op-Ed piece, Stanley Fish, distinguished professor, author, and hero of the academic Left, warned that the pervasive leftist politics of many of our professors and administrators are posing a threat to the quality, integrity, and academic independence of colleges across the country.
Citing “Indoctrinate U,” a documentary by twenty-something film-maker Evan Maloney that shines a light on the classroom politics and blatant bias at major universities, Mr. Fish summed up the film as portraying mainstream universities in America as “places of indoctrination where a left-leaning faculty teaches every subject, including chemistry and horticulture, through the prism of race, class and gender; where minorities and women are taught that they are victims of oppression; where admissions policies are racially gerrymandered; where identity-based programs reproduce the patterns of segregation that the left supposedly abhors; where students and faculty who speak against the prevailing orthodoxy are ostracized, disciplined and subjected to sensitivity training; where conservative speakers like Ward Connerly are shouted down; where radical speakers like Ward Churchill are welcomed; where speech codes mandate speech that offends no one; where the faculty preaches diversity but is itself starkly homogeneous with respect to political affiliation; where professors regularly use the classroom as a platform for their political views; where students parrot back the views they know their instructors to hold; where course reading lists are heavy on radical texts and light on texts celebrating the Western tradition; where the American flag is held in suspicion; where military recruiting personnel are either treated rudely or barred from campus; where the default assumption is that anything the United States and Israel do is evil.”
Mr. Fish concedes that he knows “professors who use the classroom as a stage for their political views,” and adds that “Academics often bridle at the picture of their activities presented by Maloney and other conservative critics, and accuse them of grossly caricaturing and exaggerating what goes on in the classroom. Maybe so, but so long as there are those who confuse advocacy with teaching, and so long as faculty colleagues and university administrators look the other way, the academy invites the criticism it receives in this documentary.”
So, what are those in academia doing to right their ship? Lowering their standards. The University of California, for example, is considering sweeping changes to their admissions process. The key changes being proposed are to lower the current requirement of a 3.0 GPA to 2.8, and to eliminate the requirement for certain (SAT II) subject tests. What is their goal? To deliver less intelligent, but more impressionable students into the hands of left-wing professors with a political axe to grind and the autocratic power to do so within an educational system that is failing to create critical thinkers? No; they already have that. What they seek is Diversity.
Like most other institutions of higher learning, UC wants to increase their diversity and they see the reduction or elimination of academic standards as the key to boosting the admission of blacks and Hispanics (who, on average, do worse on standardized tests than whites and Asians). What they don’t want anyone to know, and what we’re supposed to ignore, is that almost all students, regardless of race, color or creed, are more likely to graduate from college when they attend campuses where their grades and test scores are generally the same as their peers. Isn’t graduation -- you know, the standard measure of our effectiveness in successfully educating our students -- the point?
In the end, all attempts to attain an artificial level of diversity, particularly by ignoring all objective measurements of academic ability, only helps the university, not the student. The notion of diversity-as-societal-change-agent is just another example of the misguided Liberal pathology, and of the institutionalized self-interests which comprise so much of the Leftist ideology. And, like most of the Liberal “platform,” it’s had just about zero scrutiny.
Remember all the brouhaha regarding the Liberals’ grand scheme for “diversifying” our primary and secondary schools by bussing our children all over the place? Yeah…me neither. But isn’t it interesting that the Left was able to pull off such a stunt to begin with, and then suffer no damage to their reputation (or "voting base") whatsoever? Imagine if our education systems were staffed and managed by an overwhelmingly Conservative majority, and they had said, “Instead of addressing the apparent disparity in the quality of the public education dispensed in ‘black schools’ versus that of ‘white schools,’ we’ve decided that it would be easier to just transport your children away from their home and away from their neighborhood schools to a different school across town.” And, if they were really honest: “We know this does not address the core problems, and we know the long morning bus rides won’t be a lot of fun, and we know the extra time, aggravation, and apprehensiveness are not conducive to improving your child’s educational experience, but we do feel that it is worth it because we will be increasing the Diversity of the school system, at large.”
Wow. Can we look back on that -- yet??? -- and ask ourselves, “What the Hell were we thinking?”
Teaching is a difficult profession, and a noble one, but perhaps it’s time to take a step back, reassess where we are, and where we want to be. Where do we want to be? Where do we start?
Let’s take back our education system by insisting on school vouchers so our children can attend elementary, junior and senior high schools where teachers want to teach and children want to learn. Let us also get back to basics; instilling the curriculum found in E.D. Hirsch’s “Core Knowledge” curriculum (or something very similar) would be an excellent start. In high school, let’s identify students whose aptitudes lend themselves to either higher education or to vocational systems and direct their studies accordingly. Not everyone wants or needs to attend a college or university to achieve competence and satisfaction in their preferred field of endeavor, so let’s stop herding everyone down the “college” path and start paying attention to the natural inclinations of our young adults. If we do those things which help them to attain a core competence in their area(s) of interest, all of society will benefit.
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
Programme for International Student Assessment, http://www.pisa.oecd.org/
“Even the Left Admits that Classroom Politics are a Problem” by John Zmirak, 11/7/07
“Academic Slums” by Walter E. Williams, 12/19/07
“Politics in the Post-Gutenberg Age” by Suzanne Fields, 1/7/08
“What Ails Schools? No National Standard” from The Atlantic, excerpted in The Informed Reader, The Wall Street Journal, 1/10/08
“Dumbing Down Higher Education” by Linda Chavez, 1/11/08
“Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality” by Charles Murray
The Core Knowledge Curriculum by E. D. Hirsch
Friday, January 1, 2010
Polls, Pols and Propaganda
Where do journalists, or judges, or politicians get the idea that they know what’s best for the rest of us? Where do any of us get such notions? Why do we look to polls for answers to complex problems, or assume that polls add instant credibility to every issue?
The answer, of course, is because we are addicted to the idea that polls are some kind of a magic modern oracle. But let’s make no mistake: polls are artfully crafted, designed -- and often manipulated -- to present a very specific viewpoint. They are the means to the furtherance of a very specific agenda, and they are just as likely to be used to forge public opinion or to sell a policy position as they are to be used for legitimate illumination.
The truth is, polls are often little more than an extension of what we have been led to believe, and far too infrequently do they represent the fruit of any sort of true intellectual examination. Why should they? How could they? After all, what does Joe Sixpack know about foreign policy, or economics, or global trade? What does Sally Such-and-Such know about fighting a war, or the environment, or world financial markets? The answer is: Only what they’ve been fed, via neat little media packages designed to sway their opinion toward the (left-wing) conclusion that the (left-wing) MSM wants them to have.
Politicians -- and more than a few of their constituents -- prefer to govern by polls: It is far easier to rely on “group think” and point to a poll result than to think critically and address a difficult issue logically and rationally. Who needs to be an expert on anything when we have a consensus? Instead of thoughtful dialogue about real problems and real solutions, stump speeches are instead littered with references to what pollsters say “the people” want. Thus, what the voters hear is essentially: “Re-elect me and I will (insert what the polls are saying you want me to do).”
This is how complex, intertwined issues are boiled down to sound bites and headlines, and how the resulting public (and very often ignorant) opinion is then used to drive (very often flawed) public policy. Incredible, isn’t it?
Mark Alexander, publisher of The Patriot Post (www.patriotpost.us), has probably captured the essence of how the MSM uses opinion polls as propaganda more concisely and with more dead-on accuracy than anyone else on the planet (with apologies to Brent Bozell and the Media Research Center). If you’ve ever wondered just what in the world is going on with a particular issue, and how we’ve come to find ourselves in the predicaments we sometimes find ourselves in, as a society, his take on what he calls “pollaganda” will provide some insight. To wit, from the Patriot Post editorial dictionary:
Pollaganda — n. 1. mainstream media (MSM) polling used to manipulate public opinion and advance a particular bias. 2. Outcome-based polling; instruments designed to generate a preferential outcome, which can be used to manipulate public opinion by advancing the perception that a particular issue, individual or group has a majority of public favor or disfavor. 3. A dezinformatsia (disinformation) campaign of political polling used for propaganda, polling masquerading as "objective journalism" designed to advance a liberal bias.
Pollagandize — v. 1. To engage in pollaganda. 2. To utilize instruments of pollaganda, or selective poll reporting (reporting polls that comport with a particular ideological viewpoint), to advance a liberal bias.
Pollaganda Cycle — n. A self-perpetuating cycle — the intentional and systematic propagation of MSM polls to manipulate public opinion by first saturating viewers with "reporting" that reflects a particular bias; second, conducting public opinion polls in concert with like-minded organizations or campaigns, which will reflect that bias; third, further proselytizing viewers by treating these poll results as "news"; and fourth, using pollaganda to induce "bandwagon psychology" (the human tendency of those who do not have a strong ideological foundation to aspire to the side perceived to be in the majority), thus further driving public opinion toward the original media bias, ad infinitum.
Mr. Alexander writes that “most polls reflect intentional propagation of a particular bias by Leftmedia television and print outlets to manipulate public opinion. They accomplish this by first indoctrinating viewers with ‘reporting’ that reflects a particular bias, then conducting ‘opinion polls’ which, of course, reflect that indoctrination.” He also argues that there is a “Leftmedia conspiracy to undermine anything conservative; the bias itself is largely the consequence of the mass-media zeitgeist and culture, which are uniformly and profoundly left of center. Such liberalism has become so embedded within the collective consciousness of print copywriters and television talkingheads that it flows freely from every front page and broadcast.”
Is this surprising? Not really, when you consider that any number of academic studies that assess the political views of national reporters in the major press pools of Washington and New York conclude that those reporters overwhelmingly self-identify as "liberal" or "Democrat." In fact, only eight percent of those reporters said they would consider voting for a conservative.
OK, so we see that the possibility exists for bias among the journalists at some of the largest newspapers in America. But would these paragons of virtue let their personal feelings, thoughts and experiences cloud their judgment and color their perception of issues and events (as people do, from every other walk of life, in every other occupation)? But how could they get it done? How could they present “news,” filtered through their liberal worldview, without appearing to compromise their journalistic integrity?
It becomes easier to imagine once you understand that they are writers; it’s what they do. They know how to use words to get your attention, to craft a compelling story, and to shape opinion. And their editors, long of tooth and schooled in the fine arts of the subtle and the sublime, know just how far to go. Not only that, but the fact that they have been able to get away with it for so long has led them to believe that they are smarter than Joe Sixpack and Sally Such-and-Such. (Sadly, but inevitably, most of the Joes and Sallys believe that journalists are smarter, too.)
There are lots of little things the MSM likes to do to subtly promote their agenda. Have you ever noticed headline (and copy) placement? Have you ever noticed, for example, how polls that support Democrat candidates are placed above the fold in lead stories, while polls that are favorable to Republican candidates are below the fold and mentioned only in a negative or unfavorable context?
Here’s another example, from Patriot Post Volume 06 Number 19, published May 12th, 2006 (emphasis mine):
“On Wednesday morning (May 10th) The New York Times' top headline was, ‘Poll Gives Bush His Worst Marks Yet.’ In the first paragraph, the writer notes, ‘Americans have a bleaker view of the country's direction than at any time in more than two decades, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Sharp disapproval of President Bush's handling of gasoline prices has combined with intensified unhappiness about Iraq to create a grim political environment for the White House and Congressional Republicans. Mr. Bush's approval ratings for his management of foreign policy, Iraq and the economy have fallen to the lowest levels of his presidency.’”
“To be fair, the last paragraph of this 1,480 word Bush-bashing diatribe includes this tidbit: ‘Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who was Mr. Bush's opponent in 2004, had a lower approval rating than Mr. Bush: 26 percent, down from 40 percent in a poll conducted right after the election. And just 28 percent said they had a favorable view of Al Gore, one of Mr. Bush's more vocal critics.’" In other words, with all of the favorable MSM coverage Kerry and Gore get, Bush still comes out on top. Perhaps The Times should have headlined this article ‘Bush more popular than Kerry or Gore.’”
This is classic media manipulation. Try this little game: Read the headlines, then jot down a thought or two about your general impression of what the story will be about. Read the first paragraph or two, or three, and see if your initial impression holds true (it probably will). Now, finish reading the story, with an eye out for anything at all that seems incongruent with your initial assessment. Hint: Things which contradict or detract from the writer’s worldview is usually buried at or near the end of the piece; giving it less prominence provides the appearance of it having less importance in the “grand scheme of things.”
In addition to headlines, there’s also the matter of where a story appears within the newspaper itself. The Los Angeles Times opined that “Bush may be the first 'A4' president: entirely comfortable repeating familiar arguments for his proposals, even if that means appearing on an inside page of the newspaper's front section, such as Page A4, that attracts far less attention than Page 1." A4? That’s not bad for a Republican POTUS in a liberal newspaper. But the perks are even better if you’re a Democrat (or the son of a Democrat) who gets into trouble: When Al Gore’s 17-year-old son, Albert Gore III, was arrested for driving 100 mph, The New York Times ran eight sentences on his arrest on page 18; The Washington Post, eight sentences on Page 6; the Los Angeles Times, nine sentences on Page 10; and USA Today, a three-sentence item in a roundup column. Contrast that with the prominent column inches that were dedicated to the Bush daughters drinking beer.
There’s also “the label game.” A few years ago, a Media Research Center study on ideological labeling in the media found that, on ABC, conservatives received 79% of the “liberal” or “conservative” labels; on NBC, 80%. On the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, 82% of the 353 ideological labels assigned by CBS's reporters were given to conservatives. Only eight House Members were identified as liberals, compared with 34 who were called conservatives. Why the disparity? Are liberals so rare, or difficult to spot, that those in the MSM can’t properly identify them? Or is there a dearth of conservatives?
The truth is that any basic, intellectually honest examination of how the MSM does business will expose the fact that they aren’t exactly hiding their bias. If you finished Junior High school, you should be able to spot it straight away. If you’re paying attention.
Speaking of media, let’s not forget another big player in the propaganda game: Hollywood.
For obvious reasons (see FDR’s “New Deal” and the Works Progress Adminstration) the majority of the "creative community" has aligned itself with liberal idealism, and that partnership naturally colors much of the "entertainment" presented to the general public. For example, shortly after the 2000 election the good folks who brought us "South Park" launched a new show called "That's My Bush!" about, you guessed it, George W. Bush. He was portrayed as a lovable goofball who managed to somehow get by in spite of himself. It's safe to say that Timothy Bottoms playing a befuddled POTUS is a far cry from having John Travolta portraying a suave and calculating Bill Clinton in "Primary Colors."
Nobody likes to pat themselves on the back like Hollywood. There are dozens of "Awards Shows," and at almost any one of them there is a 100% chance that at some point during the ceremonies one celebrity or another will show how clever they are by making fun of conservatives. The question is: When was the last time you heard someone in show biz take a crack at a Democrat? In Hollywood, that would be like dissing the Prom King.
As the masters of “pop culture,” the movers and shakers of Hollywood believe that they have more influence than they actually do. Still, that influence isn’t inconsequential when it is added to that of the MSM. The resultant cacophony of liberal groupthink -- scattered, yet enjoined by a shared playbook against a common enemy -- can (and too often does) overwhelm the mediums through which we view our day-to-day lives. Consider the “War on Terror” taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan. How have the Left portrayed this struggle between the forces of Good and Evil? If we go back forty years, to the Vietnam War, we can find a classic example of the media’s use of propaganda in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo: South Vietnamese Police Chief, Brigadier General Nguyen Ndoc Loan, was photographed on the streets of Saigon shooting what appears to be a civilian in the head. What wasn’t widely distributed with the photo was the fact that the “civilian” was a Viet Cong Colonel who had been captured just after killing a close personal friend of the police chief’s and murdering his entire family.
Edmund Burke is credited with coining the term “The Fourth Estate,” saying of the media “Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in lawmaking, in all acts of authority.” This effect is most obvious when the MSM unites on a particular issue – such as virtually any foreign or domestic policy or agenda being pursued by a Republican administration (the same can be seen when they champion Democratic causes). What is important, here, is the effect upon the citizenry when the opinion of the MSM is the only voice that is heard, endlessly recycled, over and over again. Do you think it has any effect?
In the end, polls are an important part of the self-perpetuating MSM propaganda machine, each one feeding off of the other. The reality is that what polling organizations are really doing, by and large, is measuring the media's effectiveness at indoctrinating readers and TV viewers with opinion-shaping propaganda. We see the results of it every day.
I suppose we should be grateful that liberals don’t have a stranglehold on our education system, or the full backing and financial support of every labor union in the land, or we’d be in really big trouble…
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
“Bias” by Bernard Goldberg
The Media Research Center
http://www.patriotpost.us/
“U.S. Military Defeats Fourth Estate” by Douglas MacKinnon, 1/7/08
See also: ABC, CBS, PBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, MTV, MSNBC, Time, Newsweek, the Associated Press, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, the AFL-CIO, Teacher’s Unions, the American Bar Association, AARP, and Hollywood.
The answer, of course, is because we are addicted to the idea that polls are some kind of a magic modern oracle. But let’s make no mistake: polls are artfully crafted, designed -- and often manipulated -- to present a very specific viewpoint. They are the means to the furtherance of a very specific agenda, and they are just as likely to be used to forge public opinion or to sell a policy position as they are to be used for legitimate illumination.
The truth is, polls are often little more than an extension of what we have been led to believe, and far too infrequently do they represent the fruit of any sort of true intellectual examination. Why should they? How could they? After all, what does Joe Sixpack know about foreign policy, or economics, or global trade? What does Sally Such-and-Such know about fighting a war, or the environment, or world financial markets? The answer is: Only what they’ve been fed, via neat little media packages designed to sway their opinion toward the (left-wing) conclusion that the (left-wing) MSM wants them to have.
Politicians -- and more than a few of their constituents -- prefer to govern by polls: It is far easier to rely on “group think” and point to a poll result than to think critically and address a difficult issue logically and rationally. Who needs to be an expert on anything when we have a consensus? Instead of thoughtful dialogue about real problems and real solutions, stump speeches are instead littered with references to what pollsters say “the people” want. Thus, what the voters hear is essentially: “Re-elect me and I will (insert what the polls are saying you want me to do).”
This is how complex, intertwined issues are boiled down to sound bites and headlines, and how the resulting public (and very often ignorant) opinion is then used to drive (very often flawed) public policy. Incredible, isn’t it?
Mark Alexander, publisher of The Patriot Post (www.patriotpost.us), has probably captured the essence of how the MSM uses opinion polls as propaganda more concisely and with more dead-on accuracy than anyone else on the planet (with apologies to Brent Bozell and the Media Research Center). If you’ve ever wondered just what in the world is going on with a particular issue, and how we’ve come to find ourselves in the predicaments we sometimes find ourselves in, as a society, his take on what he calls “pollaganda” will provide some insight. To wit, from the Patriot Post editorial dictionary:
Pollaganda — n. 1. mainstream media (MSM) polling used to manipulate public opinion and advance a particular bias. 2. Outcome-based polling; instruments designed to generate a preferential outcome, which can be used to manipulate public opinion by advancing the perception that a particular issue, individual or group has a majority of public favor or disfavor. 3. A dezinformatsia (disinformation) campaign of political polling used for propaganda, polling masquerading as "objective journalism" designed to advance a liberal bias.
Pollagandize — v. 1. To engage in pollaganda. 2. To utilize instruments of pollaganda, or selective poll reporting (reporting polls that comport with a particular ideological viewpoint), to advance a liberal bias.
Pollaganda Cycle — n. A self-perpetuating cycle — the intentional and systematic propagation of MSM polls to manipulate public opinion by first saturating viewers with "reporting" that reflects a particular bias; second, conducting public opinion polls in concert with like-minded organizations or campaigns, which will reflect that bias; third, further proselytizing viewers by treating these poll results as "news"; and fourth, using pollaganda to induce "bandwagon psychology" (the human tendency of those who do not have a strong ideological foundation to aspire to the side perceived to be in the majority), thus further driving public opinion toward the original media bias, ad infinitum.
Mr. Alexander writes that “most polls reflect intentional propagation of a particular bias by Leftmedia television and print outlets to manipulate public opinion. They accomplish this by first indoctrinating viewers with ‘reporting’ that reflects a particular bias, then conducting ‘opinion polls’ which, of course, reflect that indoctrination.” He also argues that there is a “Leftmedia conspiracy to undermine anything conservative; the bias itself is largely the consequence of the mass-media zeitgeist and culture, which are uniformly and profoundly left of center. Such liberalism has become so embedded within the collective consciousness of print copywriters and television talkingheads that it flows freely from every front page and broadcast.”
Is this surprising? Not really, when you consider that any number of academic studies that assess the political views of national reporters in the major press pools of Washington and New York conclude that those reporters overwhelmingly self-identify as "liberal" or "Democrat." In fact, only eight percent of those reporters said they would consider voting for a conservative.
OK, so we see that the possibility exists for bias among the journalists at some of the largest newspapers in America. But would these paragons of virtue let their personal feelings, thoughts and experiences cloud their judgment and color their perception of issues and events (as people do, from every other walk of life, in every other occupation)? But how could they get it done? How could they present “news,” filtered through their liberal worldview, without appearing to compromise their journalistic integrity?
It becomes easier to imagine once you understand that they are writers; it’s what they do. They know how to use words to get your attention, to craft a compelling story, and to shape opinion. And their editors, long of tooth and schooled in the fine arts of the subtle and the sublime, know just how far to go. Not only that, but the fact that they have been able to get away with it for so long has led them to believe that they are smarter than Joe Sixpack and Sally Such-and-Such. (Sadly, but inevitably, most of the Joes and Sallys believe that journalists are smarter, too.)
There are lots of little things the MSM likes to do to subtly promote their agenda. Have you ever noticed headline (and copy) placement? Have you ever noticed, for example, how polls that support Democrat candidates are placed above the fold in lead stories, while polls that are favorable to Republican candidates are below the fold and mentioned only in a negative or unfavorable context?
Here’s another example, from Patriot Post Volume 06 Number 19, published May 12th, 2006 (emphasis mine):
“On Wednesday morning (May 10th) The New York Times' top headline was, ‘Poll Gives Bush His Worst Marks Yet.’ In the first paragraph, the writer notes, ‘Americans have a bleaker view of the country's direction than at any time in more than two decades, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Sharp disapproval of President Bush's handling of gasoline prices has combined with intensified unhappiness about Iraq to create a grim political environment for the White House and Congressional Republicans. Mr. Bush's approval ratings for his management of foreign policy, Iraq and the economy have fallen to the lowest levels of his presidency.’”
“To be fair, the last paragraph of this 1,480 word Bush-bashing diatribe includes this tidbit: ‘Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who was Mr. Bush's opponent in 2004, had a lower approval rating than Mr. Bush: 26 percent, down from 40 percent in a poll conducted right after the election. And just 28 percent said they had a favorable view of Al Gore, one of Mr. Bush's more vocal critics.’" In other words, with all of the favorable MSM coverage Kerry and Gore get, Bush still comes out on top. Perhaps The Times should have headlined this article ‘Bush more popular than Kerry or Gore.’”
This is classic media manipulation. Try this little game: Read the headlines, then jot down a thought or two about your general impression of what the story will be about. Read the first paragraph or two, or three, and see if your initial impression holds true (it probably will). Now, finish reading the story, with an eye out for anything at all that seems incongruent with your initial assessment. Hint: Things which contradict or detract from the writer’s worldview is usually buried at or near the end of the piece; giving it less prominence provides the appearance of it having less importance in the “grand scheme of things.”
In addition to headlines, there’s also the matter of where a story appears within the newspaper itself. The Los Angeles Times opined that “Bush may be the first 'A4' president: entirely comfortable repeating familiar arguments for his proposals, even if that means appearing on an inside page of the newspaper's front section, such as Page A4, that attracts far less attention than Page 1." A4? That’s not bad for a Republican POTUS in a liberal newspaper. But the perks are even better if you’re a Democrat (or the son of a Democrat) who gets into trouble: When Al Gore’s 17-year-old son, Albert Gore III, was arrested for driving 100 mph, The New York Times ran eight sentences on his arrest on page 18; The Washington Post, eight sentences on Page 6; the Los Angeles Times, nine sentences on Page 10; and USA Today, a three-sentence item in a roundup column. Contrast that with the prominent column inches that were dedicated to the Bush daughters drinking beer.
There’s also “the label game.” A few years ago, a Media Research Center study on ideological labeling in the media found that, on ABC, conservatives received 79% of the “liberal” or “conservative” labels; on NBC, 80%. On the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, 82% of the 353 ideological labels assigned by CBS's reporters were given to conservatives. Only eight House Members were identified as liberals, compared with 34 who were called conservatives. Why the disparity? Are liberals so rare, or difficult to spot, that those in the MSM can’t properly identify them? Or is there a dearth of conservatives?
The truth is that any basic, intellectually honest examination of how the MSM does business will expose the fact that they aren’t exactly hiding their bias. If you finished Junior High school, you should be able to spot it straight away. If you’re paying attention.
Speaking of media, let’s not forget another big player in the propaganda game: Hollywood.
For obvious reasons (see FDR’s “New Deal” and the Works Progress Adminstration) the majority of the "creative community" has aligned itself with liberal idealism, and that partnership naturally colors much of the "entertainment" presented to the general public. For example, shortly after the 2000 election the good folks who brought us "South Park" launched a new show called "That's My Bush!" about, you guessed it, George W. Bush. He was portrayed as a lovable goofball who managed to somehow get by in spite of himself. It's safe to say that Timothy Bottoms playing a befuddled POTUS is a far cry from having John Travolta portraying a suave and calculating Bill Clinton in "Primary Colors."
Nobody likes to pat themselves on the back like Hollywood. There are dozens of "Awards Shows," and at almost any one of them there is a 100% chance that at some point during the ceremonies one celebrity or another will show how clever they are by making fun of conservatives. The question is: When was the last time you heard someone in show biz take a crack at a Democrat? In Hollywood, that would be like dissing the Prom King.
As the masters of “pop culture,” the movers and shakers of Hollywood believe that they have more influence than they actually do. Still, that influence isn’t inconsequential when it is added to that of the MSM. The resultant cacophony of liberal groupthink -- scattered, yet enjoined by a shared playbook against a common enemy -- can (and too often does) overwhelm the mediums through which we view our day-to-day lives. Consider the “War on Terror” taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan. How have the Left portrayed this struggle between the forces of Good and Evil? If we go back forty years, to the Vietnam War, we can find a classic example of the media’s use of propaganda in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo: South Vietnamese Police Chief, Brigadier General Nguyen Ndoc Loan, was photographed on the streets of Saigon shooting what appears to be a civilian in the head. What wasn’t widely distributed with the photo was the fact that the “civilian” was a Viet Cong Colonel who had been captured just after killing a close personal friend of the police chief’s and murdering his entire family.
Edmund Burke is credited with coining the term “The Fourth Estate,” saying of the media “Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in lawmaking, in all acts of authority.” This effect is most obvious when the MSM unites on a particular issue – such as virtually any foreign or domestic policy or agenda being pursued by a Republican administration (the same can be seen when they champion Democratic causes). What is important, here, is the effect upon the citizenry when the opinion of the MSM is the only voice that is heard, endlessly recycled, over and over again. Do you think it has any effect?
In the end, polls are an important part of the self-perpetuating MSM propaganda machine, each one feeding off of the other. The reality is that what polling organizations are really doing, by and large, is measuring the media's effectiveness at indoctrinating readers and TV viewers with opinion-shaping propaganda. We see the results of it every day.
I suppose we should be grateful that liberals don’t have a stranglehold on our education system, or the full backing and financial support of every labor union in the land, or we’d be in really big trouble…
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
“Bias” by Bernard Goldberg
The Media Research Center
http://www.patriotpost.us/
“U.S. Military Defeats Fourth Estate” by Douglas MacKinnon, 1/7/08
See also: ABC, CBS, PBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, MTV, MSNBC, Time, Newsweek, the Associated Press, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, the AFL-CIO, Teacher’s Unions, the American Bar Association, AARP, and Hollywood.
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