White House Urges Other Networks to Disregard Fox News
I suspect that whether or not this little cartoon of mine is seen as being over the top, depends upon whether you are looking at this now... or at some point of time in the future. I'll be thrilled if 10 years from now, this is snickered and laughed at.
But in the near future, there's a Net Neutrality vote coming up this Thursday... there are more Healthcontrol votes coming very soon after... there are FCC diversity in broadcasting 'guidelines' in the works by Mark Lloyd, Cap and Trade taxation plans and other Global Warming initiatives... all of these are MAJOR issues, with huge implications, and threats, to our Individual Rights, our Liberty, and Freedom.
Such issues require, and demand, a free, unrestrained debate. When the government publicly announces, as a matter of policy, that you and your ideas, 'the opposition', are less worthy than those whom they favor... a line is in the process of being crossed.
Whether or not they are able to cross that line, and if so, how far they are allowed to cross over that line, or whether they are pushed back to the right side of the line - or whether they step right over it and never look back - depends upon the reaction of the public, We The People. Let's hope that this becomes the norm as far as reactions and characterizations of such comments by those in power, "Obama's dumb war with Fox News"... we'll see.
Just keep in mind, that telling each other that "Oh, don't worry, they don't really mean anything by it... they won't really hurt anybody..." has a poor track record of working out well. Add to that, a government drive to act on progressivist faux scientific agenda's... and we should all have a queasy feeling in our stomachs.
There were others who were proud to think of themselves as being members of a forward thinking democracy, until suddenly It Was Too Late,
"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after [THE YEAR DOESN'T MATTER], between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in [THE NAME OF THE COUNTRY DOESN'T MATTER]. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with [THE LEADERS NAME DOESN'T MATTER], their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it."
..."The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. [THE NAME OF THE PARTY DOESN'T MATTER]. gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic [THE NAME OF THE NATION DOESN'T MATTER]’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.
(Read the full excerpt from "They Thought They Were Free", The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer - remember, history doesn't repeat, it rhymes... repeatedly)
The IDEAS matter, the methods they use to implement them matter, the way they deal with their critics matters, the respect they show the Rights and Property Rights of Individuals matters, the willingness to 'allow' or override your ability to make your own choices for your own life, MATTERS.
And more than all of that, the way you respond at the first sign of trouble matters.
Have you responded to your elected officials? Have you responded at all?
Yes, IT MATTERS.
I suspect that whether or not this little cartoon of mine is seen as being over the top, depends upon whether you are looking at this now... or at some point of time in the future. I'll be thrilled if 10 years from now, this is snickered and laughed at.
But in the near future, there's a Net Neutrality vote coming up this Thursday... there are more Healthcontrol votes coming very soon after... there are FCC diversity in broadcasting 'guidelines' in the works by Mark Lloyd, Cap and Trade taxation plans and other Global Warming initiatives... all of these are MAJOR issues, with huge implications, and threats, to our Individual Rights, our Liberty, and Freedom.
Such issues require, and demand, a free, unrestrained debate. When the government publicly announces, as a matter of policy, that you and your ideas, 'the opposition', are less worthy than those whom they favor... a line is in the process of being crossed.
Whether or not they are able to cross that line, and if so, how far they are allowed to cross over that line, or whether they are pushed back to the right side of the line - or whether they step right over it and never look back - depends upon the reaction of the public, We The People. Let's hope that this becomes the norm as far as reactions and characterizations of such comments by those in power, "Obama's dumb war with Fox News"... we'll see.
Just keep in mind, that telling each other that "Oh, don't worry, they don't really mean anything by it... they won't really hurt anybody..." has a poor track record of working out well. Add to that, a government drive to act on progressivist faux scientific agenda's... and we should all have a queasy feeling in our stomachs.
There were others who were proud to think of themselves as being members of a forward thinking democracy, until suddenly It Was Too Late,
"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after [THE YEAR DOESN'T MATTER], between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in [THE NAME OF THE COUNTRY DOESN'T MATTER]. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with [THE LEADERS NAME DOESN'T MATTER], their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it."
..."The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. [THE NAME OF THE PARTY DOESN'T MATTER]. gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic [THE NAME OF THE NATION DOESN'T MATTER]’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.
(Read the full excerpt from "They Thought They Were Free", The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer - remember, history doesn't repeat, it rhymes... repeatedly)
The IDEAS matter, the methods they use to implement them matter, the way they deal with their critics matters, the respect they show the Rights and Property Rights of Individuals matters, the willingness to 'allow' or override your ability to make your own choices for your own life, MATTERS.
And more than all of that, the way you respond at the first sign of trouble matters.
Have you responded to your elected officials? Have you responded at all?
Yes, IT MATTERS.
*********************Update**********************
In a comment I made at the Gunslinger's, I said I'm not hurling the nazi charge at the left, but I am pointing out that the tactics are very much similar, and that the lesson needs to be learned... not that anyone today are the equivalent of the nazi's, but that the tactics of a party urgently pushing hurried crisis legislation, incrementally assuming more powers to the govt to handle more and more decisions in business and culture that would not normally be allowed to govt, or would be acceptable if it did, are very similar.
We need to swat away the 'you're saying they're nazi's!' comments and begin noticing that the tactics are common to any govt moving towards tyranny, and they are not at all confined to 1930's Germany.
Our Constitution and Bill of Rights didn't enshrine free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, sanctity of contract, takings clause, gun rights, etc, because they were the most important and valuable of our individual rights, but because those were the most politically important rights, which if kept secure, would prevent a tyrant from successfully taking power and extinguishing all of our rights. With bailouts, business takeovers, proposed net neutrality acts, defacto 'fairness doctrine' measures, and targeting of an unapproved press... that is arguably the road being paved for us to walk down... will we go down it?
There was no Tea Party movement in Germany, and that may make all the difference for us... may....
Well there was a hopeful occurance yesterday, when the network bureau chiefs of the Washington D.C. halted the Obama administrations attempt to exclude Fox news from an interview with its pay czar.
Obama White House Rebuffed, As Other Networks Stand Up for 1st Amendment, Fox News "The White House said Feinberg would give interviews to members of the White House TV pool – with the exception of Fox News. The other members of the cost-sharing pool – CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS -- objected."
And that is good news... but noting the fact that that is in itself NEWS... where else but Fox, CNSNews... and a few blogs... do you see it? Not at the New York Times... not at CNN... not at MSNBC... not at ABC News... this wasn't a "This is Wrong!" moment, but more of a "Oh... we can't get away with That" moment.
"May" is still very much the operative word.
5 comments:
Still reading, but,
"When the government publicly announces, as a matter of policy, that you and your ideas, 'the opposition', are less worthy than those whom they favor... a line is in the process of being crossed."
Then there was this last night on the News Hour...
Report Explores New Models for Journalism
...which raises some concern. Even if not a definite RED FLAG, it is still is a potential gateway, a conflict of interests. And I know it is only someone's idea but it brought my eyebrows mid-way up my forehead since it was right after the Fox News thing.
I added an update to the bottom of the post about our 'news' media, but here's another Red flag:
When Asked Where the Constitution Authorizes Congress to Order Americans To Buy Health Insurance, Pelosi Says: 'Are You Serious?'
"When CNSNews.com asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday where the Constitution authorized Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance--a mandate included in both the House and Senate versions of the health care bill--Pelosi dismissed the question by saying: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
Pelosi's press secretary later responded to written follow-up questions from CNSNews.com by emailing CNSNews.com a press release on the “Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform,” that argues that Congress derives the authority to mandate that people purchase health insurance from its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce.
... Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandated that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a "serious question ."
Not a good sign at all.
I don't suppose you had your panties in a bunch at the far more egregious efforts of the Bush administration to muzzle the press.
And BTW, casual analogies with Nazism are offensive and make you look like an idiot.
aninnymouse said "...the far more egregious efforts of the Bush ..."
Was that really your best attempt at finding an equally relevant example from the evil Bush administration? The fact that that was the best you could come up with probably says all that needs to be said. When you find evidence that the evil bushies refused to allow members of its administration to talk with, say the New York Times, or CBS, or tried to influence the other media outlets to refrain from reporting the stories they did, it might be worth looking at. In the meantime, I'll leave you to chew on your own panties.
I wonder if you had any problem with the one fascistic action that the Bush administration actually did allow? Since that would put you in opposition to everything the Obama administration is currently doing... probably not.
"And BTW, casual analogies with Nazism are offensive..."
Nothing casual about my analogy to the tactic used by tyrants encroaching on freedom. Is it your contention that because nazi's used a particular tactic to gain power, that that tactic is no longer proper to refer to? Do you grasp the idiocy of that position?
"...and make you look like an idiot."
Hmm... lets see if I can come up with a suitable response to an anonymous fool who expressed no worthwhile opinion of his own, let alone provided any basis for the 'ideas' it had... um... ok... I'd rather look like an idiot in the eyes of an actual idiot, than seem in any way admirable to them.
In two generations, no one is going to remember what Nazism was all about.
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