Can something be true for you and not true for me? In other words, is the truth relative or is the truth fixed? How you answer this question shapes the way you look at the world. Renowned philosophy professor Paul Copan provides an excellent road map through this tricky and vitally important issue.
Prager U
Hate Speech Doesn’t Exist
Why Can’t America Fill a Pothole?
Why can’t America build or repair infrastructure on a par with countries in Europe or Asia? Why are our bridges, roads, and airports not what they should be? Aren’t we the richest and most technologically savvy country in the world? Who or what is holding us back? Kyle Smith of National Review has the surprising (and frustrating) answer.
How to Become a Dangerous Person (Free Speech)
How do you become “dangerous”? Writer and Portland-based podcaster Nancy Rommelmann would have thought she was the last person to answer that question — until she publicly dared to raise some questions about the #MeToo movement. Then her life suddenly changed and she became public enemy number one. She tells her astonishing story — what happened and why — in this compelling video.
Leftist YouTube Channels Not Censored Same As Conservatives
During the recent flaps over media bias by many social media sites against conservative ideas, an idea by Democrats and the media has come forward discussing the position that sites like Prager Univeristy are censored equally when compared to other Left leaning sites. In fact, two callers into the Dennis Prager show ask Dennis about this. Both Dennis and his producer respond by showing how these comparisons are not accurate. And when one compares “apples-to-apples,” the original premise is strengthened. (This post should be combined with this post: “‘THE MEDIAS’ CHANGES ELECTIONS BY MANY MILLIONS OF VOTES“)
“The Medias” Change Elections By Many Millions Of Votes
This is with a HAT-TIP to MOONBATTERY:
- Google is the main villain. The company is fundamentally ideological (as this site has been documenting) and has already used its massive power to shift millions of votes. Ever more energized to impose its extreme political views, Google threatens to reduce democratic elections to a farce.
Here are two videos with descriptions:
SOCIAL MEDIA BIAS
Dr. Robert Epstein told Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Tuesday that Google can manipulate votes by using tools that they have at their disposal exclusively, and that no one can counteract them. Epstein warned the senator of big tech election meddling during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on “Google and Censorship through Search Engines” on Tuesday.
More from BREITBART:
Dr. Robert Epstein’s testimony before the Senate concerning Google’s search manipulation and its impact on elections.
More from PRAGER U:
The media has a bias sway as well. Here Larry Elder notes the 8% to 10% advantage the Media give to Democrats typically. He offers some poignant examples to prove his point of media bias.
NEWS MEDIA BIAS
I was in a conversation with a younger person when they said that Fox News was biased. I mentioned that when you remove the “opinion pages” from Fox, they are slightly biased to the right… as much as CNN (once their “opinion pages” are removed) is biased to the left.
No kidding, twice they mentioned Sean Hannity, and I pointed out these were the opinion pages… then they f-i-n-a-l-l-y started tracking with me. I then mentioned that what they said is like someone coming up to me and telling me “the New York Times opinion pages lean left.” Or, “the Wall Street journal opinion pages lean right.” …
Fox News: Enraging Liberals for 10 Years (L.A. Times):
….What explains all this hysteria? Success, of course.
The propaganda charge is unfair, at least when it comes to the network’s presentation of news. In the 2004 presidential race, Fox pollsters consistently underestimated President Bush’s support. In its final preelection poll, Fox had Kerry winning by a couple of points, one of the only polls to show the Democrat on top. I’m not sure a right-wing fifth column would do that.
A recent comprehensive study by UCLA political scientist Tim Groseclose and University of Missouri-Columbia economics professor Jeffrey Milyo found Brit Hume’s “Special Report” — Fox’s most straightforward news show — more centrist than any of the three major networks’ evening newscasts, all of which leaned left.
The program is a model of smart news television….
Book: Liberal Media Distorts News Bias: Drudge, Fox look more conservative against mainstream’s liberal bent (US News and World Report):
…In a crushing body blow to the pushers of the so-called “Fox Effect,” which claims the conservative media is dragging the left into the center, UCLA political science professor Tim Groseclose in Left Turn claims that “all” mainstream news outlets have a liberal bias in their reporting that makes even moderate organizations appear out of the mainstream and decidedly right-wing to news consumers who are influenced by the slant. [Read Fox’s Huckabee slams MSNBC’s Matthews, Scarborough over bias.]
“Fox News is clearly more conservative than ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and National Public Radio. Some will conclude that ‘therefore, this means that Fox News has a conservative bias,'” he writes in an advance copy provided to Washington Whispers. “Instead, maybe it is centrist, and possibly even left-leaning, while all the others are far left. It’s like concluding that six-three is short just because it is short compared to professional basketball players.”
What’s more, he says, “this point illustrates a common misconception about the Drudge Report. According to my analysis, the Drudge Report is approximately the most fair, balanced, and centrist news outlet in the United States. Yet, the overwhelming majority of media commentators claim that it has a conservative bias. The problem, I believe, is that such commentators mistake relative bias for absolute bias. Yes, the Drudge Report is more conservative than the average U.S. news outlet. But it is a logical mistake to use that to infer that it is based on an absolute scale.”
And in further analysis sure to enrage critics of conservative media, Groseclose determines that Drudge, on a conservative to liberal scale of 0-100, with 50 being centrist, actually leans a bit left of center with a score of 60.4. The reason: Drudge mostly links to the sites of the mainstream media, with just a few written by Matt Drudge himself. “Since these links come from a broad mix of media outlets, and since the news in general is left-leaning, it should not be surprising that the slant quotient of the Drudge Report leans left,” he writes. [Read Poll: Fox, O’Reilly most trusted news sources.]…
Above Video Description:
UCLA Professor Tim Grosclose has a new book out Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. In his book, he outlines what conservatives have known for years, that the mainstream media has turned more and more leftist which in turn promulgates, influences, rewords, redefines, and imposes leftist doctrine.
From the book:
Using objective, social-scientific methods, the filtering prevents us from seeing the world as it actually is. Instead, we see only a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass—a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see….
That bias makes us more liberal, which makes us less able to detect the bias, which allows the media to get away with more bias, which makes us even more liberal.
NATIONAL REVIEW wraps this up in a bow nicely for us:
…An interesting study in this regard was recently done by Tim Groseclose of UCLA and Jeff Milyo of the University of Chicago. They devised a method of measuring press bias based on the way members of Congress cite various think tanks. By looking at their rating on a liberal/conservative scale based on votes, they were able to determine which think tanks were viewed as conservative or liberal. They then looked at how often these think tanks were cited in the media.
The conclusion of the Groseclose-Milyo study is unambiguous. “Our results show a very significant liberal bias,” they report. Interestingly, they found that the Internet’s Drudge Report and “Special Report” on Fox News were the two outlets closest to the true center of the political spectrum, despite being widely viewed as conservative.
Groseclose and Milyo also look at the political orientation of journalists relative to the population. They note that just 7 percent of journalists voted for George H.W. Bush in 1992 versus 37 of the voting public. This means that journalists are more liberal than voters in the most liberal congressional district in the U.S., the 9th district in California, which contains the city of Berkeley. Even there, Bush got 12 percent of the vote, almost twice his support among journalists….
Silencing Women… Conservative Women
In the mainstream media, women on the left are almost always portrayed as paragons of compassion and virtue. But when it comes to conservative women, it’s a different story. Why is this? Heather Higgins, chairman of Independent Women’s Forum and CEO of Independent Women’s Voice, explains the reasons behind the double standard.
Orwell vs. Huxley (Big Tech Update)
George Orwell’s fictionalized world where Big Brother reigns supreme is no longer a figment of the imagination, but a prophetic vision of present-day threats. Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center, explains how and why Big Tech is making Orwell’s 1984 a 21st century reality.
OLDER POST…. (1/2016)
Someone recently said:
- Why is it that the left loves to rewrite history? My theory is that to them the end justifies the means ironically in history that has led to genocide here and there.
To which I replied, “I agree.” (And I continued, as I am wont-to-do):
Another reason is that history is a giant mirror reflecting their failed paths to equality. From the French Revolution, to segregation and eventually the Civil War, to their terrorist arm of the Party (the KKK), to pouring water and oil into a pot and calling it a “melting pot” (multiculturalism in leftist terms is really segregation all over again). From the Fabian Socialists to Bernie Sander “types,” from the founder of Planned Parenthood having guest columns in her newsletter by NAZI doctors to allowing gender abortions and legislating to make it legal to leave a baby on a table to die from the environment… it is all an embarrassing mirror that they need to change and obfuscate. (And, there is nothing analogous.)
In reading an excellent book, early on there was this nugget:
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture…. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
Joshua Charles, Liberty’s Secrets: The Lost Wisdom of America’s Founders (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2015), XIV; that is a large quote itself from Neil Postuman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2006), XIX-XX.
While Charles and Neil take the “Brave New World” route… I think we can split the horns of the dilemma a bit (so-to-speak) and say yes… a small percentage of dedicated persons (to their faith or ethos) are feeling the boot mentioned in Orwell’s epic tale. From fining people out of business by taking their bank accounts because they refuse to make cakes for celebrations they wish not to support, to $250,000 for people who wish to call people by their real gender.
However, outside of this smaller percentage who is feeling the [sarcasm] equality of State [/sarcasm], there is a much larger percentage who do not want to be bothered as they amuse themselves to death (totalitarian bents ignored in political theories).
They do not want to be bothered by what would have in our history brought people to arms. All they care about is the next text on their iPhone or another round online with friends playing Call of Duty, or who got injured in the last NFL game that impacts the chances of their team winning. THESE people who have replaced worldviews with entertainment will one-day get a rood awakening when their toys are gone.
Liberals — especially — want this amusement to curtail knowing about history so they can get another radical candidate in office who likewise thinks the Constitution is a living/breathing document.
Sorry for the rant… but you got me thinking.
CNN’s Moral Insanity!
A CNN panel falsely claimed that abortion is moral and human life doesn’t begin at conception. Dennis Prager explains why this argument directly violates science and reason. MOONBATTERY notes:
…In the video below, a moonbat proclaims with a straight face that an unborn baby is not a human being. That is conventional insanity, of the type treated at psychiatric hospitals.
Meanwhile, the supremely odious Chris Cuomo desperately clings to the argument that it doesn’t matter if babies are human beings so long as they are not legally regarded as persons. If only they had realized this during the Nuremberg Trials, some Nazis might have escaped the rope.
Craziest of all is the underlying liberal belief that abortion is moral….
Who Are the Racists?
To call someone a racist is a serious charge. A racist is someone who believes that one person is superior (or inferior) to another person simply based on their skin color. It’s a belief that is both foolish and stupid. But conservatives are accused by progressives of being racist on an almost daily basis. Is it a fair accusation? Or, is it just political posturing? And, if it is political posturing, what does it say about the people making the charge? Derryck Green of Project 21 has some provocative answers.
Preferred Pronouns or Prison (Totalitarianism)
“He.” “She.” “They.” Have you ever given a moment’s thought to your everyday use of these pronouns? It has probably never occurred to you that those words could be misused. Or that doing so could cost you your business or your job – or even your freedom. Journalist Abigail Shrier explains how this happened and why it’s become a major free speech issue.
BAM! What Is Crony Capitalism
Actually, it is not “crony capitalism,” it is “CRONY CORPORATISM.”
This election season there’s a lot of talk about corruption, about politicians being “bought and sold”, and about “crony capitalism”. What do those terms mean? Why should we care? Is there a way to reduce corruption and restore our trust in government? Author Jay Cost, staff writer at The Weekly Standard, answers these questions and proposes a solution that every society could benefit from.
A good example of a monopoly like the one Dr. Friedman refers to is MA BELL (click pic to enlarge):
…..The crusade to create a monopolistic telephone industry by government fiat finally succeeded when the federal government used World War I as an excuse to nationalize the industry in 1918. AT&T still operated its phone system, but it was controlled by a government commission headed by the postmaster general. Like so many other instances of government regulation, AT&T quickly “captured” the regulators and used the regulatory apparatus to eliminate its competitors. “By 1925 not only had virtually every state established strict rate regulation guidelines, but local telephone competition was either discouraged or explicitly prohibited within many of those jurisdictions.”….
(Via MOONBATTERY) Crony capitalism is as much a betrayal of true capitalism as postmodern art is a betrayal of true art. It results in those who have made $zillions in the free market calling for more suffocating government regulation. Like socialism, it is a way for those who have succeeded to pull up the ladder after them so that others cannot follow and compete with them.
John Stossel has had enough of it. The solution: to reduce the power of the government to reward its friends and break the kneecaps of its enemies.
STOSSEL’S INDEPTH LOOK
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Here is the latest COVID update.
Sad and shameful!
CAROL ROTH
Since the start of the Covid crisis, the American economy has been turned on its head. Times are good for the big guys — Big Business and Big Government. But what about for the small business owner, the personification of the American dream? Carol Roth discusses Crony Corporatism/Capitalism and is the author of, “The War on Small Business: How the Government Used the Pandemic to Crush the Backbone of America“