America's Press

By Sam Huntington

The American news media began in 1729 with an entertaining press written and produced by Ben Franklin. Its focus was satire and matters of interest (he thought) to the public. A few years later, William Cosby, governor of New York, hauled John Zinger into court accusing him of seditious libel. His attorney successfully argued that newspapers should be free to criticize government so long as the accusations were true. It was this case that led the founders to consider “freedom of the press.”

Back then, it was supposed that the people had an inalienable right to know what government was up to. Of course, in explaining what the government was up to there was considerable license for the writer’s point of view, which we may assume was a viewpoint shared by the publisher.

Public assassination in the press began early in our history. Politicians soon learned how to manipulate the press for their own purposes. If we think the Steele Dossier is a disgrace, read how Thomas Jefferson anonymously conspired to hatchet his boss, President George Washington. Jefferson’s cabal made scurrilous claims, none of which were true. The dye was cast, however. News media became politicized and it has been that way ever since.

Is this problem getting worse? Considering the continual effort to mislead readers and listeners, I’d have to answer in the affirmative. The news is not only too often “fake,” lies and distortions frequently end up re-transmitted on such social platforms as Twitter, Face Book, a plethora of truly bizarre blogs, and YouTube. This would not be a problem if Americans were capable of sifting through bull feces to discover the facts. Critical thinking, however, is not one of the American public’s strong suits.

Independent research takes time; no one has time for it. The consequences of this are serious. Public apathy is an automatic win for politicians, who we might observe are inveterate liars. People who accept lies as truth become easily led sheep, easy marks for political wolves. People who become rabid enablers of dishonest press and their political masters harm themselves, their loved ones, their communities, and the nation.

How much faith or confidence can one have in a loved one who is a prolific liar? Now substitute the words “loved one” with “member of the press.” There you go, America. Here’s your sign.

Reparations

By Sam Huntington

The United Nations Working group of Experts on People of African Descent* have determined that the United States owes reparations to African Americans.  Why? Because, they say, compensation is necessary to combat the disadvantages caused by 245 years of legally allowing the sale of people based on the color of their skin and because the US has never confronted its legacy of “racial terrorism.”  I’m not sure, but this could be the reason why the United Nations has no credibility among thinking people.

The argument is that people who never owned slaves (everyone alive today) should pay reparations to people who never were slaves.  It is an irrational argument, and yet dozens of leftists are supporting it.  

In fact, the proposition is about as illogical as a human being can get.  What about the Africans who took other Africans prisoners during tribal warfare and sold them to Europeans and Moslems?  Should they pay reparations, too?  What about white skinned people who were enslaved over the past 500 years? Should they also receive reparations, or is this just a black thing?

And what disadvantages are these people talking about?  Look, if black people want to get ahead in life, there are only three things they have to do to avoid being poor: (1) Finish high school; (2) Don’t have children before they are 20-years of age; and (3) get married before having children. Voila!  Problem solved.

As for the claim that the US has never confronted its legacy of “racial terrorism,” what in the hell do they think the Civil War was about?  I’d say the cost in blood more than paid the price for ridding our nation of slavery.  Ordinarily, I would shake my head and wonder how anyone could be this stupid, but then with a bit more thought, lifting a few layers, we’ll find other facts: no one on earth has been more cruel to blacks than other blacks.  The murder rate in Chicago bears this out.  Dig down a bit further, and we’ll discover the highly-successful leftist policy of racial discrimination toward blacks through the imposition of low-expectations.  Remove another layer and we’ll find that an overwhelming number of people who feed from the public trough reman there permanently.  This is the foundation of "black policy" in the Democratic Party.  

Final questions: Kamala Harris is one of many Democrats who support reparations for blacks.  Her ancestors were slave traders.  Does Harris write a check, or receive one?  Barack Obama’s mother’s ancestors were slave owners and traders.  Does he write a check, or receive one?  Since no one is able to control who their ancestors were, how would reparations payments off-set the (manufactured) “trauma” of knowing that someone’s fourth great-grandparents were slaves?

*No one should have a title that won’t fit on a calling card.

Influencing Public Opinion

By Sam Huntington

“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” is an axiom with several connotations, an apophenia if you prefer, leading us in different directions while remaining remarkably human.  Humans tend to seek out patterns, which sometimes leads us to false positives. What we may perceive as significant isn’t, and what we think may not matter, does.  Humans are naturally nostalgic; we relate things in the present to experiences of the past.  The above phrase could be voiced to signal our resignation to life’s many cycles.  We may hope for social progress, but the greater our optimism, the more likely we are to be disappointed in social progression. Changes in our lives without foundational consistency would, I suspect, produce a very disordered society; it would be like the sound of one hand clapping.

Lasting social progress takes time.  So much time, in fact, that unless we are paying careful attention, we may not even recognize social changes, whether positive or negative.  As an example, someone growing to maturity in the past twenty or thirty years, who did not experience the violent racism of the Democratic Party in the years before their birth, may not recognize the progress we’ve made since 1950 (which, in my opinion, was largely undone by the presidency of Barack Obama). A young person’s point of reference is confined to what think they know, and that may be entirely predicated on what they’ve been told by leftist educationalists (and parents) pursuing their own peculiar agenda.  Should anyone think that I am speaking now about the leftist brainwashing that is prevalent in our public schools, they’d be correct.