The reason why I really became a fan of the channel, was because when it first came on cable programming, it felt like I was sticking the middle finger at the liberal/Democrat-hack mainstream media news channels. I used to enjoy reading and watching TV shows in which liberals lost their collective minds at the very idea that a FOXNews channel even existed.
At some point, I don't even really remember when, I realized that this 24/7 exposure to GOP propaganda was influencing my thoughts and beliefs, and got me to blithely accept things that I used to think were against my core principles.
I have always been a fiscal conservative minded person, opposed to the welfare state, income taxation and a strong, centralized Federal Government. But as I subjected my mind to FOXNews on a steady basis, I began to experience cognitive dissonance as I began to notice the number of pundits and reporterettes that would defend George Bush Jr's. and the GOP congress' profligate borrow-and-spend-like-drunken-sailors platform, as well as a continual justification for the advancement of the PATRIOT 1 and 2 Acts scope and power, continually encroaching on We the Sheeple's civil liberties.
At some point, I simply turned it off. But it wasn't just FOX News, I also quit listening to talk radio, cold turkey. If I wasn't at home watching FOXNews, I had talk radio on my car stereo or at my desk on tiny speakers in my office. Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Dennis Prager, Tom Leykis (LOL not right wing...I'd call him the Roissy of Talk Radio). I stopped listening to talk radio period, and only listened to music on my iPod.
I also quit reading the daily newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, Townhall.com, The National Review, and even the Drudgereport.
In short, I unplugged from mainstream, so-called "conservative," right-wing media on all platforms. I couldn't take the lies or continual subversion of conservative principles any longer.
But today, I came across a link from Lew Rockwell.com, that transcribed Judge Andrew Napolitano's closing argument from his FOXNews show, Freedom Watch. Somehow, the good judge is speaking truth to power on the GOP's primary propaganda organ. He asks the questions that all Republican voting viewers should be asking of their own party that they often blindly support.
Here's some excerpts of a few of the questions he posed that I think are the most relevant in dealing with our current problems in this country and throughout the world.
Does the government work for us or do we work for the government?
Of course, we work for the government. More precisely, we work for the Banker's who our Government has indebted us all to on our behalf.
Is freedom in America a myth or a reality?
Neither. It's a deliberate illusion promoted ad nausea by the mainstream media (both right wing and left wing outlets) to keep We the Sheeple from noticing that our freedom is being taken away at an exponential rate, regardless of which party controls the executive and/or legislative branches of the Federal Government.
What if the merchants and bankers who financed the American Revolution bought their way into the new government and got it to enact laws that stifled their competition?
From mercantilism at the nation's founding to full fledged corporatism of the present, this has always been one nation, under god. But it was not the God of Abraham and Isaac. This god's name is the bottom line - otherwise known as Mammon.
What if our political elites spent the 20th century importing the socialist ideas of big government Statism from Europe?
Why, we'd have a Federal Government and State Government's all across the country going broke as the entitlement spending grows larger than the money they "raise" through taxation. What if, indeed.
What if you had to produce your papers to get out of or into our once-free country? What if you couldn't board a plane, a train, or a long-distance bus without providing documentation telling the government who you are and where you're going, without paying the government, and without risking sexual assault?
From sea to shining sea, we now live under a Brave New World Order. Do you have YOUR papers, to move throughout the country, Komrade?
What if government agents could write their own search warrants, declare their own enemies, and seize whatever property they want?
As long as this is what it takes to win the War on Drugs....well, I guess this must be alright, right?!?!?
What if the feds could detain you indefinitely, with no visitors, no lawyer, no judge, and no jury?
What if, indeed. But why should they bother, when they can now simply have a military drone blow any US citizen to smithareens without due process, as long as they are identified as a potential "terrorist."
What if you were required to purchase a product that you didn't need, didn't want, and couldn't afford, from a company you never heard of, just as a condition of living in the United States?
Like car insurance? Or was that health insurance?
What if the government tried to cajole and coax and compel you into behaviors and attitudes it considered socially acceptable?
I think I'll step outside and smoke some tobacco right now. For some reason, I feel it's wrong to smoke indoors, even in my own home...
What if the government decided how much of your earnings it will keep and how much it will permit you to have?
I'd thank God every day that I live in the FREEEEEE-IST nation on the face of the Earth!
What if the government took money from you and gave it away to its rich banking and corporate friends whose businesses were failing?
Such a thing could never happen in a DEMOCRACY! Surely we are simply getting the government that we deserve! Besides, if you didn't vote, you can't complain!
What if you worked for the government and the government didn't work for you? What if freedom were a myth? What if we don't live in a free country? What do we do about it?
Pray for revolution.
6 comments:
A year or two ago, this would have been depressing. But now i seem to have reached a sort of reverse nirvana. Its almost an acceptance that the country just won't exist much longer.(I figure my kids will think of America in the past tense.)
In regards to Fox, whenever i hear a liberal type lay the hate on the channel I have some fun. I mention how Fox is full of Liberal hippie wannabe's, or something like that. It's fun to watch them come to terms with the idea that some people think of Fox as too far left.
In my late 20's I stopped listening to Limbaugh and the Sunday morning talk shows.
A few years later, when I had to move back to my parents for a bit, my Mom would leave the TV on Sunday. Like a soap opera, I did not miss anything since they always had the same statist hacks from both sides.
Too many big government lovers on the right and on the left.
I've listened to him on the satellite radio for a while now. He always has interesting insights without using showmanship or hyperbole. He's a big constitutionalist.
One of his books has a forward by Ron Paul: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1595552669/recrll-20/
@ Jack Dublin: It's fun to watch them come to terms with the idea that some people think of Fox as too far left.
Fun, indeed. I've gotten into political discussions with lefties, and they always find it surprising that I disagree with leftist ideals and positions, and they automatically assume I'm a Republican...and they'll say something like "FOXNews just Rupert Murdoch brainwashing the viewers with right wing propaganda," and I agree with them wholeheartedly.
@ sth_txs: Too many big government lovers on the right and on the left.
Amen.
@ Alte: I've listened to him on the satellite radio for a while now. He always has interesting insights without using showmanship or hyperbole. He's a big constitutionalist.
Funny...when I used to be a Bill O'Reilly fanatic, I used to get disappointed whenever O'Reilly was absent and Napolitano substituted for him.
Now I cannot stand even 15 seconds listening to Bill O'Reilly's schtick as a populist blowhard.
Napolitano is an even-keeled, principled and logical man...everything O'Reilly is not.
You pretty much described exactly how I fell away from "conservatism". Talking heads and radio dudes argue over the smallest things every day, while the big stuff that the Judge talks about here goes largely untalked about.
Glenn beck was fired from FOX after he had G. Edward Griffin on about his book. The Creature Of Jekyll Island-about the creation of the Federal Reserve. This is the power of the banking industry. Of course Beck believed in global warming, called for a value added tax.
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