Bill Clinton Proposes Ministry of Propoganda
Timothy Birdnow
Bill Clinton proposes a Ministry of Propoganda.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/05/bill_clinton_is_a_dangerous_ma.html
From the original Politico article:
"Bill Clinton doesn’t like all the misinformation and rumors floating on the Internet. And he thinks the United Nations or the U.S. government should create an agency to do something about it.
“It would be a legitimate thing to do,” Clinton said in an interview airing Friday on CNBC.
The agency, Clinton said, would “have to be totally transparent about where the money came from” and would have to be “independent” because “if it’s a government agency in a traditional sense, it would have no credibility whatever, particularly with a lot of the people who are most active on the internet.”
“Let’s say the U.S. did it, it would have to be an independent federal agency that no president could countermand or anything else because people wouldn’t think you were just censoring the news and giving a different falsehood out,” Clinton said."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54951.html#ixzz1MR3zO8hU
End excerpt.
Where to begin with this? First off, no matter how fair such an agency may start, it will be a matter of time before liberals turn it into a propoganda tool. They have always understood the necessity of "managing" the dissemination of information because they could not advance their agenda in an open competition of ideas before the general public. Early on the Left wormed their way into such venues as newspapers, universities, schools, etc. They wormed their way into control of radio, then television. Now they want the internet, because the internet continues to defy them. This "correction service" will quickly become another arm of the Democrats - just like NPR or PBS. When somebody is tasked with judging what is factual or inaccurate, and where there are gray areas, there will be personal bias. This will become institutional bias. Better to leave it alone.
But even if it is entirely fair, do we want to give government the power to censor our news? Isn't that a violation of the First Amendment? The Founding Fathers understood that there would be scurrilous reporting and outright lying by the press, but knew that competition would keep everybody reasonably honest, because if a news service was shown to be inaccurate or lying it would damage their credibility. That's why Congress shall make no law concerning abridging the freedom of the press; it is a core freedom, one necessary to a free society. Government fact-checking is de-facto abridging that freedom. From there it would be a small step to censoring private speech, or Church teaching. How long before Christian teachings that, say, homosexuality is a sin falls afoul of a "fact checker" that says there is nothing wrong with it? (Actually, we largely have that now with the abuse of tax exempt status; many churches are afraid to preach their doctrine for fear of being nailed by the IRS.)
Where do we draw the line between private and public speech? Men like Clinton and Obama see all things as public. I am mindful of the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" where the communist, while proposing marriage, says he wants to ask a political question; when asked how marriage is political he responds "everything's political". That is how the Left sees life. There are political ramifications to saying the sky is blue, if one seeks those ramifications hard enough.
And so the sky, under a fact-checking government, will be changed to a non-specific coloration of relative tint.
In the end, we will wind up with a source of information unwilling to pronounce anything definite, because somebody may object to the validity of the statement. A dog would see a gray sky, after all, and those who are incapable of seeing blue would eventually object to their vision being "dissed". In the end, we end up with a media much like Pravda in the old Soviet days; you have to read between the lines to get any information.
This is yet more proof that liberalism is a mental disorder - and Bill Clinton is one of the chief inmates in the asylum.
Bill Clinton proposes a Ministry of Propoganda.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/05/bill_clinton_is_a_dangerous_ma.html
From the original Politico article:
"Bill Clinton doesn’t like all the misinformation and rumors floating on the Internet. And he thinks the United Nations or the U.S. government should create an agency to do something about it.
“It would be a legitimate thing to do,” Clinton said in an interview airing Friday on CNBC.
The agency, Clinton said, would “have to be totally transparent about where the money came from” and would have to be “independent” because “if it’s a government agency in a traditional sense, it would have no credibility whatever, particularly with a lot of the people who are most active on the internet.”
“Let’s say the U.S. did it, it would have to be an independent federal agency that no president could countermand or anything else because people wouldn’t think you were just censoring the news and giving a different falsehood out,” Clinton said."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54951.html#ixzz1MR3zO8hU
End excerpt.
Where to begin with this? First off, no matter how fair such an agency may start, it will be a matter of time before liberals turn it into a propoganda tool. They have always understood the necessity of "managing" the dissemination of information because they could not advance their agenda in an open competition of ideas before the general public. Early on the Left wormed their way into such venues as newspapers, universities, schools, etc. They wormed their way into control of radio, then television. Now they want the internet, because the internet continues to defy them. This "correction service" will quickly become another arm of the Democrats - just like NPR or PBS. When somebody is tasked with judging what is factual or inaccurate, and where there are gray areas, there will be personal bias. This will become institutional bias. Better to leave it alone.
But even if it is entirely fair, do we want to give government the power to censor our news? Isn't that a violation of the First Amendment? The Founding Fathers understood that there would be scurrilous reporting and outright lying by the press, but knew that competition would keep everybody reasonably honest, because if a news service was shown to be inaccurate or lying it would damage their credibility. That's why Congress shall make no law concerning abridging the freedom of the press; it is a core freedom, one necessary to a free society. Government fact-checking is de-facto abridging that freedom. From there it would be a small step to censoring private speech, or Church teaching. How long before Christian teachings that, say, homosexuality is a sin falls afoul of a "fact checker" that says there is nothing wrong with it? (Actually, we largely have that now with the abuse of tax exempt status; many churches are afraid to preach their doctrine for fear of being nailed by the IRS.)
Where do we draw the line between private and public speech? Men like Clinton and Obama see all things as public. I am mindful of the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" where the communist, while proposing marriage, says he wants to ask a political question; when asked how marriage is political he responds "everything's political". That is how the Left sees life. There are political ramifications to saying the sky is blue, if one seeks those ramifications hard enough.
And so the sky, under a fact-checking government, will be changed to a non-specific coloration of relative tint.
In the end, we will wind up with a source of information unwilling to pronounce anything definite, because somebody may object to the validity of the statement. A dog would see a gray sky, after all, and those who are incapable of seeing blue would eventually object to their vision being "dissed". In the end, we end up with a media much like Pravda in the old Soviet days; you have to read between the lines to get any information.
This is yet more proof that liberalism is a mental disorder - and Bill Clinton is one of the chief inmates in the asylum.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 8:53 AM
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