Posted on 06/12/2008 1:06:38 PM PDT by al_c
Not sure if this qualifies as a vanity post, but here it is. I've been debating with some left wingers regarding Iraq. One has offered a link to a documentary on Bush and the Iraq war that was produced by Frontline (PBS) and has asked me to view it. I agreed on one condition. Knowing PBS/Frontlines normal leftist views, I said I'd view it if he'd be so kind as to view a similar production that wasn't tilted left.
Now .... where do I find such a piece?
Any help on this would be appreciated.
FWIW ... here's the link to Frontline's video ... Bush's War.
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what point about the war was he trying to make? WMD claims? bungling post war plan? Diplomacy etc?
Maybe require them to read all of Michael Yon’s dispatches?
I absolutely agree, but the challenge has been made. I gotta find something.
Basically that Bush lied in order to lead us into war with a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMDs or nuclear ambitions.
Hmmm ... not a bad idea at all. I wonder if he'll consider a book in place of a video.
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Also have him rid all of Christopher Hitchens articles on Iraq. They will appreciate that he is a fellow leftie who saw the light on Saddam when his beloved Kurdish Workers Party was getting gassed.
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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/longroad/etc/synopsis.html
frontline isn’t all bad about the middle of the page is the video
except you have to use quicktime to see the whole thing
Ask him to explain this speech.
LOL!
Oh, man ... I forgot all about that being on my profile page. Guess I ought to visit that page more often, eh?
I totally agree. It’s the whole “Bush lied and people died” mantra that I’m sick of. Doesn’t mean he didn’t screw some things up ... it’s just that the far left like to pin every single thing on him.
Here is a documentary:
WMD The Murderous Reign of Saddam Hussein
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyhTI7ZpnlE
I can’t say I’ve ever watched it. Mainly because it is 1 hour and 38 minutes long. There are DVDs of this available too.
“I totally agree. It’s the whole “Bush lied and people died” mantra that I’m sick of. Doesn’t mean he didn’t screw some things up ... it’s just that the far left like to pin every single thing on him.”
True. Also, point out that regardless of the correctness of the invasion, we are now committed and the alternative to victory is thousands or millions more dead (mostly) innocent Iraqis who supported us.
We can neither afford an inimical Iraq or the perception that we always abandon our allies when they become politically inconvenient.
I think one thing that’d actually help Bush and the Republican Party would be a strike on Iran. A big enough strike to make ‘em hurt bad.
Hmmm ... not a bad idea at all. I wonder if he'll consider a book in place of a video.Maybe require them to read all of Michael Yon’s dispatches?
If this matters to you, buy the book and give it to him. When you restrict yourself to a video, you are betting on the other fellow's game - because you know how easy it is for leftists to produce with high production values and how hard it is to find conservative people in Hollywood. Production values and eye candy are superficial compared to facts and logic - and since "liberalism" is superficial, you are in hostile territory right there.I had the experience of being found out as a conservative in a setting where I hadn't thought it necessary to debate politics, and the guy challenged me, "You probably think that journalists are objective." My reaction was to laugh, because I had already studied that issue a great deal - but ultimately I got tied up trying to argue on the wrong (albeit valid) ground and came out very frustrated.
My analysis of "liberalism" is that it is critically dependent on the support of Big Journalism, to the point that it would do at least ten points worse in any given election if journalism weren't putting a thumb on the scale with its propaganda. And that Big Journalism didn't exist at all in the founding era; the various newspapers were all openly committed to the viewpoints of their publishers, and made no claims of being objective - for the simple reason that newspapers didn't cooperate with each other in promoting the con that all journalism is objective.
Not only did Big Journalism not exist, the very idea of journalism, as we know it, itself barely existed. The reason for that was that newspaper printers didn't have access to information which, at least in principle, any given man on the street might not also know, from the same source as the printer got it. Consequently the early "newspapers" were not typically daily publications; they were often weeklies, and some had no fixed deadline and just printed whenever the printer decided he was ready. Making it even more likely that you might hear something on the street on Tuesday, and not see it in the paper until Friday.
The Big Bang of journalism, and of "liberalism," was the advent of the telegraph and the Associated Press in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. The Associated Press was and is a monopoly, and it aggressively elbowed competition out with anticompetitive practices (and indeed was held by SCOTUS to be in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1945). In the 1800s the AP defended itself against accurate charges that it was a powerful and unaccountable influence on the public by asserting that the AP was a group of newspapers which were famous for not agreeing about much of anything to do with public policy - so the AP was "objective." It was a successful argument, as we know too well - but it is a logical fallacy.
First because "believing in one's own objectivity" is my preferred definition of "subjectivity." And second, the existence of the AP basically mooted the famous fractiousness of its membership. Without the AP newswire, what we now call "the editorial position" of any given newspaper was its dominant feature. With the AP wire, a newspaper's primary content was actually news, in principle and in practice. While a twenty-year-old Wall Street Journal wouldn't tell you much that you would likely care about now in its news section, its editorial commentaries would still be likely to have resonance for the issues of today. So the more the content of a newspaper is dominated by newswire stories, the less attention is attracted by its editorial page - and the less that "fractious independence" actually matters. Worse, the importance of the newswire motivates the journalist to herd together with other journalists since the justification for trusting the story on the wire is not that the newspaper printing that story knew the story from its own reporters, but because of trust being placed in other, remote, reporters.
So the "objectivity" of journalists is simply a propaganda fiction needed by AP newspapers in order to sell their perishable AP newswire stories to the public. And that explains why a Dan Rather could be so confident that the rest of journalism would circle the wagons around himself and CBS even after we had him dead to rights on his "Killian Memo" fiction. All those "fractiously independent" newspapers are actually part of an overarching organization, the AP - and what journalists call "objectivity" is simply a matter of going along and getting along with the rest of that organization.
So we can see how Big Journalism coheres, giving it the opportunity to align itself with a political slant such as "liberalism" or conservatism while calling itself "objective." But what is its motive for aligning itself with "liberalism?" I actually think that question should be turned around. It is perfectly clear that if Big Journalism has any natural political tendency, the resulting propaganda wind of that tendency would provide ample motive for politicians to align themselves with it. And I consider that the natural political tendency of journalism was defined in 1911 by Theodore Roosevelt:
There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.The natural constituency of the Republican Party as we now know it consists of people who are, or who profoundly respect people who are, "in the arena" - people who have responsibility to work to a bottom line:It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds . . .
Journalists find it convenient to the purpose of making themselves seem important precisely by criticizing and second guessing "the man in the arena." And they cheerfully, if not quite openly, make common cause with any politician who does the same.
- Small businessmen? Check.
- Policemen? Check.
- Military? Check.
- Men more so than women? Check.
- Whites more so than blacks? Check.
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