Posted on 11/06/2019 6:59:10 PM PST by Louis Foxwell
Wont someone protect the people from themselves?
Wed Nov 6, 2019
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Robert Reich dated Hillary Clinton. Eventually the diminutive leftist became Bill Clintons Secretary of Labor and parlayed that into teaching a class at UC Berkeley on Wealth and Poverty for six figures.
Reich, who claims to be an expert on inequality, pulled down $304,802 in gross pay in 2018.
The University of Californias president, Janet Napolitano, is a fellow former Clinton cabinet member. And Reich is employed at a Berkeley school named after a Clinton Global Initiative donor.
Obviously, Reich also spends a lot of time inveighing against oligarchy. Just not enough to quit.
Reich claims that in America, "It's socialism for the rich. Everyone else is treated to harsh capitalism."
He ought to know. UC Berkeley is funded by taxpayers.
These days, Reich is one of the many tentacles of the Clinton oligarchy warning about the truth threat. His former date recently declared that she was appalled by the war on truth. Hillary didnt mean her own war on truth which ranged from falsely claiming to have landed at a Bosnia airport under fire, to applying to NASA and the Marine Corps, to being named after Sir Edmund Hillary, to, bringing peace to Northern Ireland, where she claimed, in her own lying words, the role I played was instrumental."
Did she play the Celtic harp? No, but Hillary and her cronies have been harping on about social media censorship.
The current target of the born-again truthetarians, who after decades of lying with hysterical compulsiveness claim to have found the truth, is Facebook, specifically, and social media, in general.
Facebook managed to infuriate the Clintonites and the media by refusing to censor political ads. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez then tested this proposition to absurdity by running false political ads, or ads that are more false than the ones they usually run, to prove their point.
Their point is that free speech exists for candidates running for public office and that it shouldnt.
Thats where Robert Reich comes in, and Hillarys old cheap date doesnt just lay out the same talking points, but a grand unified field theory about why the media should have the whip hand over the public.
Because oligarchy is awesome.
"A major characteristic of the internet goes by the fancy term 'disintermediation'. Put simply, it means sellers are linked directly to customers with no need for middlemen. Amazon eliminates the need for retailers. Online investing eliminates the need for stock brokers At a keystroke, consumers get all the information they need," Reich writes. "But democracy cant be disintermediated."
Voters cant be allowed to get all the information they need at a keystroke. That would be anarchy.
The Virginian who accused King George III of having "erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance" would disagree. But Reich typifies the Offices and Officers and is currently eating out the substance of Californians at the rate of $304,802 a year.
Its understandable that Reich wouldnt want inconvenient facts like these to be accessible on Facebook, but his thesis is fascinating in a nakedness far more shocking than any anything in the Katie Hill case.
Its one thing to be able to cut out the middleman when booking a vacation or buying a stock, but not when electing public officials. Reich isnt arguing for the Electoral College, but the Fourth Estate.
Or the Fourth Reich.
"Democracy cant be disintermediated. Were not just buyers and sellers. Were citizens who need to know whats happening around us in order to exercise our right to self-government, and responsibility for it," Reich thunders. "Intermediating between the powerful and the people was once mainly the job of publishers and journalists hence the term 'media'."
It's hard to tell if Reich is lying or being stupid. Or both.
The owners, publishers and writers at newspapers arent a medium between the powerful and the people because they are the powerful. What Reich really means is that the powerful media should be set the political agenda to control how a powerless people vote and what they are allowed to hear.
Thats not a medium. Its a clogged drain.
In an open political system, there doesnt need to be a filter "intermediating between the powerful and the people because the people have the power. The people lose power when theres a media filter.
Media refers to medium of communication. Not a political medium. As William Safire noted, its first use was by Lord Francis Bacon in 1605, when he used it to describe the "Medium of Wordes." The term "media" to describe the monstrous octopus entangling our political system originated from an ad magazine writing about "class appeal in mass media."
That's the sort of classism that Reich would deplore when he isn't shopping for $399 extra small turtlenecks from the J. Peterman catalog while explaining why the media should be running America.
Despite Reichs lies, the media was never meant to be an intermediary between the people and the government. The term hes using meant that the agglomeration of newspapers, radio stations, and the other tentacles of the media octopus made it easier to sell overpriced turtlenecks to the nouveau riche.
But Reich believes that the medium is the message and that people cant be trusted to think for themselves. Who is responsible for protecting democracy from big, dangerous lies? he demands.
The Bill of Rights already answered that question. And the answer is everyone and no one. The First Amendment disintermediated politics by giving everyone the right to speak for themselves. Reich and his Clintonite cronies would like to mediate our republic by turning it into an Athenian village.
To paraphrase his old date, It Takes a Media Village on Fifth Avenue to Rig Our Political System.
Thats what this nonsense about a War on Truth and an urgent need to stop the Assault of Lies is really about. Its an Orwellian gambit to protect the people by eliminating the First Amendment.
Reich and his lefty allies claim to be worried about democracy. To lefties, democracy is an entity that exists apart from the public will. And often, populism is said to threaten democracy. Democracy, which is a set of principles, not the people who vote, is often threatened by the people who do vote.
And the only way to protect democracy is by suppressing democracy, destroying the Athenian village to save the principle of open migration into the village that the Athenian Demos stands for.
What Reich and the media are arguing is that while the medium between the people and their votes, the actual elections, cant be filtered, just yet anyway, the medium between the candidates and the people can and should be filtered. And the medias role is to be that filter. What makes social media dangerous is that it provides unfiltered communication between politicians and the public.
Political candidates being able to freely communicate with the public is a threat to democracy.
The First Amendment exists precisely because the Framers understood the threat of this filter. Thats why it provides for freedom of speech, before a free press. And it was a press, not a medium. The men who built this country had experienced what happened when governors monopolized control over the press to suppress the political opposition. They did not want a single paper controlling public discourse.
And thats exactly what the media and the Clintonites want. Unlike Reich, they dont say it out loud.
Social media is a threat to the media infrastructure because it allows people to bypass media control.
Reich complains about "Facebook sending Trumps unfiltered lies to the 45% of Americans for whom it is the main source of news" and whines that "Twitter sends them to 66 million users every day."
Thats nonsense.
Facebook and Twitter, despite their algorithmic secret sauces, are platforms for people sharing content. Theyre not sending Trumps posts, theyre platforms on which people share Trumps posts. As they share Reichs posts. And Reich has learned the hard way that his lies arent winning Twitter.
Its not Facebook or Twitter, but people who threaten Reichs media Fourth Estate or Fourth Reich.
The struggle between media and social media is a power struggle between people and institutions. A free society indeed disintermediates, tearing down the barriers between public participation and discourse. Reich sees the media as a necessary Berlin Wall between politicians who believe inappropriate things, their supporters, and the people who might actually listen to them.
There is no clearer evocation of the choice between a free society and a tyranny than this.
"Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out," is the motto of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Robert Reich and his media Fourth Reich arent screaming to get out. Theyre out.
The Democrat assault on the First Amendment, under the guise of fact-checking, of foreign interference, of hate speech and of wars on truth, is a crusade by tyrants against public discourse and free elections.
Reich argues that America needs a media filter on the communications end to control our political system. How long until the argument is made that we also need a filter on the election end to prevent unacceptable candidates from running for public office? Americans dont need a deeper swamp of institutional mediums standing between them and political power. Political power is our birthright.
Thats what Robert Reich and the media want to take away from the people of this nation.
........................
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.To get on or off the Greenfield ping list please reply to this post. About Daniel Greenfield >Daniel Greenfield
Front Page mag - A Project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center
About Daniel Greenfield
To get on or off the Greenfield ping list please reply to this post or notify me by Freepmail.
Louis Foxwell...............................Daniel Greenfield Ping List Notification of new articles.
I am posting Greenfield’s articles from FrontPage and the Sultan Knish blog. FReepmail or drop me a comment to get on or off the Greenfield ping list.
I highly recommend an occasional look at the Sultan Knish blog. It is a rich source of materials, links and more from one of the preeminent writers of our age.
FrontPage is a basic resource for conservative thought. Lou
Proving that...”Little people are mean.”
Reich is a corrupt 'elite'...who cares about elites keeping their power...
None of us needs a bunch of journalism majors telling us what truth is, and what we should think. Reich’s position is as immoral as it is moronic. When leftist elitists let their masks slip they look like every other wannabe totalitarian.
Excellent piece
Great article, funny and right on the money.
Great read..bookmarking under Free Speech
Every time that guy opens his tiny gob, my blood pressure goes up 50 points. I think I’ve discovered a new medical condition, Reich Rage.
Doesn't he understand that Bobby "Third" Reich represents The Lollipop Guild?
My [English] vocabulary is probably 10-20% larger than that of the ClintonDwarf.
Never seen the word 'disintermediation' in my life.
STFU, you malignant little troll.
'I can add some more charges, if you'd like it,' said Sam Everyman. 'Calling your over-paid dwarf Names, Wishing to punch his Pimply Face, and Thinking you SJWs look like a lot of Tomfools.
JUAN WILLIAMS/SEXUAL HARASSMENT ---
Nov 2, 2017 - "Now there's a chair I'd like to sniff," two newsroom employees recall him saying after an art director stood up from her chair. ...
The media already does that to a great extent. They have been appalled they did not succeed with President Trump. They appear to have succeeded with Governor Bevin of Kentucky.
Excellent article on the essential dichotomy between liberty & tyranny and the situation as it is engendered by the use of media and the disenfranchisement of social media, lucid and convincing.
Thank you.
Reich doesn’t understand every conservative is exposed to liberal ideas everyday. In our newspapers, movies, TV shows, colleges, public schools, Sunday Morning comics, magazines, NPR, PBS, and National Network News, and 98% of cable channels.
Liberals on the other hand have to search out conservative thought. Studies back up that we understand their positions but they aren’t even aware of our positions.
There was a time when Reich’s intellect trumped some of the leftist propaganda... that’s not the case anymore.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.