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The War for the Soul of America
RCP ^ | Patrick Buchanan

Posted on 11/09/2018 6:06:41 AM PST by RoosterRedux

The war in Washington will not end until the presidency of Donald Trump ends. Everyone seems to sense that now.

This is a fight to the finish.

...

With the forced resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his replacement by his chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker, the long-anticipated confrontation with Robert Mueller appears at hand.

Sessions had recused himself from the oversight role of the special counsel's investigation into Russiagate.

Whitaker has definitely not.

Before joining Justice, he said that the Mueller probe was overreaching, going places it had no authority to go, and that it could be leashed by a new attorney general and starved of funds until it passes away.

Whitaker was not chosen to be merely a place holder until a new AG is confirmed. He was picked so he can get the job done.

And about time.

...

One reporter berated the president and refused to surrender the microphone. Others shouted support for his antics. A third demanded to know whether Trump's admission that he's a "nationalist" would give aid and comfort to "white nationalists."

By picking up the credentials of CNN's Jim Acosta and booting him out of the White House, Trump has set a good precedent.

Freedom of the press does not mean guaranteed immunity of the press from the same kind of abuse the press directs at the president.

John F. Kennedy was beloved by the media elite. Yet JFK canceled all White House subscriptions to the New York Herald Tribune and called the publisher of The New York Times to get him to pull reporter David Halberstam out of Vietnam for undermining U.S. morale in a war in which Green Berets were dying.

Some journalists have become Trump haters with press passes.

(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 11/09/2018 6:06:41 AM PST by RoosterRedux
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To: RoosterRedux

I woke up this morning thinking this very thing. But then, I wondered what we can do about it.

We can talk to each other for hours and listen to talk radio, but what does that accomplish?

We can watch it all put on Trump as he faces the scores of attacks daily..... by himself.

We can vote every other year.

There has to be more. And I’m not insinuating violence. The left has always been agenda driven, but we are not.

Any ideas?


2 posted on 11/09/2018 6:43:49 AM PST by xenia ("In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." George Orwell)
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To: xenia

“The left has always been agenda driven, but we are not.
Any ideas?”

Well, I guess we can play the Rats’ game better than they do. But then, that makes us no better than they are.

I don’t know how old you are, but I am 67, and back in the day there was a saying: “Better Red than Dead.” I vehemently opposed that then and I oppose it now, with the same fervor. Besides, “Better Red than Dead” is a surrender, and I don’t believe in surrenders.


3 posted on 11/09/2018 6:51:42 AM PST by ought-six (Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule.)
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To: xenia
And Trump is right to speak truth to mainstream media power and to accord to the chronically hostile press the same access to the White House to which Robert De Niro is entitled. Since the days of John Adams, the White House has been the president's house, not the press's house.

Exactly. Trump is the first Republican president since Nixon to actively fight the Media for control of the nation.

We have been living in a Mediacracy.

President Trump is taking back the government from the Media.

4 posted on 11/09/2018 6:53:59 AM PST by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
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To: RoosterRedux

bookmark


5 posted on 11/09/2018 6:59:05 AM PST by GOP Poet
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To: RoosterRedux
For two years, Trump has been under a cloud of unproven allegations and suspicion that he and top campaign officials colluded with Vladimir Putin's Russia to thieve and publish the emails of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

It is past time for Mueller to prove these charges or concede he has a busted flush, wrap up his investigation and go home.


6 posted on 11/09/2018 7:10:30 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion
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To: ought-six

I believe you have the saying backwards.
The correct version is ‘better off dead than red’.


7 posted on 11/09/2018 7:36:06 AM PST by bramps (It's the Islam, stupid!)
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To: ought-six

I’m the same age as you. I don’t mean we have to play the Rats game.

I am sure you have watched over the years as the left gained more and more control, while we do little more than complain about it.

The left will push us to a point of surrender. If we don’t take stands now, who says we will when it reaches that point.

The gov owns senior citizens. We rely on the gov for money and medical care after we retire.

We let it happen.


8 posted on 11/09/2018 7:52:03 AM PST by xenia ("In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." George Orwell)
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To: xenia

The left has always been agenda driven, but we are not.

****************

The Left is (at the moment) cohesive, aggressive, and most of all, they play to win. We are none of that (excepting president Trump who has few allies in the GOP).

We have to elect people who are committed to wining and producing results, not just empty talkers who accomplish nothing.


9 posted on 11/09/2018 7:58:40 AM PST by Starboard
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To: xenia
We can talk to each other for hours and listen to talk radio, but what does that accomplish?

We can watch it all put on Trump as he faces the scores of attacks daily..... by himself.

We can vote every other year.

There has to be more. And I’m not insinuating violence. The left has always been agenda driven, but we are not.

Any ideas?

"The media” must be brought to book. And that means that it must be sued for libel, and pay debilitating damages. In principle this can be done, and I have suggested the way many times - at least in outline. The Justice Department could do a lot of it, if it would - but only a DJT would consider it IMHO. All other Republicans are so afraid of the MSM that they can’t think.

First, a word about the meaning of the First Amendment.

Amendment 1:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It does not say, “abridging freedom . . . of the press,” it says “abridging the freedom . . . of the press.” Justice Scalia explained the difference by pointing out that freedom of speech and freedom of the press existed at the time of the passage of the First Amendment - but so did laws against libel. Scalia explained that “the” freedom of the press was not absolute, it was the freedom, and the limits thereof, which existed at the time of the enactment of the First Amendment.

I think of it this way: the purpose of the First Amendment is to protect heterogeneity of published opinion. It assays to do so by prohibiting the government from homogenizing it. It does not prohibit the pre-Civil War novelty of the major presses voluntarily homogenizing themselves, though - and that is precisely what the Associated Press and its membership have done. It started out innocently enough (by the standards of the day), with the expeditious transmission of news over the burgeoning telegraph network which Samuel Morse’ famous demo of the telegraph initiated in 1844. But, there is a problem. The AP “wire” is a virtual meeting of all major US newspapers and broadcasters. And what would be the natural result of that?  

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)
So the AP is the fundamental mechanism by which journalists in America “go along and get along” at the expense of the public interest. To suppose that any other result could be possible after a century and a half of continuous “meeting” - meeting not about diversion but precisely about the conduct of business - is utterly naive. And that is why we have “the media” - a misbegotten expression which simultaneously complains that all journalism is homogeneous, and uses the plural form “media.” Editorial pages can and do vary - but the body of the paper is homogenous bad news (and advertisements).

The First Amendment obviously does not prohibit private institutions from homogenizing the media, but it does not authorize that, either. It was not contemplated as a possibility in the Eighteenth Century, or - I would argue - it would have banned it. Because the objective was that the people be free to access the opinions of others, as a general good. Nevertheless, the First Amendment does not protect monopolistic behavior in the “trade” of journalism. And the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits monopoly behavior by anyone.

In the Twenty-first Century context, telegraphy bandwidth is dirt cheap, and measures such as wire services whose signal virtue is conserving telegraphy bandwidth - and whose signal vice is defeating the purpose of the First Amendment - are obsolete and can and should be sued into oblivion.

The 1964 NY Times v. Sullivan ruling made it difficult for public figures to sue for slander, on the assumption that if one newspaper attacked someone, another newspaper would defend him. That is the assumption that the First Amendment accomplished its objective of assuring heterogeneity in journalism. And as we well know, that premise is false. If anyone attacks a Democrat - a member of "the party of government” - “the media” will defend ferociously. And if anyone attack a Republican, “the media” piles on. “The media” should be sued for ruinous damages for libel - and when they appeal to NY Times v. Sullivan they should be laughed out of court.


10 posted on 11/09/2018 8:00:48 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

“The media” must be brought to book. And that means that it must be sued for libel, and pay debilitating damages.”

I need to ponder what you wrote.


11 posted on 11/09/2018 8:20:43 AM PST by xenia ("In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." George Orwell)
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To: RoosterRedux

Bravo to Pat for capturing the PaleoConservative point of view.

Irreconcilable differences. And how long before the shooting starts?


12 posted on 11/09/2018 8:23:08 AM PST by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: xenia

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3703872/posts


13 posted on 11/09/2018 10:03:57 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion
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The media and the infested education system need to be drained.

De-fund them both. Still paying the media their monthly dues via satellite or cable? Stop doing it.

Steer the college bound to a trade school or help them start a business instead of going into debt for a dubious degree. If you must do college and you’re paying for it, you choose the college. Home school or form a group to home school your younger children. Look for online education for K-12 students. There are companies popping up I’m sure.

Does it suck to be stuck paying for your local k-12 system and private education for your children? Yes it does.


14 posted on 11/09/2018 10:23:50 AM PST by listenhillary (Courts, law enforcement, roads and national defense should be the extent of government)
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To: bramps

No, the common saying was “Better Red than Dead.”


15 posted on 11/09/2018 12:22:12 PM PST by ought-six (Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule.)
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To: xenia

I will never surrender. I don’t believe in them. And, to quote the lines of a great movie: “No, sir; and I didn’t turn my saber into no plowshare.”

Then there is this from Winston Churchill:

“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”


16 posted on 11/09/2018 12:26:08 PM PST by ought-six (Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule.)
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