The Discerning Texan

The Anchoress is documenting the evaporation of the "free press" in the United States; it isn't pretty (an excerpt):

Some riveting television from Rick Santelli - go here.

You know what makes it riveting?

The man is speaking truth from his heart, and the people around him are spontaneously responding. There is nothing scripted, nothing hedged and over-considered, no punch pulled. This is not an “acceptable narrative” being promulgated by a member of the no-longer-free press. This is not a drone, dutifully mouthing-and-approving today’s talking points from the Leadership. This is fire from the ground, aimed upwards.

It is uncontrolled speech. It is free.

In our politically correct age, where everyone is afraid of giving offense, being misconstrued-and -then-sued, or simply fearful of falling out-of-step with the trendoids, we almost never hear or read anything that is uncontrolled.

But “free speech” cannot be controlled or it is not “free” at all. And we in America have for too long engaged in self-censorship in favor of “niceness.”

Sometimes, you have to lose control and let the words fly, and if you cannot do that, you are not free.

[....]

Watching Rick Santelli on CNBC proved the point of that study: he threw out the controls and said what he really thought - and it was liberating for the moment, and certainly great tv.

Now, we’ll have to see if he has a job tomorrow, or if he will be silenced. Will he be “suspended” as David Schuster was, from MSNBC for wondering if Hillary Clinton was “pimping Chelsea” to voters during the primary? Will he be made to apologize and grovel, as Chris Matthews was, when he suggested that Hillary Clinton’s post-White House career has been helped by her husband’s infidelity?

Hey, we’re watching police pull over drivers for sticking stupid (but not yet illegal) signs on their cars.

America has already lost her free press, but that was a free-surrender on the part of the press; the government did not shut the press down - it simply married them, hired them and subsumed them.

That sounds exaggerated? Here, try this little exercise: Google putin warns don’t go socialist and see what it brings up. Blogs covering it - blogs covering this - but not US news agencies. Hit the “News” button on that search and see what you get. You get bupkis.

Okay, show of hands, how many of you were surprised that this story saw the light of day: Dobson students question Obama’s plan

Think of all the stories you have known about but not seen covered by the Mainstream Press, from the robust economy that defined most of Bush’s presidency but was constantly called “recession” to our successes in Iraq to the recent protests of the stimulus bill? If a story does not serve the “established narrative,” it either does not get mentioned, or is quickly buried. The press has betrayed the public trust.

The press is not free, but for a little while we can still live without them. Until the internet and talk radio are regulated into dreary sameness, charged with “hate speech”, and rendered politically impotent, they are our best vehicles for free speech with some reach.

If we lose our freedom to speak out - to opine loudly, to mock, to question, even to demand - then we have lost everything.

And the truth is, we have already - thanks to political correctness and self-censorship - fallen into the mindset that our speech should be controlled, measured and unfree.

And that is why Rick Santelli’s rant today was riveting, and fascinating, and incredibly necessary.

Speak up. This is still America - in this nation, for now, you are free to do so. The more you shut yourself up, the more easily others will shut you up, down the road.

[....]

There is more; read the whole thing.

This media has been working tirelessly for 2+ years to put Barack Obama into office. And now that it has gotten its way, it continues to defend the utterly indefensible.

What utter scumbags.

Investor's Business Daily warned us back in October of the existential threat of a "Socialist Tsunami", but no one seemed to care:

The Crash: "Why has the market dropped so much?" everyone asks. What is it about the specter of our first socialist president and the end of capitalism as we know it that they don't understand?

The freeze-up of the financial system — and government's seeming inability to thaw it out — are a main concern, no doubt. But more people are also starting to look across the valley, as they say, at what's in store once this crisis passes.

And right now it looks like the U.S., which built the mightiest, most prosperous economy the world has ever known, is about to turn its back on the free-enterprise system that made it all possible.

It isn't only that the most anti-capitalist politician ever nominated by a major party is favored to take the White House. It's that he'll also have a filibuster-proof Congress led by politicians who are almost as liberal.

Throw in a media establishment dedicated to the implementation of a liberal agenda, and the smothering of dissent wherever it arises, and it's no wonder panic has set in.

What is that agenda? It starts with a tax system right out of Marx: A massive redistribution of income — from each according to his ability, to each according to his need — all in the name of "neighborliness," "patriotism," "fairness" and "justice."

It continues with a call for a new world order that turns its back on free trade, has no problem with government controlling the means of production, imposes global taxes to support continents where our interests are negligible, signs on to climate treaties that will sap billions more in U.S. productivity and wealth, and institutes an authoritarian health care system that will strip Americans' freedoms and run up costs.

All the while, it ensures that nothing — absolutely nothing — will be done to secure a sufficient, terror-proof supply of our economic lifeblood — oil — a resource we'll need much more of in the years ahead.

The businesses that create jobs and generate wealth are already discounting the future based on what they know about Obama's plans to raise income, capital gains, dividend and payroll taxes, and his various other economy-crippling policies. Which helps explain why world stock markets have been so topsy-turvy.

But don't take our word for it. One hundred economists, five Nobel winners among them, have signed a letter noting just that:

"The prospect of such tax-rate increases in 2010 is already a drag on the economy," they wrote, noting that the potential of higher taxes in the next year or two is reducing hiring and investment.

It was "misguided tax hikes and protectionism, enacted when the U.S. economy was weak in the early 1930s," the economists remind us, that "greatly increased the severity of the Great Depression."

We can't afford to repeat these grave errors.

Meanwhile, Candidate Obama told millions watching the debates about the tax cuts he was going to "bestow" on everyone making less than $250K. He spent weeks running away from a "redistribution of wealth" accusation from a guy who was nicknamed Joe the Plumber by a cheerleading, corrupt, in-the-tank media--even as the same media tried to smear this working man, whose only mistake was asking Obama the "wrong" question from his own front yard.

None of this mattered, of course. The number of fools who bought into the whole scripted narrative hook, line, sinker; from the daily lies and reversals of previous positions, to the "disownership" of Wright and Ayers, etc. And like the mindless hypnotized citizens of Orwell's 1984, just enough of these sleepwalking, media-blinded zombies made it to the polls to make the nightmare our reality today.

We didn't listen to the warnings; and just as predicted in IBD and elsewhere, we are now on a fast track to losing it all--all for a "cult hero" who got just 52% of the vote in the middle of a recession.

We are losing our country--the greatest example of altruism and wealth to ever exist on this third rock from the Sun--to style over substance; to cheap, empty slogans like "hope and change", and a to candidate with zero--zilch--executive experience (and it shows). But the man does know his Marx and Engels...and Keynes. That shows too. As does the bankruptcy of their flawed, devoid of reason ideas.

So, loyal readers, I ask you this: who was right? And how can we now slap the collective faces of the suckers who bought into this load of garbage and knock some sense into them before it is too late (if it isn't already...)?

It gives me no great pleasure in having not been fooled--but it is embarassing how many of my fellow citizens were so badly cowed by this charlatan.

UPDATE: James Madison foresaw what could happen, long before IBD. This from Federalist #61:

James Madison, officer in the Continental Army, hero of The American Revolution, diarist of the debate over the U.S. Constitution, author of the Bill of Rights, fourth President of the United States, writing under the pseudonym “Publius” in what we call “The Federalist Papers”:

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule which is little known, and less fixed?

Is there anything else that could possibly be more eloquently and perfectly stated about what is going on in our country right now? What a black eye Obamaism has been for our politics. What an embarrassment. What a potential, and likely, disaster? Give me Dead White Males, any day of the week.

After many years as a student of history and politics, that’s the one and only quote I have hanging on my wall in the office, a gift from my sister, who knew how much I revered it. I’ve used it many times over the years (most recently, here) , but it’s never seemed more poignant than it does right now, in the era of American citizens who vote for American politicians with the same intensity and depth of thought with which they vote for American Idol contestants. For shame.

Haven’t written much here lately, too busy with other things, and besides, my cynicism is not feeling that amused, right now. I feel like I’m watching a Keystone Kops version of the Wehrmacht—–goose-stepping down Pennsylvania Ave., with a propped-up quisling media corps (aka “the Clown Brigade”) flashing “heil” salutes along the way. We have finally become ridiculous as a polity.

Once upon a time, truly visionary men created something magnificent. Today, we have lost our way, we have let down our allies and friends, and we are being led to our doom by a Marxist rookie egomaniac. Who happens to be half-black (So what?? for the enlightened, this was never about color.)
God help us all.