We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.
This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.
— Edward R. Murrow, in a speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) convention in Chicago (15 October 1958).
Nicole and I watched Good Night and Good Luck on Friday night, and I highly recommend the film! (This isn’t a review, though; there are plenty of those around already.) It’s incredible how many parallels can be drawn to current events… I don’t think the release could have been any more timely.
Have you heard yet? We’re living in a time where the United States has a President who thinks he’s an emperor: this nation was founded on the Rule of Law (“Lex Rex”), but George W. Bush claims the “Divine Right of Kings” every time he refuses to comply with the laws enacted by Congress—as he has been doing for at least the past four years. To top it all off, anyone who opposes him (no matter the reason) is labeled a “lover of terrorists’ rights.”
May I ask you, do you “love this land”? Do you want to consider yourself patriotic? Then prove it: read the Constitution; read the Federalist Papers; read Max Farrand’s Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. (Then repeat at least five times.) If you remain ignorant of what America was intended to be, then all your flag-waving and cheerleading amounts to nothing but hatred and contempt for what our Founding Fathers fought for.
It’s amazing just how much Pres. Bush’s administration resembles McCarthyism. Yesterday’s “Communists” have been replaced by today’s “Al Qaeda,” and the nation in general is just as complacent as it was in the 1950s. And just as with yesterday, we need men like Edward R. Murrow who are willing to stand up to this usurper.
Earlier, the Senator asked, “Upon what meat does this, our Caesar, feed?” Had he looked three lines earlier in Shakespeare’s Caesar, he would have found this line, which is not altogether inappropriate: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
[...] His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
Good night, and good luck.
— Edward R. Murrow, from the March 9, 1954 “See It Now” television broadcast on Senator Joe McCarthy.
If this man is not stopped; if this nation is not restored to the Constitutional Republic it began as; I see no reason to believe we will leave the next generation with anything but a Dictatorship… or perhaps an ash heap.
Darth Dubya… The Phantom Menace?
Much of the church has been deceived into thinking Republican = Christian and Democrat = the devil.
For better or for worse, I’m an independent voter. Yet, I generally dodge the political hot button with my fellow Christians because criticizing the Bush administration is somehow equated to supporting the terrorists, or worse yet, the liberals.
These are strange days…
“…criticizing the Bush administration is somehow equated to supporting the terrorists, or worse yet, the liberals.”
Yeah, see, that type of tactic is called “terrorism.” I say we declare war on it.
Unless you want Caesar to have your head, you keep your mouth shut. *sigh*
So what would Jesus think of enacting bloody revenge upon those who wronged us? Granted, we have a responsibility to protect our families and our nation — but at what point does it became nothing more than a vendetta? What seperates us from them?
This really is a bizarre time in US history. We’ve become everything we fought so hard against little more than two centuries ago. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?
I just hope the “American experiment” hasn’t failed. *bigger sigh*
“at what point” not “it what point” — no “edit” feature? D’oh!
So, a tea party, then?
My wife and I are very close to packing up and moving to Canada. However, that’s the very trendy, “liberal” thing to do these days. Don’t wanna be lumped in with Babs Streisand and her ilk now, do we?
What concerns me most is that you simply can’t *rationally* discuss this with many Christians. Criticizing the Bush administration has become nearly synonymous with criticizing Christ. It’s insane!
Seems like the Muslims aren’t the only ones screaming “kill the infidels!”
Don’t worry, I can edit them.
The “American Experiment” failed no later than when Lincoln sent millions of men off to die, in an effort to deny a few states their right of secession. (And no, the “Civil War” — or “War of Northern Aggression,” depending on your take of it — was not about slavery.) Soon after that followed the Federal Reserve (which is a group of banks, not a government entity), Social Security, the Income Tax, and a myriad of other un-American programs.
Kneon, you know exactly what Jesus would think about us “enacting bloody revenge.” I’m not for that. What I am for is for a group of American men to stand together against those who would abuse this Constitution Republic, calling for them to get back in line.
“Criticizing the Bush administration has become nearly synonymous with criticizing Christ. It’s insane!”
It’s the result of relying too heavily on the political opinions of a handful of people (James Dobson, Rush Limbaugh) during the Clinton years. I should know, that was me! But for the grace of God (and eye-opening resources like this quiz at OnTheIssues), I’d still be a pom-pom-waving Republican cheerleader.
This administration’s logic is so Time Cube.
Oh man… did I just type that?! Shame on me!
(You know you’ve officially run out of quasi-intellgient things to say when you play the Time Cube card… )
Time Cube is legendary! “Dr.” Gene Ray is a Grade-A loonie who maintains that the Earth exists in four different, co-existing time periods and that anyone who disagrees with his fatally flawed logic is evil.
Why, he’s my second favorite psuedoscientist — right after the always amusing Richard C. Hoagland!
But I digress.
Point being, the administration’s logic is often looney. And lucky us, the “loonies” have access to the most powerful army in the world…
Never seen Time Cube before. (So does that cancel your comment out?)