This was a classic clip from the "Super Bowl of Freedom" rally to protest health care reform.

I didn't just post this clip to show that John Boehner's an idiot (although he is). What really got me wasn't so much what he was saying as what he was insinuating.

He was saying how he was standing with the founding fathers and with freedom loving Americans. Does he really think that people that hold an opposing view are against the constitution and freedom?

It reminds me of some of the idiotic debates I used to have over religion back in my missionary days. Not uncommonly somebody would sanctimoniously say something along the lines of, "Well I have the Bible on my side!" Of course all that they really had was their own interpretation of the Bible that conveniently fit their own preconceived notions. Nevertheless, once they said that, the argument was settled as far as they were concerned.

I look at a lot of these debates over the constitution in much the same light.

All of which makes Boehner's screw-up such a classic. This is the guy that is standing with the founding fathers and loves freedom. This is the guy that just happens to be carrying around a pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution and is ready to teach people like me something about it. This is the top ranking Republican in the House of Representatives!!! Then it turns out he can't even distinguish between the most famous lines of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

I think this short video speaks volumes.

I had an interesting assignment this past week for a government class. I was assigned to watch three hours of FAUX, er, I mean FOX news and three hours of MSNBC. Trying to keep an open mind and objectively compare networks proved a bit challenging. Most painful of all was having to listen to Glenn Beck - a flat out demagogue if ever there was one.

I have always been a bit of news and politics junkie. I remember watching Walter Cronkite in the latter part of his career when I was a kid. I watched Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather for pretty much the entire time that they were the leading anchors for the big three networks.

One thing where I think there is wide agreement is that the nature of journalism itself has changed drastically over the past 15 years or so. For the most part, I have not been pleased with the changes that we have seen. Journalism used to be much more about reporting the facts and trying to maintain some semblance of neutrality. The FCC had the fairness doctrine in place up until 1987.

I've got some real mixed feelings on the fairness doctrine. I think there are some very legitimate concerns about free speech and free press rights being violated under such a mandate. However, I look at the state of journalism today and I wonder if such a thing isn't necessary after all.

I think responsible journalism means trying to report the facts rather than being the propaganda outlet for one political party or the other. A free press is vitally important to the functioning of a democracy such as ours. The vast majority of us do not live in D.C. We do not personally know our elected representatives. We do not sit in on the hearings and meetings that go on in formulating policy or legislation. We are dependent upon the press to tell us about these things. The press plays an enormous role in shaping public opinion and so indirectly, they influence elections.

When I look at news that is biased either to the right or the left, I see dozens upon dozens of examples of hyperbolic speech. To listen to FAUX news, one would think that the passage of healthcare reform would transform this country into the Soviet Union. Such an assertion is, of course, laughable.

I think such coverage, whether you be on the right or the left, is a bad thing. Most people will tend to watch the news network that slants their stories to their liking. Unfortunately, this means they have no exposure to other viewpoints or their rationale. So with regards to the healthcare debate, critics have nothing at all to say about the real problems with regards to affordability, the effect that healthcare spending has on the deficit, the growing number of uninsured, etc. To them, the issue is merely about Obama and his supposedly insatiable desire to take over private enterprise.

Basically, such slanted coverage only tends to reinforce our prejudices rather than opening us up to other considerations.

Incredible. Simply incredible. I really can't say it any better than Cenk Uygur does here. This should make anybodybody's blood boil. It's funny to hear people decrying the anti-capitalist sentiment that exists in this county right now and crying about the onset of socialism. Socialism?!?! We've been heading AWAY from socialism for the last 30 years. We aren't anywhere even remotely close to socialism. Ah, but that won't stop the hyperbole whores.

Yes, but if we can get people to fear socialism, then maybe they won't ask too many questions about what the capitalists on Wall Street are doing.

Let's all pretend there is no such thing as robber barons. We should be far more concerned if Barack Obama was really born in the United States or if he is actually a foreigner that is part of an elaborate international communist conspiracy. Hmmm.......(cue the spooky music).

As some will probably recognize, I ripped off the title of this post from a Hugh Nibley essay. No better words could be used to describe this.

The objects above show the works of two right-wing blowhards - Glenn Beck and Bob Basso. Both of them use Thomas Paine as the inspiration for their own works. I suspect that they used Paine as an inspiration because he wrote Common Sense and they are arguing for, what to their minds, is common sense.

Sigh.

Perhaps if their familiarity with Paine extended beyond simply knowing the title of his book, they might have chosen a different founding father for their inspiration.

Here is a snippet from Agrarian Justice

Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before.

In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for. Nor it is that kind of right which, being neglected at first, could not he brought forward afterwards till heaven had opened the way by a revolution in the system of government. Let us then do honor to revolutions by justice, and give currency to their principles by blessings.

Having thus in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is,

To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property:

And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.


Gasp!  Is THE Thomas Paine actually proposing....a social program to redistribute wealth!!!  Somebody should let Glenn Beck know that.  He might have to totally reconsider the title of his book.

Agrarian Justice was not Paine's only such work either.  Rights of Man rails against poverty and social injustice.  Far from being the work of a libertarian, it reads more like Karl Marx.

But hey, why should the facts get in the way of a good performance?  Since when has sensationalism relied on the truth?

Thomas Paine and the founding fathers hated monarchy and aristocracy.  Clowns like Beck and Basso are attempting to hijack their characters and twist their words to make them appear to be anti-government rather than anti-monarchy.  There is a huge difference there.  Of course accuracy is not their real aim.  It's about getting viewers and keeping the ratings up and this is much easier to do by stirring the pot, keeping emotions high, and playing loose with the facts.

There is something else here that bothers me as well.  Why the appeal to Colonial era figures in the first place?  Why do we see people showing up in tri-corner hats at tea parties?  Obviously they are trying to make some point by doing so.  Could they be saying that they are standing for the principles that the founding fathers belived in - and implying that those who don't, don't?  Well that position, besides being arrogant, is nonsense.

As mentioned above, Paine's writings, when actually read, bear little resemblance to the right-wing rants of Glenn Beck and his ilk.  There is another point to consider as well.  The constitution itself established a much stronger federal government than was previously had under the Articles of Confederation.  If the founders hated the idea of a strong central government as much as some people claim, then why did they write a constitution that dramatically increased the power of the central government?

I cringe when I hear people talk about how "we should return government to what the founders intended".  It makes "the founders" sound like a unified body that had a clear, specific vision of what government is supposed to be.  Of course any student of history knows that to be far from the case.  The constitutonal convention in Philadelphia was a summer that was filled with bitter disputes and compromise and near failure.

Perhaps instead of playing dress up and ranting, such people should open up a history book.  They might realize that debate and compromise have defined this nation since its inception.  Then maybe they will knock it off with the self-righteous attitude of wrapping themselves in the cloak of the founders.

"History hurts my brain" -- hilarious. FAUX news is the best thing to ever happen to Jon Stewart. It must be like shooting fish in a barrel for him.

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112818960&ps=cprs

Above is an NPR article that provides a synopsis of an article that will be published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine citing a recent study that found that 73% of all physicians favor a public option.

I found this article intriguing because, as a whole, I have found doctors to be a pretty conservative group - far more conservative than say, nurses. Of course my evidence for this is purely antecdotal. I have no idea, statistically speaking, how doctors line up politically.  Nevertheless I was quite surprised that nearly 3/4 of them support a public option.

http://www.brookings.edu/speeches/2009/0615_youth_entitlement_aaron.aspx

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/opinion/19buffett.html?em