America's Forced March to the Left

The drug-induced anti-authority, anti-discipline, hippie era of the '60s combined with America's drubbing in Vietnam and the spectacular birth of the Black Power and feminist movements led America to become ever more contemptuous of right-of-center thought.

Because that is more a movement of passion than of reason, it has--outside the hard sciences--rapidly accelerated in zeal, power, and influence, which has led to leftist thinking dominating society's mind molders: the colleges and the media: including most of the major newspapers, book and magazine publishers, and TV news networks, led by CNN.

That, of course, is bringing about, not withstanding occasional pauses, an ever more leftward-leaning electorate, which has resulted in the election of the most radical president in American history. And the leftward trend is accelerating yet further. He's only been in office for nine months and already, he has taken over the nation's largest car company and all college lending from banks, mortgaged our children's future by forcing through a wildly cavalier "stimulus," plan, filled with leftist policies--for example, transportation spending designed to force us out of our cars and into wildly time-wasting mass transit. Most dangerous, ObamaCare will ensure that taxpayers will die earlier by providing health insurance to everyone, without regard to their ability to pay, including, after he gives them amnesty, the 12-to-20 million illegals. You can't provide health care for 43 million more people with the same numbers of doctors, nurses, MRI machines, operating rooms, etc., without killing more people--Already, over 100,000 people die of medical errors every year. And to ensure that his dragging of America leftward accelerates, he's skirted Congress by naming 37 czars to move America ever leftward.

The only remaining major mass-media sources of conservative thought are the admittedly sometimes overwrought (e.g., Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck) Fox News and some conservative radio talk show hosts, notably Rush Limbaugh. And now, the White House and its complicit media, is trying to eliminate even their relatively small influence. For example, the media ridicules Limbaugh while promoting such equally biased and frothing leftists as former sportscaster, now Obaman pit bull Keith Olbermann. Limbaugh's drug problem was exploited viciously by the media, and now, with frighteningly little evidence, the media is tarring Limbaugh as a racist, the worst epithet that, today, can be bestowed. It's McCarthyism from the Left.

And to assault the last bastion of right-of-center thought, the White House is refusing to provide access to Fox News, the only major news organization to seriously question Obama policies: the many hard leftists on the Obama campaign team (not to mention his white-hating pastor of 20 years Jeremiah Wright,) ObamaCare, his massive expansion of government, the Acorn scandals, skirting Congress by creating more than 30 leftist czarships, etc. Ironically, the Pew Charitable Trusts found that Fox provided the presidential campaign's most fair and balanced coverage.

Let me be clear, I do not like many of Fox News's rightwing lightweights. But listen, for example, to the regular Fox News debates among the likes of Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol on the right and Juan Williams and Mara Liasson on the left and I think you'd be hard-pressed to broad-brush dismiss Fox News.

Compare those with CNN "debates," in which CNN regularly pits a brilliant leftist such as Paul Begala or Julian Epstein against a lightweight conservative such as Bay Buchanan or Alex Castellanos. That's like the president of the American League pitting his best home-run hitter against a minor leaguer from the National League in a home-run hitting contest. That hardly proves that the American League has better hitters.

Do you truly believe America will be better now that we are significantly exposed only to left-of-center ideas? If the country veers ever more leftward? Are the following ideas so apriori wrong that they should be given short shrift and in many cases, outright censored: individual responsibility, discipline, order, fiscal restraint, meritocracy rather than reverse discrimination, free-market versus big government solutions, a clear-eyed look at the pros and cons of providing another amnesty for illegals, the science behind global warming, the risk-reward ratios of "environment-saving" restrictions on our lives, a fair-minded risk/reward analysis of nuclear energy and of ObamaCare, and more careful stewardship of our tax dollars?

As readers of this blog know, I hold some liberal views, many libertarian and a few conservative ones, but perhaps most important, I believe society is, by far, best when we are exposed to the full range of benevolently derived ideas. Alas, America has raced toward ensuring that we are exposed overwhelmingly to leftist views. That trend has rapidly accelerated under President Obama and his complicit media.

Lord Acton said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Obama is verging on absolute power and is using it to stifle all dissent. That worries me.