An Egalitarian Hat-trick + Exemplary Erudition from Harvard

Rev. Steve Schlissel - October 3, 2013

The Schlissel Retort: 10.03.13

Keeping up with The Times.

An Egalitarian Hat-trick + Exemplary Erudition from Harvard

While we await the appearance of a news periodical determined to report news,  we’ll settle for catharsis via semi-occasional comments on “all the views the misfits print.”[1] 

1. It seems to me that an American newspaper ought to regard itself as honor bound, solemnly obliged to provide service to the American public. I know that’s a lot to ask of a paper unable because unwilling to learn. If the Times found a Venn diagram making plain that the rights of citizens belong solely to citizens, they’d think it must mean gay citizens . To grasp the dynamics of the reality gap, always bear in mind that

        a. There is no neutrality.

        b. All thoughts and their fruits are either for or against the true God.

        c. The spring of all human activity is religious conviction.

        d. Whether such conviction is true and beneficent or false and mischievous, it’s there.It is this a priori religious conviction which decides what is or is not evidence.

e. Christianity in our time and place has been displaced by anti-Christianity.

f. Anti-Christianity is Egalitarianism, exponentially strengthened through ties to an Enlightenment notion of human autonomy operating in a theater of impersonal Evolutionary predestination: Ethics, Epistemology and Ontology in all their apostate splendor.

f. The New York Times may claim a megachunk of credit for this revolution’s success.

If there is an obligation to the American public, I’d hold it necessarily includes information–both accurate and up-to-date–about known, sworn enemies of our nation who are determined and even now engaged in destroying it by any and all means, especially including vicious and sudden violence and destruction, randomly delivered in the name of their deity to any place associated with America, her people and/or beliefs. Such is the threat of Islam today. Yet in reporting on the terrorist attack of late September in Nairobi, it was eight paragraphs into the story before even the egal-ized, sanitized word “Islamist” appeared. An act of Muslim terror, in which an effort was made by the murderous punks to chase away shopping Muslims so as to confine the bloodshed  to “infidels,” even that is obscured in its actual character. I regard that as criminal and traitorous.  

Now it seems rather easy to distinguish such acts from the Times’ imaginary Islam which is so peaceful and gooshy-love-dumb. Simply give a standard denunciation space to the top 100 Muslim clerics after each violent act by their fellow Muslims. Give them the chance to DENOUNCE and condemn the terror. Why don’t we see such denials, routine in all civilized corridors? Three guesses. Make that two.

2. NYT readers are indoctrinated in the Egalitarian Catechism with no letup. Like the catechisms of the Reformation, positive assertions about what is true are nestled among refutations attacking known “error.”  As an elite, purified source of Egalitarian dogma, the Times earns its anti-Christian stripes, however, by keeping laser-guided sights set on all cardinal components of Christian truth, beginning with the belief that there is truth. Seemingly determined to match the Inquisition in zeal to stamp out “heresy,” the paper often–I mean often–resorts to a nameless magisterium, a mysterious authority or set of “doctors” who have supposedly established the Times’ version of “obvious,” leaving peons to simply obey and exercise a little implicit faith. You’ll see this in their ubiquitous “Scientists say…” allegation.

3. With the recent coronation of anti-Christianity, however, it has become de rigueur for the Times to write as if they, you and everybody else already and assuredly believes the truth of their Confession of Faith. Consider, for example, their front page notice of the leading national story. The headline: A Brawl Over Textbooks.” The text: “A Texas panel that reviews high school biology textbooks is stirring controversy because its members include creationists and climate skeptics.” Of course, for as long as I can remember, the Times has been actively at war with this same Texas panel, and for essentially the same reason–that it exhibits evidence of thought .  What is different is how light a burden it has become to get an “Amen” to their assumption that the panel is peppered with Neanderthals.

I would love sometime to shine a light on this propaganda technique, which could be called the “prevail by presupposing a shared faith” method. I mean, just think of the horror! Among those charged  with giving an imprimatur to Texas Religious State Instruction Manuals, you will find people who actually believe God created the world! But “climate skeptics” is more awkward. Do they mean there are panelists who don’t believe we have a climate? Uh, no. They mean there are people who question  the holy white-coated fathers and their conclusions about global warming and carbon foofs. Where, I ask, is Torquemada when you need him?

4. The September 29th front page feature story, above the fold, right, four columns wide with headline (Children and Guns: The Hidden Toll) and prominent photo, plus four cameo photos of deceased children. The problem: There is not even an effort to pretend that this “story” is news. It is pure advocacy, editorial masquerading as news, and in the process, avoiding every meaningful question which failed the test of serving their agenda.

On this topic, consider: Of the issues resolutely and invariably described as “rights issues” by the New York Times, none have a vintage older than my generation. No story touching abortion fails to mention abortion “rights,” none about homos fails to mention “homo-” or “homo marriage rights,” etc. The only subject with a rights pedigree, however, one stretching back 240 years to our nation’s founding, is gun rights, but it is the single issue never presented under that heading. This is reporting? It is editorial and disease on every page. It is never reporting.

5. Not House Republicans but NYT policymakers are insane. The terrorist attack in Nairobi, Kenya, oozed facts proving one remarkable, unavoidable conclusion: It was the armed CITIZENS–members of gun clubs, retired and off-duty officers, ex-army, and Plain Joe Does who, armed and brave, went INTO harm’s way and effected the actual END of the crisis, risking their lives separately and together. It is an AMAZING testament to the truth concerning armed citizens, especially in perilous times. It was Founding Fathers’ Wisdom on display, thus guaranteeing it would be ignored (the Times and woman punish the same way). How did the Times spin it? The Kenyan federal government failed, not, the Kenyan people succeeded!  All attention OFF truth and armed citizens to the rescue. The goal of such jaundiced coverage is tyranny–for our own good, of course.

6. The hat-trick. The wife of mayoral hopeful de Blasio has created orgasmic seizures at the paper. In a salute with the tone of a junior high-school tribute to, uh, Lady Kaka, the praise gushes for this woman who was once “a smoldering teenager who took to writing poems everyday to wrestle with her isolation and anger.” Picked by them to be a darling and a spokesman they are determined to use as leverage for their candidate, we have in Mrs. de Blasio a woman, to hear them tell it, who is the incarnate egalitarian “victim” supreme, the Colored Krishna walking among us to save. How perfect is she? Oh my, you’ll be sorry you asked. She is a “onetime student of powerlessness, a woman whose early identity was profoundly shaped by feelings of alienation [here come the pucks]–because of her race, her gender and her evolving sexuality…” How great she art. I admit to being clueless as to the meaning of #3; after all, she is the wife of a male candidate for mayor. What are they saying? Does he know that her sexuality is evolving? I shudder to think. But who needs reality or accuracy when maudlin is available. Again, front page. Her only flaw? Her hubby is vanilla white. Apparently his being “an avowedly activist, tax-the-rich liberal” has secured the indulgence necessary to wipe even that stain from the (paper of) record.

7. Last place goes to the sinking flagship for its amazing helpfulness, offered in an  October 2nd  piece that was actually news. Sort of. The Supremes have decided to hear the case of a man challenging limits on direct contributions to candidates of his choice. Apparently alarmed at the wafting scent of liberty, joined to the litigant’s self-description as a conservative, the Times brought in a heavy hitter, a top expert to help us morons understand the threat facing us (the thing they are unable to do when it involves maniacal Muslim murderers). I ask you to bow your head in a moment of non-contemplative silence to prepare yourself for the full impact this quote will make on your psyche. Ready: Here it is, from no less a knowledge-macher than “Charles Fried, a Harvard law professor who was solicitor general in the second Reagan administration” (see how unbiased? Trust us! A Reagan maven!) Ready? This is heavy:

“Without aggregate contribution limits, the amount of money that a contributor can hope to direct to a given candidate is virtually limitless.”

You get it? Without limits on the amounts you can give, the amount you can give is limitless. Wow.

Well, that’s what he should have concluded. By hedging with the “virtually,” he turned what was oh-so-close to being just another meaningless articulation of a self-evident truth into just another stupid error. “Professor sir, if an amount is without limits, the amount is actually, not virtually, limitless.” But someone will suggest the “virtually” referred to a donor’s resources. Sorry, no exit. His predicate was not an individual’s income or resources, but limits imposed by law. The prof and The paper join to teach the world to sing in perfect tautology.[2] 

But he’s from Harvard. And don’t you forget it.

 


[1] No pedantry intended. If you are not familiar with the boxed-boast in the top-left corner of every NYT front page, it reads, “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Like my friend John Hultink says, “Yeah, right.”

[2] Tautology: a statement which conveys no useful information whatsoever, regardless of its length or polysyllabic glory.

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