America Is Being Reborn!
By Jim E. Reames (04/08/03)
The America I remember as a child died, in part, with introduction of the Cold War and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Then, when the Vietnam War got rolling I was one of thousands drafted in October 1966, at about the same time many thousands of other Americans decided to defy the government.
They burned their draft cards before going underground or into exile, many to Canada, and others to Europe while I went to Ft. Hood, Texas, and from there to fight anti-war protest marchers at the Pentagon in Washington, D. C. The draft dodgers returned after President Gerald Ford issued a blanket pardon so America might be healed of its division and polarization.
During and after the war I was very much in favor of seeing the arrest of Jane Fonda and even her criminal prosecution. To this very day I believe her actions in North Vietnam constituted the crime treason.
Today, we are reliving similar actions (and emotions) as carried out by Peter Arnold, who is now employed by a news service that is extremely anti-American. And like in the case of Jane Fonda, there are those who suggest that he should be arrested for treason against the United States of America. But I, for one, barely reserve judgement against that specific call. I’m still waiting to see what Peter Arnold is going to pull next on public media before I lean down to pick up a journalist’s stone.
It is very clear now that this war on terrorism has opened the eyes of the silent majority. It has illuminated both THE MOTIVE and the MODUS OPERANDI of the liberal left many of who still carry a very strong and oftentimes voiced anti-American sentiment that was given birth to during the Vietnam War. What comes to mind are the public criticisms of people like Robin Williams, Mike Farrell, Martin Sheen, and a host of news media editors and anchors who appear to be sympathizers of Peter Arnold. They were of the same attitude back in the 1960s and early 70s, as they are today. Some of them even became millionaires acting in violent movies that quickly became politically correct, as slams at our military and at our conservative Christian values (the movie MASH for example was one such pundit in the name of entertainment). So were the movies "Deerhunter," "Platoon," and "Born on the Fourth of July." The very people like Mel Gibson who publicly claim to despise war and violence make a good living pretending to live in that world. So were they wrong, then? And are they wrong today, while the Untied States of America is literally being reborn in the eyes of the world? Let’s take a closer look.
If we backtrack the professional careers of most mainstream news media anchors at NBC, CBS, ABC, and the movers and shakers at CNN, or at the New York Times---we learn these people cut their teeth in journalism when it was very popular to distrust America, capitalism, and the words of politicians, just as did many of today’s powerful Hollywood actors.
For we can not deny: There was strong probable cause for them to legitimately cross-examine and to question the true intent of a most powerful industrial military complex of that period.
Our corporations were, in fact, polluting our rivers and our air. We were destroying our natural forests. If not for the "tree huggers" of that period most of today’s gigantic Red Wood forests would have been cut down long ago. Many beautiful rivers (like the Payette in Idaho) would have been transformed for the benefit of hydraulic dams.
Most of us Baby Boomers have come to the common sense conclusion…over time and the review of dug-up facts…that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill President Kennedy. It was a triangulated "turkey shoot" meaning there was conspiracy and cover up. And it has always bothered me that, even today, our news media still refers to Lee Harvey Oswald as being the lone killer; translated to say they ignore the many holes that were found in the famous Warren Commission Report. It is as if they still expect intelligent readers to accept the physics of that "magic bullet."
Moreover, history has proven there was fabrication from the White House…directly from the lips of Lyndon B. Johnson…concerning the Bay of Tokin incident that started (perhaps for all the wrong reasons) the Vietnam War. The CIA did in fact use unsuspecting American citizens as guinea pigs for drug experimentation. Our own government also used unsuspecting Black Americans to experiment and monitor the ugly death-cycle of syphilis. Add onto all of that the repugnance of what Watergate represents, and we all might be well advised there MUST remain a place in the future for controversial journalism.
These and many other reasons are why I can not be quick to judge the words or the intent of reporters like Peter Arnold, whom I think is mistaken and wrong, even bios to the point of his own discredit. I believe the anchors and the editors of today’s mainstream news media are mistaken and wrong, even bios to the point of their own discredit, too. But I can not deny their drive to question and to cross-examine and to challenge what is sold as being truth.
For better or for worse there was a Twentieth-Century experimentation for how modern day news ought to be gathered, analyzed, filtered, spun, and then presented on the part of those few who grew up distrusting power. Hence, today, we have a Peter Arnold and others at the top of news media journalism who view the United States through the eyes of the French, the Germans, the Russians, and the Hollywood elite. To say they all hate America and freedom is a falsehood. But to also suggest they view the world differently than most of America’s hard working middle class is probably more truth than spin. Some of these liberals are just suspicious. Others are out-and-out hypocrites and liars, who are now very confounded and confused with why it is that this United States of America understands the issues and the threats posed by terrorists like Bin Laden and Hussein better than themselves. Many of today’s militant liberals just don’t get it! Worse still, they are blinded by their own endorsement of other liberals who use and exploit them for votes to win elections.
Have you ever noticed just how many hard-core liberals who viciously hate President George W. Bush also hate things that are pure, and honest, righteous and just? How many of them are arrested for illegal drug use? How many of them prefer divorce, broken homes and kinky abnormal life styles vs. true peace, love, joy, and truth…these cockroaches of our society? How many of them praise, and publicly esteem, sick perverts like Michael Jackson, Peewee Herman, and Woody Allen? Would anyone with an ounce of common sense truly advocate listening to these sleaze-balls when it comes to leadership of the world…on a platform designed by their beloved United Nations?
Personally I’m sick of the liberal agenda and liberal philosophies that have swept over the world like an ebb tide of vomit. I feel elated to see men like Bill O’Riley, Mike Savage, and Rush Limbaugh who are willing to stand up to heard and counted and to challenge the filth that is sold as being the truth.
Finally, after decades of lies, the Untied States of America is being reborn. In spite of our many mistakes as a nation and as a self-governed people this war in Iraq is hard evidence we Americans are more civilized and more compassionate than were the barbarous killers who ran Iraq. So we disserve to look into the mirror of humanity with pride and confidence. The atrocities now documented prove that ours’ is a just war for all the right reasons. This postulate (THIS TRUTH!) should be enough to silence the partisan politics of Hollywood elitists. It should be enough for the partisan politics of the New York and the LA Times newspapers to be readjusted. But it should not put an end to controversial journalism.
The swing of our political pendulum from the left to the right, or at least to some spot in the middle, is already causing a revolution in the way news is being prepared, analyzed, and even aired. Cross-examiners like Bill O’Riley are forcing news media personnel to take second, much deeper, looks at the very profession they represent. That shift, alone, is the genesis of heated mass media executive boardroom discussions---now that viewer ratings are being fought for, thanks largely to radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Mike Savage, the FOX News Channel, as well as the World Wide Web.
If NOT managed properly, what lies ahead for America is an even wider separation of idealism that will turn to fire in the upcoming 2004 presidential election. Hatreds and mistrust may well incubate, grow, and expand.
But IF MANAGED PROPERLY the polarization that this nation has felt since the Vietnam War may well come to an end. The loudest critics of government and of Republican values may be silenced, albeit the Republican Party has many shortcomings—just as does the Democratic platform.
Managed properly, we may all witness a new global peace and a more stable economic future.
What I feel lies in our immediate future is an attitude of intolerance on the part of main stream (middle class) America that the old way of one-sided news presentation has come to an end. Those who have gotten away with attacking the ideas of conservative thought and our Christian values are being met nose-to-nose with strong and convincing rebuttal, just as the terrorists to hijacked United Airline's’ Flight-93 were met with men willing to die rather than be exploited.
So I am convinced America will come though this cultural struggle for the better. Instinct prompts me to rely upon truth, justice, and time tested conservative Christian values vs. the lies, the attitudes, and the politically correct pundits of extreme liberalism. America, I believe, is changing. In the eyes of the world we are being reborn as a nation that is once again unafraid to stand up to fight (and even to die as individuals) for what most of us claim to believe in which is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Bible calls it peace, love, and joy. The motives and the modus operandi of the liberal agenda have been exposed to the light of truth. And as the light of truth becomes brighter…we will see the hypocrites turn and run in the direction of their darkness.
Don’t you just have to love the First Amendment! I love it as much as I do the Second Amendment, which grants me the fight to bear arms. For if we did not have the Second Amendment America would not be free. Without the Second Amendment we would not have the First.
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