I Am Right — You Are Wrong
Here is a video. Watch it.
Now that you have watched it, let’s think about a few aspects of it. The group that produces these series of videos, New Left Media, are obviously left-leaning. That said, the interviewer does a good job of not giving his position away too clearly. He remains reasonably objective through the interviews that we see, and that’s important. What is also important to note, however, is that we only see what this group wants us to see. We are presented with the most entertaining interviewees, not necessarily the most well-informed and “intelligent” ones.
PERSPECTIVE, K?
That said, I am impressively appalled at the level of ignorance shown in this video and others like it. This trend of willful ignorance goes back decades, and it was also seen clearly in the most recent presidential election. The side of the Democrats was particularly guilty of this in the most recent cycle. Obama was using his incredible level of difference from Bush to get votes. Lots of citizens my age didn’t vote for Obama because of his policies — they voted for him because he was “cool.” They were just as uninformed about politics as the individuals in this video.
Why is it that this country doesn’t seem to have individual thought about politics anymore? The citizens in this video claim to understand the issues at hand, but they are woefully misinformed. They claim that Glenn Beck is an educator, brought from O HOLY GOD to present them with unbiased information. REALLY? SERIOUSLY? Glenn Beck is a fine individual, I’m sure, but to believe that he is presenting anything but biased party-line information is delusional. Sure, watch him and enjoy him if you understand the issues that he is talking about, but don’t go to him for NEWS. The Fox network delivers fine actual news, but it is important to remember that the talking heads who have so many shows on that network are not delivering news, they are delivering opinion.
I don’t care if you’re Republican, Democrat, or somewhere else entirely … THINK FOR YOURSELF. Forget TV and radio and newspapers and any other sort of media imaginable. Forget what your family says. Read the source material, which IS available online, and decide for yourself.
If, after you have done independent study to understand the issues, you find yourself agreeing with individuals such as Glenn Beck … by all means watch and support them. If you have not come to a conclusion on your own, go dig a hole and live in it.
You will then become the Morlocks of our society, and you will like it.
ONE MORE THING
Hey! You so-called constitutionalists! Stop being stupid. The constitution is great, don’t get me wrong. But why is it such a mystically strong standard that you hold all of your views against? It is not infallible. Who knows what the founding fathers would have thought of the way we view it today? You do not know, so stop pretending. We live in a society so vastly different from the one that they had that it is impossible to make any direct connection between their thoughts from then to now. If they were around today .. drafting a brand new constitution … I would bet my considerable lack of wealth that it would look quite different from our classic constitution.
Again .. even though this is a good standard to base your personal opinions off of … think for yourself.
THINK. BRAIN. USE IT. THANKS.
You are SO right on the target! Thinking critically is… critical. To my offense, I willingly admit that I voted for Obama, because he is cool. Because he said things during the campaign that jived well with my brain/heart. Because I’m registered Democrat. And you know what? That scares the hell out of me. And makes me realize how others could do it so easily as well.
I’m also really glad that you wrote that, because it reminded me of the only thing I remember from a philosophy class I took in college: Socrates once kicked the shit out of someone (mentally) by showing that person, through debate, that they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. And he said, kind of, “I know that I don’t know.” Basically, that we should know and accept when we don’t know something. We should realize that if we don’t know something that we should go back, research it and think critically about it. Thus, our decisions and our every day conversations become dense and not just empty gestures. Or… something like that with bigger words. haha
Anyways, thank you for posting this! I agree so much with the whole thing.
One avenue to take the discussion further, it’s the future professor in me, is this: what do we do when information becomes privatized? Example: Coca-Cola’s recipe is private info, not accessible to the public. So, millions of people around the globe are deciding to consume something, but the whereabouts and ratios of the ingredients are unknown. (They actually have a commercial about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=mJgTnDpU4VY ) Thoughts? haha 