I grew up in the eighties under Reagan and became aware of the misinformation and lies that the liberal media was putting forth, particularly Reagan economics,, which logically made sense, but also the Soviet Union, Communism, and so forth. They said Reagan's tax cuts were not working, and that all his military spending did was add to the national debt, instead of giving people a reason not to mess with us.
 |
| A quote by Rush Limbaugh |
I could never explain that to my friends. They would just pick up the latest edition of the Free Press and point to their evidence. If I wanted to get evidence I had to go out of my way and go to the library and do some research, which was impossible given that I had all sorts of homework and studying that had to be done. Actually, they didn't need evidence. Sometimes they would just look at each other and laugh when I opposed them. I was backwoods. I had these outdated, controversial ideas.
When I tried to explain to them that the Iraq War was good, they mocked me. When I tried to explain that Sam Donaldson, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather were all in the tank for democrats and were trying to make Reagan and Bush look bad, my friends mocked me. "It's the news!" they'd say, laughing. "It's the facts as they happen. How could you oppose facts?"
Well, I knew it wasn't the facts what I was hearing, but I just learned to keep my mouth shut. The only vindication I got was that the opposing voices in the media, all their attempts at destroying Reagan and Bush, didn't work, as Reagan won in two landslide elections, and Bush also won in 1988. So there were obviously many people who were thinking the same as me, only if you watched the media you wouldn't know it.
So I was so thankful when conservative media, beginning with Rush Limbaugh, came along to give me some credibility and not let me feel so isolated anymore. I do not get most of my ideas from Rush, it's just that he sort of vindicates what I'm thinking as I read the news. Of course now theirs National Review, and even Fox News to some extend, although I think Fox is far from a conservative media outlet. It does, however, seem to be fair to both sides, actually giving traditional Americans (conservatives) a platform.
Yet there are some who don't like all these voices being heard. They don't like that the Internet, a.m. radio and books give voices to people with differing opinions on the facts to be heard. They don't like Rush Limbaugh, and would prefer that he not have a voice.
A good example is yesterday when I read that Mitt Romney was saying that he thought American was a better place before conservative media came along. He thought America was a better place before Rush Limbaugh came along, because all this did was create a partisan divide where people could just listen to people they agree with all day long, rather than everyone getting all the same facts from the same sources every day.
What makes this so naive is that it sort of feeds into what liberals and democrats have always said about Rush, that he hives people ideas and tells people how to think. That's not how it is at all. All he does is make free thinkers like myself feel less isolated in a world surrounded by liberal media.
You see, I didn't think I was getting the facts when I watched Dan Rather. I didn't agree with the editorials in the Detroit Free Press that my college buddies were quoting from. Conservative media made me realize that I was not alone in doubting the "facts" doled out by the media and my liberal buddies.
Granted, we did not have many political debates, as we were more interested in studying, doing homework, but mainly in having fun. Still, it's something I think about once in a while. I simply don't understand why anyone would want to stop voices from being heard. There's nothing better, in my mind, for free speech than a free Internet. It allows people to get their news from all sorts of media outlets, both left, right, independent, and so forth. It's simply a great thing.
Further Reading:
No comments:
Post a Comment