Monday, March 22, 2010

PATRIOTISM = EXTREMISM

This is the same theme the so-called "moderate Conservatives" harp on about the Tea Partiers - S.L.



Is Patriotism Dangerous? Publicly Funded NPR Wants You To Think So



Reprinted from:




Posted by Warner Todd Huston Mar 18th 2010

Public supported National Public Radio (NPR) posted a report on March 17 during its “All Things Considered” radio show that warns its listeners that “patriot groups” are dangerous and are apparently increasingly prone to attacking government officials and facilities. Oddly the two examples it uses to prove its case have no ties whatsoever to any “patriot groups.”





Headlined, “Hostility Against Federal Workers Troubles Officials,” NPR blames “patriot groups” on these attacks and worries that “anti-government hate groups” are on the “upsurge.” And what does NPR use to prove its case? Nothing but the say-so the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center and a misconstruction of two recent attacks on government facilities by disturbed individuals.

NPR ominously begins its report with this:


"Three attacks on U.S. government employees this year, along with an upsurge in anti-government hate groups, have officials in Washington concerned about the safety of federal workers."


The piece goes on to report that this sort of violence is a “troubling trend” and lays it all at the feet of “patriot and militia groups.”

NPR then tries to prove its case by discussing the two most recent sensational attackers on government facilities; Joe Stack and John Patrick Bedell.

Joe Stack, a disturbed man who crashed his small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas back in February, was not known to have any ties to any tea party group, any “patriot” group, or other right-wing groups. His manifesto reads like a confused communist rant with hate for the U.S. government and George W. Bush liberally sprinkled throughout. But NPR lumps this nut in with the right with claims that they are all dangerous to government officials and facilities.

NPR similarly uses as proof of these dangerous patriots the disturbed actions of John Patrick Bedell who opened fire on officers near the Pentagon on March 4. Bedell was an anti-war protestor, heavy marijuana user, and exhibited paranoia for which he refused to seek medical help. Bedell also has no known ties to tea party groups, any political organizations, or NPR’s frightening “patriot groups.”

Yet NPR put forth both of these sick-minded men as examples of “patriots” that have become dangerous and unstable. If NPR wasn’t saying so why include them in this report?






Naturally for its “expert” on dangerous patriots NPR turns to Mark Potok, the director of the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center. As always, Potok cites claims of a “huge growth in the so-called patriot movement that includes militias out there.” Not that NPR offers any actual proof other than Potok’s say so, of course.

We’ve seen in particular a huge growth in the so-called patriot movement that includes militias out there,” Potok says. “And I think that some of the violence that we’ve seen, such as the Pentagon shooter and the IRS, are at least in some way a reflection of that rage.

Potok says there are now more than 500 patriot and militia groups active in the U.S., more than triple the number in 2008.

Again, NPR trots out Potok to warn of those evil right-wing patriots and tries to back his claims up with two crazy people that have no ties at all to those same right-wing patriot groups that are being blamed for this “upsurge” in violence.
What NPR doesn’t tell you is the sort of people that work with the SPLC. Chip Berlet, for instance, is one of those people.

Berlet has all sorts of extremist, left-wing associates (like anti-American billionaire financier George Soros) and is a member of other far left organizations such as the Socialist Workers Party. Here is an entry on Berlet in discoverthenetwork.org nestled in a page about the left-wing Tides Foundation:


Berlet is a senior analyst for Political Research Associates, and has had affiliations with the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee, the Christic Institute, the Socialist Workers Party, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

To show how unbiased SLPC’s Chip Berlet is, he once wrote that, “right-wing foundations and think tanks support efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable.”



Not too biased there, eh?

Discoverthenetworks.org also has a page on the SPLC itself.

So, for its expert on those monstrous patriot groups, NPR turns to a group that has ties to the Socialist Workers Party, George Soros, and the anti-Christian ACLU and then expects us to think such an organization should be accepted as an unbiased news source! Apparently NPR does expect us all to accept as gospel its left-biased report on how dangerous those “patriots” are, but I hope America is more skeptical than that.




Remember folks, YOUR tax dollars support NPR.

5 comments:

  1. Hitler did get sent to jail, after the Beer Hall Putsch.

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  2. Stack replaced a friend of mine as bass player in Billy's band when my friend moved back up to North Texas. Everybody that knew him musically didn't know him as anything other than a reasonably polite guy. He may have had mental problems, but he didn't share them with anybody that anyone knows of, nor even talk about his issues with the IRS. He went off his nut and did what he did, but there was no warning and he wasn't a member of any groups.

    Hell, I'm a member of a local Conservative political group that occasionally has been demonized for doing things like publishing "The New American", and we have a hard time getting a dozen people to show up for lunch once a month and are all a bit old and broken down, so I don't think you'll see any of us charging into some stupid tilting at windmills endeavor.

    I'm part Jew and the ADL thinks I'm a neo-nazi affiliated terrorist because I'm a member of the Jews for Preservation of Firearms ownership, among other pro-2A groups. Take everything the ADL and SPLC vomit out their NPR mouthpieces with a LARGE GRAIN OF SALT. I like to build and fix guns and I'm involved with useful organizations related to that trade. Would I be pro-nazi if I still had a BMW R/80 and joined an "Airhead" rider's group?

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  3. The SPLC might have filled a need in earlier years, but now they have to find a reason to even exist due to the fact that their organization is no longer needed. The SPLC even declared that the Sons of Confederate Veterans (a heritage group) is a racist organization.

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  4. I know that the party line is peaceable resistance and all, but there will come a time when we might all wake up and realize that while we are operating within the rule of law and trying to play by "civilized rules", the powers of tyranny have no such restraints and that their end game is really one of total eradication of ANY dissent or opposing voice to their utopian vision.

    This reminds me of the middle east and UBL; If we just talk nice and have nice dialogue and kum by yah sessions then they won't be militant angry muslims anymore and they'll revert back to the early surahs and recognize all people of the book. They just want to be heard...

    Um... ...yeah... ...and Bill Ayers is not really for the total take down of Constitutional America.

    Oh, and the Bolsheviks didn't mean to kill every one of the Czar's officers and NCOs.

    I fear that we are going to see continued propagandizing and vilification of patriots until either we become extinct or...

    ...patriots make someone else extinct... ...if for nothing else than to prove a point.

    just saying...

    MF8

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  5. Anony, Some day we might. But not anytime soon.

    Of course, if you really cared about having your ideas represented fairly in the marketplace of ideas, you'd be getting them to the marketplace by fighting to get into a profession, like teaching or journalism or movie-making, that would let you get your ideas out there. You know, like the left has done for the last 50 years or so.

    ReplyDelete