Don't Be Fooled: What the media decides is "news-worthy"

The media plays a critical role in election cycles and more so today with a 24 hour news cycle.  But as we demonstrate in our book, Vigilance the Price of Liberty, the media is bias and each news outlet will “bend” the news toward or against the party, politician, and position it favors.

For example, The Washington Post has 20 people investigating Donald Trump.  How many do they have on Hillary Clinton?  The point being, The Post has a liberal bias and will actively work against Trump.  Fox News has a bias toward Republicans and will spend more time on stories that are unfavorable to Clinton. More important, is the fact that both sides of the political media populate the airways with a lot of words about scandals and not substance.

We need to focus on what is important.  Is a call made by Donald Trump 25 years ago posing as his own publicist a pertinent story to this 2016 presidential election?  Or is a discussion of the presumptive presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, under criminal investigation of note? For us, it is the latter and let us explain our reasoning.

Hillary Clinton’s emails place the candidate under Federal criminal investigation.  Assume, as we should for now, that Clinton is innocent.  She has told us that she never sent or received an email that was marked secret.  However, the fact has been established that she did send and receive secret and classified information.

Her defense is that the emails were not marked as such at the time and the later classification was internal chatter amongst different agencies.  However, this flies in the face of one of her own emails that shows, while the information was not marked classified, she knew it to be classified.  Therefore, regardless of the outcome of the FBI investigation, did not her actions tells us she was reckless with national security information?

The media is supposed to stand as a watch dog for the people against political corruption, not pose as a political lap dog.  This protection of political candidates by the media on both sides of the isle is rampant.  It is the contrast between the two above examples that should draw the audiences’ attention: a silly phone call made over 2 decades ago vs. an FBI criminal investigation of a candidate while serving as Secretary of State.

The media will make this election about political correctness, party lines, sexism, racism or any other –ism.  It will be about who the media deems worthy of running for political office and who they will protect in that endeavor.  And it should be the American public’s endeavor to be vigilant…and be free.

Don't Be Fooled: Parties are NOT a Democracy

This Presidential elections are big events with big outcomes in the balance.  However, the way we go about electing a president relies on emotion rather than fact and reason.  The process is corrupted by parties, politicians and media who shred the Constitution by controlling the agenda to direct you toward what you should think is important and how you should vote. The pandering and deceit is all designed to play us as fools.

In response to the onslaught of misinformation coming to you this election cycle, we would like to introduce our series: Don’t Be Fooled.  Over the next several months we will shine light on the disingenuous dialogues and give you facts to help reason an informed judgement.

To start, there is a notion espoused by the press that parties are part of a democracy.  They are not.  Further, selecting a presidential candidate by a party does not have to be democratic.  Parties are private companies, like labor unions, with the goal, like a labor union, to keep their union members employed.  Parties purport to represent an ideology and offer a “platform” for governance if their “union members” become elected to government.

Important to note, parties are not part of the government.  Parties are not even mentioned in the Constitution.  In fact, parties pose great danger to our Republic, as so noted by President George Washington who, in his farewell address, warned the nation of the dangers from parties when the “will of the party replaces the will of the nation.”

The Democrat and Republican parties are composed of state parties from the 50 states and a separate national committee. The national committee is responsible for the national convention from which the 50 state parties choose their presidential candidate.

Each party can make its own rules on how to choose their candidate.  An enlightening article, The Agony of a Trump Delegate, by Kimberly Strassel on April 28, 2016 appearing in the Wall Street Journal describes the GOP party nomination system in light of Donald Trump’s displeasures of such – click here for full article.

Bernie Sanders can also be displeased by the lack of “democracy” of the Democratic Party. The super delegates are independent of the primaries and caucuses and represent about 30% of the votes needed to win the nomination for the Democratic presidential candidate.  The Democrats put this undemocratic system in place to assure the control of their nominee if the voters should choose someone not of the Party’s design.

In summary, parties are not part of the government.  They are private organizations who select who they want as their presidential nominee according to their own rules, which they may change at any time.  Your vote for a presidential candidate of a party is at best a preference poll.  However, with all this said, parties risk the wrath from their voters if they should chose against the majority of their voter’s preference.

What Do You Think?

When I was applying to college some four years ago, a question was posed that inspired the journey of writing Vigilance The Price of Liberty and building US Vigilance:

Choose an issue of importance to you – the issue could be personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope – and write an essay in which you explain the significance of that issue to yourself, your family, your community, or your generation.

We would now like to pose that question to you. What do you think is the issue of largest importance? A coddled Millennial generation that appears unable to stand the bright light of reality?  The assault on religion or freedom of speech? A Middle East in turmoil?  A political system that is largely distrusted?

Whatever issue you think is most important, how would crystalize it and begin to solve it?

For me, I thought the issue of largest importance was that “Government has become too large to sustain and too opaque to be accountable which diminishes its ability to do the public good.”  My solution was to team with my father to write a book and launch US Vigilance to promote responsible citizenship.

We cannot be a society of complainers; we must be a society of resolvers.  Once you have identified the problem it is time for action.

What do you think?

#BeVigilant. Be Free.

Ideas versus Identity

Who are you?  Simple question, but how would you respond?  Today you are expected to adopt a view of yourself based on physical, gender, racial or sexual attribute – not your individual ideas.  The political class and the media drive you to “identity” politics in an effort to control your behavior and confine your vote.  To make you an automaton to an ideology that keeps politicians and the special interests that feed off government in perpetual power.

Two weeks ago we heard from five astute college students from five prominent California universities at the Collegiate Forum at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.  In this panel discussion this issue of our ideas being relegated to our person was brought to light.

We are now in a state that assumes a way of thinking based on our external identity and demands - or suffer the repercussions - adherence to a political dogma.  There is sort of mob-mentality to govern our thoughts and actions, which essentially replace individuality.  This is dangerous for our country and the antithesis to a democracy.  It is contrary to our founding and can, in time, extinguish the freedom which we now celebrate.

Join the discussion.  Check-out the panelists’ thoughts on identity vs. ideas in the video of the Collegiate Forum below.

There Is Hope

Last week we launched the Collegiate Forum where we brought together five outstanding students from five notable California colleges.  Over 200 hundred people listened intently to the student panelists debate, discuss and reason the resolution: Is political correctness on college campuses an enemy of free speech?  There was no shouting, name calling, or trigger warnings. It was old fashion politeness with thoughtful and fact based debate of ideas.

The calm of the debate at the Nixon Library between students from UC Berkley, Occidental, Pomona, Chapman and Stanford was refreshing.  Without the shrill noise of protest, we could hear another side.  We might not agree at the end, but we had a chance to understand the opposing view and, in that process, become enlightened with better ideas for solutions.

This Collegiate Forum is the first of many that can be brought to Millennials and Baby Boomers.  That evening, we left with hope that the next generation is not lost to mean spirited confrontation but open to challenging ideas that can be a spring-board to responsible citizenship.

Look for the video of the panel discussion on our website www.usvigilance.com or the Nixon Foundation website www.nixonfoundation.org coming soon!

Freedom to Exchange Ideas

Student on-campus protests are nothing new.  What has changed is what is protested.  In the 1960s it was freedom TO speak and today it is freedom FROM speech.

The only free speech is unrestricted speech so that ideas can clash.  Challenging ideas leads to better ideas...silencing opposition leads to stagnation, and uniformity of political ideas is tyranny.

If a speaker is invited to campus to talk about why communism is the way of governments of the future, and economic success, then his presence on campus would be better served engaging in challenging debate with students versus campus protest.

Protest is fine to show numbers, but it is a one-way shouting of slogans and not a two way dialogue of ideas.

Join us this Thursday, April 14th at 7pm PT for the Collegiate Forum at the Nixon Library to discuss “Is political correctness on college campuses an enemy of free speech.”

Click here for more information and to register for this free event.

The Audacity of Arrogance

President Obama can seemingly operate with a complete severance from reality, which some have argued stems from a position of arrogance.  For example, Mr. Obama refuses to recognize the nature of terrorism based in Islamic extremists.

In a recent event, first reported by the Media Research Center (a conservative-leaning watchdog group) the words “Islamist terrorism” were omitted on both audio and written transcript in an official White House video.  These words were spoken by French President Francois Hollande this week at an international summit in Washington on nuclear security that also discussed global terrorism.

The White House blamed this omission (from the full excerpt given below) on a “technical issue”, that is, when the omission was noticed.

“We are also making sure that between Europe and the United States there can be a very high level coordination. But we’re also well aware that the roots of terrorism, Islamist terrorism, [emphasis added] is in Syria and in Iraq. We therefore have to act both in Syria and in Iraq, and this is what we’re doing within the framework of the coalition. …”

Similar to the Ft. Hood shooting, that Obama declared was work-place violence, Islamic terrorism has no place in the president’s reality.  For our president, arrogance is “truth”.  Arrogance trumpets louder than facts.  Arrogance throws an impenetrable veil over the lessons of history.  Arrogance is blind to the outcome of events that contradicts its notion of what reality should be.

Barak Obama is a man who apparently sees himself extraordinarily possessed with superior intelligence and morality, so much so, that he is content to lie to the nation.  Whether it was the Affordable Care Act where you could keep your healthcare plan but could not, Iran nuclear deal that was not to permit Iran to have a nuclear infrastructure but did, Benghazi where it was an Internet video that was the cause of the deaths of four Americans but did not, the success of Yemen that was a failure, the Red Line in Syria that was a bluff, ISIS as jayvee but was not, or where he told us 20 times that he had no constitutional power to change immigration law then did.  You name it, Obama’s view of the American people is that, in the words of Jack Nicholson playing Col. Nathan R. Jessep in the movie A Few Good Men, “You can’t handle the truth”.

The truth is a weight that only Obama can bear as he incessantly lectures us.  For Obama knows that everything he has done will be right – given unlimited time and money.