So journalists are outraged about the Trump administration barring a CNN correspondent, Kaitlan Collins, from some statement being given by the president. Even Fox, which is often little more than a Trump fellatio apparatus sided with CNN, the latter of which released a statement on the incident.
"This decision to bar a member of the press is retaliatory in nature and not indicative of an open and free press."
My response to that is so what. The position of journalists by contrast is clear. How dare anyone "retaliate" against them. They're granted carte blanche, in their own minds, to do as they please without consequence. They're permitted by "freedom of the press" to trash the president (or anyone for that matter) all day long and he is obligated to receive and entertain them anyway.
Fox clearly thinks it's making some glorious stand on principle by siding with CNN, but I have ever asserted the president has all the same rights as any other citizen, and one of those is the right to dissociate. As stated previously on my social media.
"If (journalists) can't behave themselves, then kick them out. The President is not required to meet with journalists. It's a courtesy; one that can, and frankly should, be rescinded given the ostentatious animus these pricks all have for the president. Donald Trump is the duly elected president of the United States whether you like it or not. These press briefings are not dinner parties where you can dispense your opinions unfettered. They're not stages for dissidents to engage in political grandstanding or activism. If these people cannot maintain the proper decorum then they should be ejected and their passes should be revoked." - Me, June 29, 2018.
The president has a right to defend himself from unscrupulous journalists and fallacious reporting. And one of the ways he may do so, as may any of you, is to simply dissociate from them. Trump has apparently done exactly what I said he should. So, bravo. He should listen to me more often.
Coincidentally Fox's president, Jay Wallace, would also use the word "unfettered," but to argue the complete opposite point.
"We stand in strong solidarity with CNN for the right to full access for our journalists as part of a free and unfettered press."
So according to Wallace for a press to be "free" it must be "unfettered," and an irrevocable component of that freedom, is journalists having a "right to full access" to the president. As promptly observed on my social media, the first presidential press conference wasn't until 1913 (124 years after the adoption of the U.S. Constitution), and the first televised presidential press conference wasn't until 1955 (166 years after the adoption of the U.S. Constitution). For a large chunk of American history journalists didn't even cover the president. It wasn't until 1895 (106 years after the adoption of the U.S. Constitution), during the administration of Grover Cleveland, that William Price became "the first newsman to wait outside of the White House to interview people after their meetings with the president." There wasn't a White House Press Secretary until 1929, when George Akerson was appointed as the first by Herbert Hoover. The fact is there are more presidents who weren't covered by the press than presidents that have been. Even fewer had "press secretaries." This simple historical observation renders the claim Trump's crossing a "dangerous line" for banning a CNN correspondent from a press conference, and that the press has a "right to full access for [...] journalists as part of a free and unfettered press," utterly farcical. By that rationale the first 25 presidents not only crossed that line but resided on the other side of it. Modern press conferences are a product of modern presidents realizing that proactively interacting with the press, and therefore giving them access, was in the interest of their administrations; not out of any obligation to respect a journalist's imaginary "right" to "full" and "unfettered" access. The very notion is preposterous. No right is "unfettered." All rights have limitations. It's generally understood that one person's rights terminate, for example, at the point they infringe upon the rights of another. The notion the press is granted by the First Amendment unfettered access to a person essentially renders the First Amendment an abolition of privacy. But don't take my word for it. Let's hear what some other, notable Americans, have to say about the press.
"If by the liberty of the press were understood merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please: But if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating, and defaming one another, I, for my part, own myself willing to part with my share of it when our legislators shall please so to alter the law, and shall cheerfully consent to exchange my liberty of abusing others for the privilege of not being abused myself." - Benjamin Franklin, September 12, 1789.
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misapprehension is known only to those who are in a situation to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. [....] General facts may indeed be collected from them [...] but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." - Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, June 14, 1807.
"I hope it will be no offense to say, that public opinion is often formed upon imperfect, partial, and false information from the press. [...] What sort of men have had the conduct of the presses in the United States for the last thirty years? [...] How many presses, how many newspapers have been directed by vagabonds, fugitives from a bailiff, a pillory, or a halter in Europe?" - John Adams to John Taylor, April 15, 1814.
Joseph Story, Supreme Court Justice appointed by James Madison, also provides protracted exposition on the freedom of the press in his treatise on the Constitution. He describes a press that is far from "unfettered."
"That this (first) amendment was intended to secure to every citizen an absolute right to speak, or write, or print, whatever he might please, without any responsibility, public or private, therefore, is a supposition too wild to be indulged by any reasonable man. That would be, to allow every citizen a right to destroy, at his pleasure, the reputation, the peace, the property, and even the personal safety of every other citizen. A man might then, out of mere malice or revenge, accuse another of infamous crimes; might excite against him the indignation of all his fellow citizens by the most atrocious calumnies; might disturb, nay, overturn his domestic peace, and embitter his domestic affections; might inflict the most distressing punishments upon the weak, the timid, and the innocent; might prejudice all the civil, political, and private rights of another; and might stir up sedition, rebellion, and even treason, against the government itself, in the wantonness of his passions, or the corruptions of his heart. Civil society could not go on under such circumstances. Men would be obliged to resort to private vengeance to make up for the deficiencies of the law. It is plain, then, that this amendment imports no more, than that every man shall have a right to speak, write, and print his opinions upon any subject whatsoever, without any prior restraint, so always that he does not injure any other person in his rights, property, or personal reputation; and so always that he does not thereby disturb the public peace, or attempt to subvert the government. It is in fact designed to guard against those abuses of power, by which, in some foreign governments, men are not permitted to speak upon political subjects, or to write or publish any thing without the express license of the government for that purpose. [...]
Even to this day, in some foreign countries, it is a crime to speak on any subject, religious, philosophical, or political, what is contrary to the received opinions of the government, or the institutions of the country, however laudable may be the design, and however virtuous may be the motive. [...] In some countries, no works can be printed at all, whether of science, or literature, or philosophy, without the previous approbation of the government; and the press has been shackled, and compelled to speak only in the timid language, which the cringing courtier, or the capricious inquisitor, has been willing to license for publication. [....]
There is a good deal of loose reasoning on the subject of the liberty of the press, as if its inviolability were constitutionally such, that, like the King of England, it could do no wrong, and was free from every inquiry, and afforded a perfect sanctuary for every abuse; that, in short, it implied a despotic sovereignty to do every sort of wrong, without the slightest accountability to private or public justice. Such a notion is too extravagant to be held by any sound constitutional lawyer, with regard to the rights and duties belonging to governments generally, or to the state governments in particular. If it were admitted to be correct, it might be justly affirmed, that the liberty of the press was incompatible with the permanent existence of any free government. Mr. Justice Blackstone has remarked, that the liberty of the press, properly understood, is essential to the nature of a free state; but that this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter, when published."
Someone will likely try to draw a distinction between Story's exposition and what Trump did. Story is talking about libel, and Fox News is talking about "access," they might say. Once again, there wasn't a journalist regularly covering the president until over a century (and 24 presidents) after the Founding, and that journalist didn't even have direct access much less "unfettered" access to the president or his administration. Some years later "Theodore Roosevelt saw Price standing in the rain on a cold day and arranged for a small room to be provided for him inside the White House. That was the start of the White House Press Room." So the "right to full/unfettered access" to the president, just like the right to say and print whatever they please with no regard for its veracity or ramifications, is a myth naturally derived from journalists themselves. (As they stand most to benefit from its belief.) As is the notion Trump is the only or first president to ever have an aversion to the press. What began as a gesture of kindness (and perhaps self-interest to some degree) from one president a century ago, is now a den of integrity bereft partisans and subversives who conspicuously believe their role and duty as "journalists" is to ruin the current president, for which purpose they claim "full" and "unfettered" access as their "right." Even if that's not the case with all of them, we may reasonably surmise that even those of them with the best of intentions, seek access purely in the hope of getting a scoop for their agency. Something that, while perhaps not deliberately wicked, is hardly meritorious. A journalist in the "Amanda Knox" documentary, Nick Pisa, articulates with incredible candor what motivates modern journalists. And it's not accurate reporting.
As you can see Nick is really torn up about the part he played in ruining a woman's life; slightly chuckling, as he recollects with an audible flippancy (if not fondness), the lies journalists like him perpetuated across the globe. Or to borrow Story's language the part he played to accuse another of infamous crimes that excited against her the indignation of all her fellow citizens. Nick is the epitome of the kind of men Adams claimed ran the presses in his day, but like pretty much every other journalist probably thinks it all justified by virtue of the profession itself. (Apparently not much has changed on that front in 200 years.) As story makes explicitly clear, in depth and at length, the freedom secured to the press by the Constitution is a freedom from government imposed preconditions on what they report or publish. He explicitly refers to an "unfettered" press as "despotic" and "incompatible with free government." (A journalist's "right to full access" to the president is nowhere mentioned and patently preposterous.) Franklin (who owned a newspaper) states he'd rather part with the freedom of the press altogether than be subjected to its abuses.
"A declaration that the federal government will never restrain the presses from printing any thing they please, will not take away the liability of the printers for false facts printed." - Thomas Jefferson, to James Madison, July 31, 1788.
In conclusion Donald Trump is not, by barring Kaitlan Collins from a press event, imposing preconditions on or controlling what the press may report. Donald Trump is not, by barring Kaitlan Collins from a press event, passing a law that abridges the freedom of the press. And since we're on the topic of the freedom of the press, the First Amendment only prohibits congress from doing such, not the president. The president not being conferred any legislative power by the Constitution, is fundamentally incapable of "making laws" that abridge the freedom of the press, at least so long as the government is operating in accordance with that document.
Chalk this up to another instance of leftists claiming a violation of imaginary rights they don't have.
I said some time ago, long ago even, or have been saying, that we will lose the right to bear arms. It's only a matter of time. You can disagree all you like, but the current national sentiment regarding "school shootings," will to any discerning/rational person give credence to my assertion. The current hysteria over school shootings is a testament to the power the media has over the collective minds of the populace. And despite their ostensible claims to hate the "liberal" media, Republican sentiment is also overwhelmingly dictated by such. (To which Republicans themselves are consistently oblivious.) And this is manifest in the ostentatious clamor, even among Republicans, to take measures, up to and even including the implementation of new gun control regulation, to "protect our children" from school shootings. Stupid people will, as always, suggest I oppose protecting children or some such nonsense. I have no problem with any pragmatic means of thwarting a malicious shooter, anywhere, in any situation. I take issue, rather, with the utterly distorted perception among most of those vociferously demanding "something be done."
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." - William Pitt, November 18, 1783.
Because their visceral appeals are but the manifestation of their facility. In other words, it merely shows how gullible they are, and how much their thoughts and opinions are directed by the media and how little they're grounded in logic. So before proceeding I will provide a bit more context. One of the ways Marxists have traditionally achieved the establishment of an authoritarian Socialist state is by assiduously fomenting social unrest and anarchy. The principle behind this is, at its core, simple enough. If you can create enough disorder, anarchy, etc., stupid people in their delusion and desperation will literally welcome, and even beg for, tyranny. Because tyrants impose order. Human beings are creatures of habit that crave structure in their lives. And thus order, even under a despot, is preferable to disorder for many. As illustrated previously on the blog Jonathan Smith described this clamor for safety and security at any cost occurring during Shay's Rebellion.
"Our distress was so great that we should have been glad to snatch at anything that looked like a government. Had any person that was able to protect us come and set up his standard, we should all have flocked to it, even if it had been a monarch, and that monarch might have proved a tyrant. So that you see that anarchy leads to tyranny; and better have one tyrant than so many at once."
It is no coincidence that leftists are assiduously instigating social unrest, and through extension the large, crime ridden riots we now regularly see that stem from such. Turns out you don't even have to provoke "actual" (tactile) social unrest, however. There doesn't even have to be a genuine threat to social stability and personal safety, if you can induce the false perception in the minds of the populace that such exists, through a politically weaponized media that hyper-saturates its reporting with coverage of school shootings, inducing the misconception in the average person that it's far more prevalent than it actually is. Again, it conveys the profound power of the media and entertainment industry upon the human mind, that people are consistently exhibiting palpable apprehension and fear, over something that hasn't impacted 99.99999% of them in any tangible way whatsoever, and with an almost statistical certainty never will. But the left, consummate demagogues, are constantly seeking to evoke emotion in the people. They want feeling instead of thinking, because emotion is the enemy of rationality. This is why they always tell the story of the poor elderly person who can't afford their own medication when pushing Socialist medicine, and conveniently omit the logistics; i.e., who will pay for it. And it would seem, on the gun issue, the left has finally found the right thing to tug on the collective heart strings of a populace it keeps perpetually apprehensive, paroxysmic even, through a complicit media; their kids. The slightest implication of harm to their children, real or imagined, causes rational thought to evaporate. "Had any person that was able to protect (their children) come and set up his standard, (they) should all have flocked to it." This is what we currently see across the country, particularly any time there's a "school" shooting. Now let's approach the subject rationally, instead of through the prism of emotion or biased, agenda driven media coverage. This is a map of alleged school shootings.
According to it there were around 60 "school shootings" in 2017. It should be understood that 60 school shootings on this website, does not equal 60 dead children, or even an actual shooting victim. Many, and I mean many, of the red dots you see on the map merely represent the discharge of a firearm on, or near school grounds, and things like "attempted suicide." For example (emphasis mine).
"Two men, 18 and 19, entered Pinewood Elementary school on New Year's Eve, and and fired their guns more than 60 times, causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage to classrooms and the library. No one was injured."
That's a quotation from the site, for 2017, Marysville, WA. That incident, in which no one was even injured much less killed, is considered a "school shooting" by this website; because leftists naturally want to include anything that consists of a gun and a school in relation to one another, no matter how tangentially, for the purposes of skewing the data against the Second Amendment. No one was killed? No one was injured? Accidental discharge? So what. That's another red dot, making the problem appear worse, to those who never look beyond the map. I've said it in the past, and I'll say it again. The notion of a gun violence "epidemic," particularly in a school setting in the Untied States, is a 100% media fabricated myth. (Your child is significantly more likely to be killed on the way to school than at school.) And I'll now illustrate this, again, as I have in the past. When I removed incidents of attempted suicide, and incidents in which no one was injured from the tally provided by the website above, I was left with 31 instances in which an actual "shooter" inflicted actual harm on someone at a school in 2017. According to Accuweather "Each year, 51 people are killed and hundreds more are injured by lightning in the United States." The odds of being struck by lighting in any given year are 1 in 1,000,000, and the greatest loss of life to lightning occurs while fishing. And from this I infer, that people literally have a higher chance of being struck by lightning, than being involved in or the victim of a "school shooting." How many of you are worried about your child being struck by lighting every morning when you wake up? Almost certainly none. And were I to ask why you're not worried about that, the answer to that question would be it's so improbable it's not worth worrying. So why are people in this country more concerned about something that is, on average, 38% less likely to occur than being struck by lightning? I'll tell you why. Because the TV told them they should be. Where is the clamor to save the lives of lightning strike victims? Where is the clamor to make fishing safer? People will now respond with fallacies, arguing one can be stopped and the other cannot, but that's simply not true. There are ways to diminish the chances of a fatal lightning strike, in much the same manner one may take steps to diminish the chances of being shot. And in instances of both, when they do occur, there often was little if anything that could be done, within reason, to prevent either. We could ban fishing, swimming, outdoor activities, etc., in efforts to mitigate the risk and loss of life. But no one's proposing that. The loss of life is just a necessary consequence, they'll say, of the freedom to do these things. Again, leftists do not have the same desire to ban fishing if it "saves just one life," because no one's ever deposed a tyrannical government with a fishing pole. Instances of such being done with firearms are numerous however. That's why they so aggressively target the latter and not the former. The narrative of the above site (with the map) is basically replicated across the gamut of leftist media coverage. CNN for example, which has its own map, as of May 25 states there have been "23 school shootings where someone was hurt or killed. That averages out to more than 1 shooting a week." The NYT reports that "(School shootings) have become so common that most people likely don’t remember them all — and in some cases, maybe you didn’t hear about them in the first place."
I mean, that's awful. Right? These school shootings are occurring so often (more than once a week), and so many people are dying to them, you can't even remember them all and maybe even didn't hear about them in the first place. You know, just like all the people who die to automobile accidents, stroke, or heart disease.
Is our failure to know about or remember every instance of a thing, proof of anything in particular, much less that something is a "problem" per se? How many of you know about and/or can remember how many times it's rained this month three states over from you? How many of you know about and/or remember every terrorist attack that's occurred in the last year? Or is it merely our innate tendency, as human beings, to place far less emphasis and importance upon things that do not affect us personally and far more upon things that do? (Even among school shooting victims, you would no doubt find if questioned, that none of them know about or can remember every other school shooting.) Ultimately, regardless of how many school shootings people know about or can remember, we're talking about something that as of May according to The Washington Post has killed less than half of a tenth of 1% as many people as influenza and pneumonia. But there are absolutely zero articles from those same sources lamenting the frequency of such deaths during the same period, or at all, much less pointing out how they're so numerous no one knows about or can remember them all. So I say, with no remorse, that I don't really care about school shootings. I don't fret about it or give it much thought at all. I don't really care about the crying relatives of victims on the TV. The media coverage of these things means nothing to me, because it's almost entirely (if not entirely) mindless hysteria, comparable to fretting over the 0.00001% of the population that dies every year to lightning strikes. And people will no doubt respond to that assertion with sanctimonious indignation. "Oh, how can you say that!? How can you be so heartless!? How can you not care!?" You mean just like you heartless bastards don't care, or even think about, the 51 people (on average) that die to lightning strikes every year? How do you like being construed as a monster for not making something so improbable, and indeed statistically negligible, the focus of your life? Where's your outrage over that loss of life? Where's your compassion? It never even crossed your mind til I apprised you of it. But hey, those people don't matter right? Because they weren't shot.
And that's another thing with which I have long taken issue. This hyper-emphasis on shooting fatalities, the egregiously disproportionate coverage such receives, etc., effectively renders the lives of shooting victims more important/valuable than those who die to any other cause. It diminishes the lives and deaths of essentially anyone not shot to death; they're lives don't matter because they had the audacity to die in a manner that doesn't immediately lend itself to advancing a political agenda. There are no journalists crying on the TV over the loss of life to influenza and pneumonia. (Which begs the question. Is there anyone more full of crap than a modern "journalist?") So, long story short, this "school shooting" hysteria, and yes, I'm calling it hysteria, because that's what it is, is abject proof this is a nation of mindless sheep led by the TV whichever way the Socialist left desires at any given time. You folks are only serving the leftist agenda by elevating those who get shot over others who die to every other cause of death. Shooting victims are not more important for being shot to death, than someone who died of cancer, or a lighting strike, etc. Except, thanks to facile Americans, they are. If you get shot you're memorialized for days, weeks, months even by a throng of sanctimonious frauds, who don't give a fraction of such concern to the victims of anything else, or far greater killers like "abortion." The notion this society gives a crap about the 10 kids killed in Sante Fe, Texas, or the lives of children in general, when it tolerates the liquidation of 3,000 kids a day in genocide mills, caught on video dismembering them and selling them for parts, is a hypocritical farce of perhaps unparalleled proportions. The loudest voices decrying the loss of children's lives in Sante Fe, are the same ones that would be celebrating their deaths as a victory for "women's rights," had their mothers simply not wanted them. So, in closing, I'm all for rational solutions to actual crises. But I will have no part of this damnable madness that grips the nation.
