500 MB Nyheder Direkte fra Internet 5/500 MB nyheder direkte fra internet CD 5.iso/start/progs/text/jun95-f2.txt

Text File | 1995-05-27 | 15KB | 288 lines

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
* The Future Of Freedom Foundation * Jun/95 *


The Oklahoma Tragedy and the Mass Media
=========================================
by Richard M. Ebeling

The hundreds of pictures and thousands of words that have appeared
in the popular press since the Oklahoma City bombing tell us much
about America and its people. The images and descriptions of the
killed and wounded have aroused the sympathy and concern of
millions of Americans. Countless prayers have been offered for the
dead and those they left behind, and charitable contributions have
been sent from every corner of the country to assist in the wake of
a terrible human tragedy. Once again, Americans have shown
themselves to be a generous and caring people, in the tradition
that has been the hallmark of all previous generations since the
founding of the nation.

In those pictures and words, however, has emerged another side of
contemporary America. It has to do with how many reporters,
opinion-makers, intellectuals, and political analysts see America,
because those numerous stories about various aspects of the
Oklahoma tragedy have not only contained the facts of the case and
the surrounding circumstances, but interpretations, as well, that
have given the facts a particular shade and color. In other words,
these molders of public opinion have attempted to convince us what
the Oklahoma tragedy is supposed to mean in terms of American
politics and culture.

With few exceptions, the mass media and popular press generally
have had one interpretive narrative running through all the stories
and commentaries: America is threatened by a minority of "right-
wing" extremists who preach hate for and fear of the U.S.
government; this minority is obsessed with a desire to arm itself
to the teeth with all types of weaponry and is forming itself into
citizenry militias that pose a danger all across the land; this
minority is linked to or influenced by racist and neo-Nazi
organizations; and even when these groups outwardly disown
violence, their rhetoric and arguments are the feeding ground for
creating "crazies" who are willing to commit terrorist acts against
the government and innocent people.

The uniformity of this interpretation demonstrates just how much
the mass media and many in the intellectual community are out of
step with what is actually going on in America and how influenced
they are by the "spin" given to events in the briefings and
handouts supplied by various government agencies. The reporters,
intellectuals, and political analysts who dominate that mass media
basically buy into the "party line" of the government
establishment.

But what else can one expect? After all, they went through the same
propaganda mill of state education from kindergarten to graduate
school. They all tend to look upon the state as the benevolent
redistributor of wealth and the caring social engineer who will
remove the blemishes of an unjust market society. They all tend to
view themselves as the educated elite who see and know so much more
than the average middle-class American who populates that vast
wasteland that separates New York from San Francisco.

Let us look at some of their misunderstandings of the Oklahoma
tragedy.

Who is responsible? Typical of the collectivist mentality and its
corollary of collective guilt, the mass media immediately picked up
on President Clinton's theme that it was not the actual bomber who
was responsible for the act of terrorism in Oklahoma City. No, it
was the purveyors of hate and anger on talk radio and the Internet,
whose sick conception of the government made the perpetrator do it.
He could not help himself, the evil hatemongers made him do it. To
admit that the perpetrator had acted on the basis of his own free
will would mean that he was responsible for his actions and their
consequences. This is too much for the collectivists in our midst,
who have cultivated the ideology of a "nation of victims," to
accept. Without this ideological anchor, what would be left of
their aging rationales for redistribution and social safety nets
and the political power that comes with these government policies?
Who are these hatemongers, with their antigovernment paranoia?
According to Time (May 8, 1995), "Most are not violent people, and
many of them have understandable grievances about feeling left
behind in the economic competition of the 1990s." Yes, even many of
the hatemongers and paranoids who made the perpetrator do it are
themselves victims, according to the thinking of those in the mass
media. They are supposedly the latest victims of capitalism; these
are the people who lost their jobs when heartless corporations
moved jobs overseas in search of cheap labor. They feel resentful
as the benevolent state tries to compensate for the injustices of
the past through humane affirmative-action policies. And in search
of "simplistic" answers to "complex" problems, these "simple
people" encapsulate all their frustrations in the government, which
has let them down.

That many of the people who have expressed concern and fear of the
government have done so because the state has increasingly
threatened or suppressed various individual freedoms is apparently
beyond the understanding of the enlightened scribes of the mass
media. To take seriously the ordinary American's perspective might
undermine their idyllic fantasy of the paternalistic state, a state
that knows what is better for the people than the people
themselves.

What freedoms have been lost or threatened that drives these
"extremists" and "paranoids"? The establishment press has
enumerated many of the concerns about lost liberties that many of
these Americans are fearful of losing. In the Western states, there
has emerged a growing movement in opposition to the encroachment of
the federal government over land use, water rights, and
government's abrogation of the private title to property in the
name of "environmental protection." State and local governments
have lost their traditional authority to an overpowerful and
overbearing Washington. Tax burdens confiscate the income and
wealth of those who have earned it in the marketplace; the Federal
Reserve System possesses an unlimited authority to print paper
money in any quantity deemed desirable by the monetary central
planners. The taxing and money-monopoly powers of the federal
government, therefore, threaten the economic well-being of every
American.

Federal agencies like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
run roughshod over the rights of the citizenry, the cruelest and
most brutal example being the massacre of the Branch Davidians at
Waco, Texas, in April 1993. Even one of the members of the jury at
the Branch Davidian trial following the massacre said afterwards:
"The federal government was absolutely out of control there. We
spoke in the jury room about the fact that the wrong people were on
trial, that it should have been the ones that planned the raid and
orchestrated it and insisted on carrying out this plan who should
have been on trial." (For one of the best articles on the federal
siege, attack, and destruction of the Branch Davidian compound and
the perverse trial and sentencing of some of the survivors, see
"Waco: A Massacre and Its Aftermath" by Dean M. Kelley, First
Things, May 1995.) Those who have chosen to arm themselves and
train in the proper use of weaponry have concluded that the
greatest danger to their life and property may come from "out-of-
control" federal agencies that seem to stand outside the law and
appear to be answerable to no one except themselves.

But in the eyes of the establishment press, these are "macho males"
wanting to "play war-games" in battle fatigues on weekends. The
vast majority of those who report and write analyses for the mass
media cannot understand why the "progressive" functions,
responsibilities, and powers of the government cause such
consternation among a growing number of Americans. Their articles
ooze with sneering sarcasm and ridicule. Viewing themselves as
enlightened moderns, they do not even realize that they are
dominated in their own thinking by that a-thousand-times refuted
socialist idea that private-property rights can be abolished or
significantly diminished with no loss of personal rights and civil
liberties.

But all rights ultimately arise from private-property rights and
can only be retained in the long run when they are respected and
protected. And the first of these property rights is the right of
self-ownership and the corollary right of self-defense, regardless
of whether the aggressor is another individual or the state.

What is "right-wing" extremism? What makes someone "right-wing" in
the eyes of the establishment press? From the descriptions offered
in the mass media, a "right-winger" advocates strict constitutional
constraints on the powers of the government; believes in the
federalist principle of a division of powers among the national,
state, and local levels of government, with primary decision-making
at the local level because it is closest to the people's control;
views that individuals should be secure in their lives, papers, and
property from arbitrary searches and seizures; and considers that
individuals should be self-responsible for the economic well-being
of their families and the moral education of their children. And
what makes someone a right-wing "extremist"? An extremist is anyone
who actually takes these ideas seriously, believing that they
represent the foundation of any free society and are worth
defending.

The mass media tries to muddy the waters by saying that many of
these "right-wing extremist" groups are connected with or
influenced by racist, neo-Nazi or fascist "radical extremists." The
attempt to lump together strict constitutionalist individualism
with neo-Nazism or fascism just shows how much those who write for
the establishment press are still trapped in the Stalinist thinking
of the 1930s, when the communist political lexicon declared that
fascism was the extreme, last line of defense of capitalism and
only the "progressive left" led by communists represented truth and
goodness.

Who is the fascist? Individualism and the political philosophy of
limited government is not only inconsistent with but is the exact
opposite of fascism and Nazism. Under fascism and Nazism, the state
reigns supreme with absolute power over everyone and all forms of
property. It can well be asked:

Who is the fascist, when the president of the United States and
many Democrats and Republicans in Congress call for expanded
authority for the FBI and other federal security agencies to
intrude into the lives of the American citizenry?

Who is the fascist, when the call is made for increased power
for the FBI to undertake "roving wiretapping" or have easier
access to the telephone and credit-card records of the general
population?

Who is the fascist, when the proposal is made to make it easier
for the FBI to investigate and infiltrate any political
organization or association because the government views it as a
potential terrorist danger?

Who is the fascist, when it is proposed that a foreign resident or
visitor in the United States should be open to deportation without
a full disclosure of the supposed terrorist evidence against him?

Who is the fascist, when it is proposed that the president should
have the discretion to decide what foreign organization or
association is peaceful or potentially violent and, therefore,
whether Americans shall be permitted to voluntarily donate to it?

Who is the fascist, when it is suggested that perhaps shortwave
transmission licenses should be revoked because some in the
government or on the political left do not like what others say in
their exercise of free speech?

Who is the fascist, when the critics of "right-wing extremism"
hint that perhaps the government might have to regulate Internet,
because the critics do not like the ideas that others choose to
share among themselves?

Where do we go from here? The deaths in the Oklahoma City bombing
were indeed a tragedy for America. That tragedy, however, will only
be compounded if we allow ourselves to be taken down the road of
even more government powers and controls because of the rhetorical
and ideological biases that still dominate political and mass-media
discourse in the United States. We have reached this point in
America because of the distance we have already traveled down that
road. Let us, instead, retrace our steps and find the road of
freedom once again. We need a society in which everyone is safe and
secure in his personal liberty, private property, and in his
voluntary and peaceful associations with his fellow men. In the
end, that more than anything else would heal the hurt, diminish the
fear, and remove the anger that is causing divisions in our
country. And the tragedies of both Waco and Oklahoma City could
then pass into history, remaining only as lessons for us to
remember and to learn from.

Professor Ebeling is the Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics at
Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, and serves as vice
president of academic affairs for The Future of Freedom Foundation.

**************************************************************************
                 * The Future of Freedom Foundation *
                  ----------------------------------
                  11350 Random Hills Road, Suite 800
                          Fairfax, VA 22030
                         Tel. [phone]
                         Fax: [phone]

Dear Friend of Freedom:

    We invite you to subscribe to our monthly publication,
Freedom Daily ($15 per year; $20 foreign), and to become a financial
supporter of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

    Our mission is to present an uncompromising moral, philosophical,
and economic case for the libertarian philosophy. In the five years we
have been publishing our essays, no one has ever found any compromise of
libertarian principles. Whatever the issue the welfare state; the regulated
economy; gun control; the CIA; Waco; Randy Weaver; health care; public
schooling; the drug war; the Persian Gulf War; trade restrictions; immigra-
tion controls; civil liberties; Social Security we hit hard and we do not
pull our punches. We have never advocated "reform." When it comes to
advancing liberty, we always talk in terms of abolishing, ending,
eliminating, and repealing.

    We hope you will subscribe to Freedom Daily and become a financial
contributor to The Future of Freedom Foundation.  And we believe that you
would find our books and tapes highly rewarding. We are certain that you
will not find another foundation that applies libertarian principles in
such a consistent, uncompromising, and hard-hitting way.

                Yours for liberty,

                Jacob G. Hornberger
                Founder and President
                The Future of Freedom Foundation
[end]