Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary

MUST-READ: The definitive catalog of left-wing media bias

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This American Spectator essay is required reading. (H/T ECM)

It is basically a list of the most egregious examples of media bias in recent memory. I am not old enough to remember some of these, especially the JFK ones. So this was a real eye-opener to me.

Here’s a summary of the points raised:

What’s particularly interesting is that the stories not reported about JFK were in the early 1960s, the effort to not report the story about President Clinton was in 1998, the story on John Edwards was hushed through the time it counted most, in the election cycle of 2008 when he was a serious presidential candidate, and the decision not to report on Van Jones was — well — two weeks ago, and ACORN but last week. Which is to say, September of 2009.

In other words, across five decades of American journalistic history, the instinct of many Old Media institutions — specifically including NBC and the New York Times — has been to deliberately withhold the truth. To quite deliberately use their journalism skills and tools to misrepresent those whose politics they do not favor.

Were this, say, the field of medicine, practitioners of this kind of thing would lose their license to practice, sued for and surely convicted of malpractice. As it is, the examples listed here are what might be termed “media malpractice,” evidencing a clear and convincing pattern of deceit.

The mainstream media is totally untrustworthy.

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Commentary

MUST-READ: Has the decline of chastity and courtship hurt young people?

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Here’s an article by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post. (H/T The American Thinker via ECM)

Excerpt:

The casual sex promoted in advertising and entertainment often leads, in the real world of fragile hearts and STDs, to emotional and physical wreckage.

[…]…having a series of low-commitment relationships does not bode well for later marital commitment. Some of this expresses preexisting traits — people who already have a “nontraditional” view of commitment are less likely to be committed in marriage. But there is also evidence, according to Wilcox, that multiple failed relationships can “poison one’s view of the opposite sex.” Serial cohabitation trains people for divorce.

I actually think that a series of sexual experiences outside of marriage poison’s one’s view of the opposite sex and trains people for divorce. I’ve put a lot of thought into the things that should be done during friendships and courtships in order to train the couple for marriage, and pre-marital sex is not one of those things!

There are a lot of people out there today who think that they can get the end goal of a fairy tale wedding, a long, stable marriage, and well-behaved children, by making moral decisions significantly different than their grandparents made. The blessings that our grandparents enjoyed were causally connected to many moral realities that young people seem to have rejected as old-fashioned and outmoded.

I think one of the major reasons why I value chastity so much is because I have come to realize that sex outside of a commitment really affects people, especially women. There is a real difference in the way that I am treated by women who are chaste – they are a lot more vulnerable and susceptible. They are also a lot more open, interested and engaged in our platonic friendships as well.

I think there is an awful lot of sex going on out there, but not a lot of chivalry and romance. I think one of the problems we need to face is that we need to be more cautious about tearing down the morality that was been in place for centuries in the Christian West. Before destroying the foundations, we should first ask ourselves what the consequences will be on other people’s incentives.

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Walter Williams asks how well public schools perform for the money

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Walter Williams explains how much public schools cost and how well they perform.

One of the most left-wing places in the country is Washington, D.C. – which votes 90% Democrat.

How good are schools run by Democrats?

Only 14 percent of Washington’s fourth-graders score at or above proficiency in the reading and math portions of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test. Their national rank of 51 makes them the nation’s worst. Eighth-graders are even further behind with only 12 percent scoring at or above proficiency in reading and 8 percent in math and again the worst performance in the nation. One shouldn’t be surprised by Washington student performance on college admissions tests. They have an average composite SAT score of 925 and ACT score of 19.1, compared to the national average respectively of 1017 and 21.1. In terms of national ranking, their SAT and ACT rankings are identical to their fourth- and eighth-grade rankings — dead last.

And how expensive are schools run by Democrats?

During the 2006-07 academic year, expenditures per pupil averaged $13,848 compared to a national average of $9,389. That made Washington’s per pupil expenditures the third highest in the nation coming in behind New Jersey ($14,998) and New York ($14,747). Washington’s teacher-student ratio is 13.9 compared with the national average of 15.3 students per teacher, ranking 18th in the nation. What about teacher salaries? Washington’s teachers are the highest paid in the nation, having an average annual salary of $61,195 compared with the nation’s average $46,593.

Public schools cost too much and perform too little.