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Commentary

How Google, Facebook and Twitter brainwash users against conservatism

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Why do people think that CNN are biased leftist clowns?
Be careful with the liberal media

Here’s a story from Rachel Alexander, writing at The Stream. I cannot cut and past the whole article, but I can excerpt a sample of what she found.

She writes about Google:

Ever notice when you search for news or politics on Google News that the majority of search results tend to be articles from left-leaning publications? A search on Hillary Clinton today returns almost entirely articles by left-leaning publications on the first page of results. But is that just because liberals are more likely to search for stories about Hillary and are also more likely to prefer liberal sources? Maybe the Google result is just reflecting user preferences. Well, let’s try it for Donald Trump. I just did and got a similar result.

Fox News didn’t show up in either search, never mind that it’s a top ten news website with the most most popular television news network in America, and one that has been covering Trump’s presidential campaign obsessively. Only after clicking “Explore In-Depth” and scrolling well down the page did a Fox News story appear, in the 12th position, just below an article by Bloomington, Indiana’s Herald Times.

It’s well-known that Facebook is biased to the left, as well.

She writes:

Facebook’s Trending News feature is also biased. John Jalsevac at Live Action News observed how the undercover Planned Parenthood videos were featured in Trending News, but not in a way that readers would click and go to the videos themselves. Instead, readers were routed to two articles Planned Parenthood had posted on its Facebook page.

“Someone at Facebook’s headquarters is responsible for coming up with a one-line description of why a particular term is ‘trending,’” Jalsevac writes, “and then (it would appear), choosing which posts to give pride of place when a user clicks on that trending topic.” By now it should surprise no one that the Facebook employee apparently chose to direct people to Planned Parenthood to get the organization’s spin on the videos rather than to the videos themselves or to some news site that was at least attempting to offer an objective description of the controversial videos and Planned Parenthood’s reaction.

Facebook frequently removes conservative posts and bans conservatives, drawing a line where it thinks content is too extreme.

Here’s an example of how Facebook censors viewpoints that conflict with their secular leftist values.

Rachel talks about Twitter, too:

Twitter also frequently bans conservative users, known as “Twitter Gulag.” Left-wing activists target outspoken conservatives and report them en masse to Twitter, claiming they are abusing its policies — usually claiming “harassment” — and Twitter often complies and deactivates their accounts. One conservative who was banned, Todd Kincannon, fought back in 2013 by forming the Twitter Gulag Defense Network and creating a list of tips to avoid being banned. He is still banned from Twitter three years later. Another outspoken conservative, Robert Stacy McCain, was just banned this past week, with no explanation given.

Prominent conservatives Milo Yiannopoulos, tech editor at Breitbart, and John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, recently lost their verified checks (a blue checkmark that indicates the account of a public figure is authentic), which is considered a step toward eventually banning an account. The conservative actor Adam Baldwin was temporarily banned after joking about #GamerGate, a hashtag he created for gamers fed up with political correctness.

Robert Stacy McCain and I are on each other’s blogrolls. If you want to support him, you can tweet something with the hastag #FreeStacy. I did. He’s a good man, and fearless about what he writes.

But I do have a response to this.

First of all, I don’t recommend that you have a TV in your home, even if the only news that you get is Fox News. TV is a delivery mechanism for the thought of secular leftists. You’re better off just buying or renting the programs you want, rather than uncritically taking in the opinions of uneducated clowns on CNN, MSNBC, the Comedy Channel, etc.

You should instead read a balance of left, center and right news sites. For example, on this blog, I will frequently link to the New York Times and the Washington Post, and sometimes the Los Angeles Times. Those are the sites I read on the left. On the right, I read the Washington Times, the Washington Free Beacon and Investors Business Daily.

Also, it’s a good idea to get yourself set up with conservative voices, that will balance out the liberal garbage that you will undoubtedly be confronted with by co-workers, etc. I recommend listening to the Ben Shapiro podcast and the Dana Loesch podcast. Ben Shapiro has no commercials. Dana has some short commercials. I also like the Weekly Standard podcast, but they are more establishment. And I love Washington Watch with Tony Perkins – president of the Family Research Council. My favorite podcasting app for my phone and tablet is Player FM. It’s free, has no ads, and works really well.

Commentary

Should Christians seek to help the poor by growing a secular government?

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Major welfare programs as of 2012
Major welfare programs as of 2012

I was asked a question by e-mail by Kerri about why some Christians like Bernie Sanders and his plan for big government, more spending, higher taxes and more debt.

I found a paper (PDF) on the University of Washington web site that makes the case for why Christians ought to care about more than just social issues when it comes to politics and elections.

Here’s the abstract:

What accounts for cross-national variation in religiosity as measured by church attendance and non-religious rates? Examining answers from both secularization theory and the religious economy perspective, we assert that cross-national variation in religious participation is a function of government welfare spending and provide a theory that links macro-sociological outcomes with individual rationality. Churches historically have provided social welfare. As governments gradually assume many of these welfare functions, individuals with elastic preferences for spiritual goods will reduce their level of participation since the desired welfare goods can be obtained from secular sources. Cross-national data on welfare spending and religious participation show a strong negative relationship between these two variables after controlling for other aspects of modernization.

Here’s the conclusion:

It is quite apparent that there is a strong statistical relationship between state social welfare spending and religious participation and religiosity. Countries with higher levels of per capita welfare have a proclivity for less religious participation and tend to have higher percentages of non-religious individuals. People living in countries with high social welfare spending per capita even have less of a tendency to take comfort in religion, perhaps knowing that the state is there to help them in times of crisis.34 As laid out in the theory above, there is likely a substitution effect for some individuals between state-provided services and religious services. Religion will still be there to serve the spiritual needs of people seeking answers to the philosophic mysteries of life, but those who value those spiritual goods less than the tangible welfare benefits churches provide will be less likely to participate in religious services once secular substitutes become available. Given that religious practice and values are often passed down from generation to generation, the weakening of practice in one generation will likely translate into weaker practice in subsequent generations. Does this mean that secularization theory is correct in its prediction that religion will gradually fade away? Doubtful. Realizing that there is still a yearning among many people to understand the mysteries of life, religion is not likely to dissipate at any time soon. Government simply cannot offer credible substitutes for these less tangible, supernatural goods. The explosion in spirituality once religion was made legal in former Soviet bloc countries lends credence to this assertion (Greeley 1994). As religious markets become more deregulated in various parts of the world, it is likely that new religious movements will take advantage of increased liberty and discover ways to expand.

Perhaps one of the most important lessons from the findings above is that the religiosity of a society is not simply determined by sociological factors. Government policy can play an important role in shaping the religiosity of a nation. Policies aimed at regulating the activities of religious organizations — from tax laws to zoning regulations — have important effects on the firms that supply religious goods and services. Many of these policies are designed consciously to promote or inhibit religious practice. Alternatively, welfare policy has been shown here to unintentionally affect the demand for religious services, likely over the course of generations. And, finally, since an extensive welfare state is considered by many to be a hallmark of modernized societies, the microfoundational analysis presented above provides a way of incorporating a component part of the secularization thesis (which relies heavily on notions of modernization) into the religious economy perspective.

Have you ever heard a sermon that addresses the size of government and individual liberty and prosperity? I haven’t. You’d have to be reading Christian scholars like Wayne Grudem or Jay Richards to find that. The typical church you attend either praises big government or says nothing about it. After all, we can keep making withdrawals on the liberties we have right now without ever worrying about having to make any deposits, right? Everything will be fine, and it’s easier not to have to think about what’s down the road to serfdom, so long as the scenery is nice for us right now. Religion is primarily about comfort, not truth. Right?

The truth is that religious liberty and freedom of conscience works better in societies where individuals are large, and government is small. We can do more as Christians to help others and draw attention to Christ when we are allowed to keep our own money, and make our own lives the way we want. When a secular government takes half our money to buy the votes of people who just want money and not a transformed life, we lose. It’s our job to attach wisdom and goodness to our giving when we give of ourselves to others. In the long run, that wisdom and goodness rubs off on the people we give to, reducing the need for them to be dependent on others. Government just takes our money and sends it to people who are living unwisely, with no strings attached. That will never get people out of dependency. It’s a mistake for Christians to use government as a substitute for doing the work of charity. That’s our job.

Commentary

A closer look at the beliefs and habits of Major Richard Winters

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Major Richard Winters, U.S. Army Airborne
Major Richard Winters, U.S. Army Airborne

This post came to me from Brian, and it’s from the Art of Manliness blog. I blogged about Winters on D-Day and here is that post.

Let’s find out what made Dick Winters tick.

Excerpt:

Growing up, Dick Winters was by temperament and intention a self-described loner. In high school and college, he was content to focus less on his social life and more on his personal development. Sports, work, and especially his studies took priority over “running around.” Simplifying his life in this way allowed him “time to spend with my inner thoughts and ideas stimulated by reading.”

Winters took a similar approach to serving in the Army, eschewing social pursuits in favor of studying military manuals and critically thinking through life and leadership. While training stateside, he “preferred a quiet evening in the barracks to the nightlife” of cities close to camp, and he abstained from joining “in the parties and social gatherings in which most officers participated.”

After their paratrooper training was complete, Easy Company deployed to the quaint English village of Aldbourne for nine months of preparation preceding the invasion of Normandy. On his first Sunday there, Winters attended a church service and then visited a small adjoining cemetery, where he “sat on a bench and took time for personal reflection and simply to enjoy some solitude.” It was there he met Mr. and Mrs. Barnes, who proved crucial in extending such opportunities for private contemplation.

The Barneses, who had already lost a son in the war, took an immediate liking to Dick, and when the Army asked who among the natives of Aldbourne might be willing to billet pairs of its officers, they volunteered their home — as long as Winters was one of the two.

Winters preferred planning to passion and spontaneity, because he believed that preparing in advanced trained him to make better decisions on the fly:

The Barneses adopted Dick as one of their own, and provided him with a quiet refuge in which to hone his martial monasticism. While other officers and troops hung out at the village pub, and enjoyed the social life in neighboring towns, Winters rarely left Aldbourne, choosing instead to pore over tactical manuals and plan for D-Day. In preparing to lead men in combat, he felt his time to be extremely precious and thus devoted as much of it as possible to becoming “totally proficient in tactics and technology” and developing his own “personal perspective on command.”

Major Winters ultimately found that his “intense study paid huge dividends in Normandy.” Not only did he have ready solutions to the challenges he and his men faced in combat, but his hours of quiet reflection proved invaluable in another way.

As the famous saying goes, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” and Major Winters encountered many scenarios to which there was no textbook answer as to how to proceed. In such situations he proved able to deftly improvise. The months of stillness to which Winters had exposed his mind left it keenly responsive to insights and intuitions — giving him what he termed a true “sixth sense” when it came to making decisions.

Winters was careful to not let women interfere with his mission:

Most monks take a lifetime vow of chastity; Dick Winters didn’t extend it that far, but he did put the pursuit of women on hold for a season.

To Winters, romantic relationships were another distracting entanglement that would prevent him from fully developing himself and following the way of the monastic warrior. As is true of many eminent men, in his youth he made going after girls a low priority, and went on “only a handful of dates.”

When Winters went off to war, he and a female acquaintance became pen pals. She developed romantic feelings for the strapping officer, but he steadfastly kept her at arm’s length. In observing the men of Easy Company, he had found that those with romantic attachments were more susceptible to combat fatigue and shell shock.

[…]Bachelors have less to lose and are therefore able to more fearlessly throw themselves into the fight. Thus, desiring to detach himself from anything that would inhibit his focus on the task at hand, Winters was committed to remaining in full-on monk mode for the duration…

Winters writes:

“under fire in combat, whether it’s rifle fire or artillery, the men who seemed to have their eyes glazed over quickest and put their heads down and kept their heads down, were those who were married. Either they were married or in love or had a fiancée back home. They were the first to show fear. Those who hadn’t fallen in love or who weren’t engaged seemed to be able to hold on longer.”

[…]“As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t even kiss a girl’s hand, for as a soldier, I don’t want any more people than necessary to even know me. It’s no good. If a soldier lives, O.K., get out of the army and forget it. If he doesn’t, O.K., there are just that fewer people who feel the toll of the war.”

Isn’t it amazing that in today’s society, it’s just the opposite. The “best” men are the ones who are able to get the largest number of attractive women to have recreational sex with them before marriage. It didn’t used to be that way.

The article talks about how Winters was very serious about physical fitness. He felt that his mental ability and his moral courage was based on being physically fit.

But I want to focus on his moral character:

Winters believed that the cornerstone of character was honesty, and that from there you worked to develop a moral compass that was guided by the virtues of courage, fairness, consistency, selflessness, and respect for your fellow men. He felt that integrity was paramount as well, noting that “it is easier to do the right thing when everyone is looking,” but “more difficult to do what you should do when you are alone.”

To these core values, Winters added his own ascetic precepts, choosing to abstain from canoodling with women, drinking alcohol (he was a lifelong teetotaler), and, as we shall see, swearing.

Winters says that the most important part of being a leader is sharing the burden of risk and danger with his men:

“The intensity of a fire, or a heavy concentration, to be a leader, you have to be able to concentrate on that fire and move just as soon as it stops or the last round hits. Move. Get up. Start circulating among your men. Is everybody okay? Let’s get up. Let’s move. Keep your eye open for an attack. Get their attention. Move among your men as quickly as possible. And moving among them—the fact that they see you and they’re talking to you—they know that you are there and you are talking to them, and it makes all the difference in the world to know that you are not in this thing by yourself. That’s what officers must do—break the cycle of fear. If a soldier is concentrating on his own feelings and on his own fear, and he sees you moving around, he realizes that you’re sharing the burden with him. That’s why he can then move.”

His morality was rationally grounded in a Christian worldview:

For Major Winters, his spirit-maintaining ritual was church attendance. Very few soldiers attended religious services while overseas, even in the anxious days leading up to the invasion of Normandy. But for Winters, going to church “became the bedrock of [his] character” and he only missed 3 services in the 9 months he lived in Aldbourne. As he explained to his pen pal, “The way I feel about it, it is a very special privilege to be able to go at all and I don’t want to miss a chance.”

The article is definitely worth a read. We are surrounded by so many celebrities and athletes with low moral character that it is nice to go back in time and learn what Americans used to be like. You could do much worse than learning from Richard Winters.

Previously, I blogged about Winters’ heroism at Brecourt Manor and Nijmegen, as well as another famous airborne officer, Ronald Speirs, at the Battle of Foy.