The Real Culprits

[Geee]

American Thinker:

The lights in the theater came on, but the spectators sat still in shocked silence, stunned by the revelations they saw in Dinesh D'Souza's documentary, 2016: Obama's America. As we shuffled toward the exit, an elderly man next to me said shakily, "God help us!" But I wondered whether any of these people, who were exposed, for the first time, to their president's outlandish biography, asked themselves, "Why didn't we know?" Why indeed?

President James Madison: "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." (1822, James Madison to W. T. Barry, 4 Aug. 1822)

An even more ominous warning by Benjamin Franklin: "A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins."

Today's America is hardly a "nation of well-informed men." But are Americans really to blame for their ignorance? Yes, to some extent they are. Anyone willing to invest a little time in a search for facts can find plenty of them literally at his fingertips. But vast numbers of Americans are still totally dependent for their information -- and thus in large measure for their political opinions -- on the TV networks and the printed media.

It is the duty of the press to perform the crucial function of enlightening the public. But the liberal media refuses to act as a guardian of democracy, fulfilling its obligation enshrined in the First Amendment. Rather than supplying its customers with unbiased, factual information, it feeds them a steady diet of blatant propaganda. Thus, it is the liberal media that bears the lion's share of the blame for the benighted state of much of the American electorate.