ONE TEACHER'S ANTIDOTE FOR PC PEOPLE...
THE INTERNET -- KRYPTONITE FOR PC
By: Joe Blow (Not his real name)
etherzone.com
Isn't the Internet wonderful? I don't know about you, but I couldn't live without it. I haven't read a newspaper in at least three years and I'm proud of it. I get almost everything I need via online news sources. I have long ago forsaken the major TV network news organizations. With the exception of FoxNews they are all the same: liberal socialist mouthpieces for Leviathan. The news stories that I'm interested in are rarely carried by the major networks, and for good reason: I'm not politically correct and neither are these stories, but the major TV networks all are.
I always tell my high school students up front that I'm not PC. I think that they should know that. Whether or not they all understand what that means is another question. I often incorporate controversial online news articles into my lesson plans. Typically my students are very interested in these articles and they often ask, "Why haven't we heard anything about this on TV?" That's when the learning begins. I usually take the long way around, but in the end, they always figure it out: Because TV is PC.
Oh, there are notable exceptions, to be sure, but those programs are few and far between. MSNBC Investigates and ABC's John Stossel immediately come to mind. I recently showed my students one of Stossel's programs on how government intrusion into the free market dooms the taxpayer to high taxes, massive frustration, and poor service. My students were simply amazed. Most of them had never heard of such a thing. One student was so impressed that he took my video tape home and showed it to his parents. His father commented, "If only half of what he (Stossel) said is true, we're all in big trouble." No kidding.
Were it not for the Internet and online news articles, my students wouldn't know anything about eco-terrorism or the ELF. The same goes for the massive federal land grab in progress in Tulelake, California to ensure that the sucker fish gets all the water it needs, at the expense of 1200 farming families and over 100,000 acres of farmland, land that was given to WWII vets for their service.
My students were shocked when I followed that up several days later with a video piece from FoxNews on the Tulelake situation. They couldn't believe that 10,000+ protesters had openly defied a federal court order forbidding moving any water from the river to an irrigation ditch. When I explained to them that they had just witnessed massive, open rebellion against the federal government by peaceful protesters in their own state, they again wondered why they hadn't heard anything about it.
The best feedback that I received regarding the Tulelake story came from one of my juniors. He's a very bright student who asks very intelligent questions and he doesn't miss much. On his way out of class he said, "I leave your class more pissed off than any other class that I take!" I took that as good news. At least I had gotten his attention. I told him, "Getting pissed off is not required. That's your decision. My job is not to teach you what to think, but how to think. The rest is up to you."
Recently I explained to my students that political correctness is an insidious form of self-imposed slavery. It inhibits your freedoms of speech and association and it requires you to stifle what you think, say, and do, so as not to offend someone else's idea of what is acceptable. It requires you to transform yourself into a second class citizen. It is invidious and flies in the face of the Constitutional notion that the individual reigns supreme, not the federal government. It requires you to surrender your private property rights to placate NGOs like the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society. Political correctness is the ultimate stealth weapon of the socialists, but like Superman, PC has its own version of Kryptonite: the Internet.
The Internet is heavily infested with conservatives, Libertarians, anarchists, Constitutionalists, Federalists, and capitalists. Isn't it great? They revel in their ability to speak their minds without fear of reprisal for asserting their God-given right of free speech. Is it any wonder why every big government bureaucrat can't wait to regulate and tax it to death?
The good news is that the Internet is almost totally devoid of liberal competition. For whatever reason, liberals seem to avoid the Internet like the plague. How great is that! Talk about your home field advantage. As Karen De Coster writes, "...the Left is absolutely lacking on the net. The Left is a bit player in the huge free flow of info on the net. The Right (lovers of true liberty) owns the net!" Who's complaining? There is no bad news.
Sure, there is a lot of junk on the Internet, but that's the normal cost of doing business in a free market. It may take some time, and require you to do your homework, but isn't that what life is all about? Doing your homework is the key to success. My students hear that from me almost every day. Some of them are actually beginning to understand that I mean it in the broadest possible sense, and for the rest of their lives. You should see the look on their faces when the light finally comes on inside. It's priceless.
But for my money, I think that the neatest thing about the Internet is the ability to easily and quickly determine your own desired level of visibility and privacy. You can be as (in)visible as you desire, without sacrificing any of your ability to freely communicate. You can instantly disappear forever, or immediately reappear using a new identity and pick up again right where you left off--the Invisible Man on steroids.
In that respect, writing on the Internet is much like being a student in high school. No matter what happens, you can get a new life every four months or so. It's a very liberating feeling, to actually have and use the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, the very same ones that are trampled and ignored daily in the PC real world.
Fed up with PC people? Spend some time online. It will do wonders for your disposition. |
