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Politics : FREE AMERICA -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (1199)	4/4/2006 12:37:29 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 14758

Sigh! People who have made up their minds and don't want to be confused by the facts are a danger to the whole society.... Even institutions that are set up to pass on facts -- the media, schools, academia -- too often treat facts as expendable and use their strategic positions to filter out facts which go against their own preconceptions. Are facts obsolete? by Thomas Sowell Townhall.com Apr 4, 2006 What is more frightening than any particular policy or ideology is the widespread habit of disregarding facts. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey put it this way: "Demagoguery beats data." People who urge us to rely on the United Nations, instead of acting "unilaterally," or who urge us to follow other countries in creating a government-run medical care system, often show not the slightest interest in getting facts about the actual track record of either the UN or government-run medical systems. Those who believe in affirmative action likewise usually see no reason to find out what actually happens under such policies, as distinguished from what they wish, hope, or imagine happens. The crusade for "a living wage" that will enable a worker to support a family proceeds without the slightest interest in finding out whether most people who are making low wages actually have any family to support -- much less seeking out the facts about what actually happens after the government sets wages. People who have made up their minds and don't want to be confused by the facts are a danger to the whole society. Since the votes of such people count just as much as the votes of people who know what they are talking about, politicians have every incentive to pass laws and create policies that pander to ignorant notions, if those notions are widespread. Even institutions that are set up to pass on facts -- the media, schools, academia -- too often treat facts as expendable and use their strategic positions to filter out facts which go against their own preconceptions. Crimes against homosexuals, blacks, or the homeless are big news to be dramatized, repeated, and denounced. Crimes committed by homosexuals, blacks, or the homeless are not -- and are often passed over in silence by much of the media. The net result is that the public gets filtered facts, which can create an impression the direct opposite of the truth. We learn from the media's filtered facts that there are countries with stronger gun-control laws than ours which have lower murder rates. We seldom, if ever, learn from the media about countries which have stronger gun-control laws than ours and whose murder rates are two or three times higher than ours. The media also filter out facts about countries where gun ownership is far more widespread than in the United States -- and who nevertheless have lower murder rates. Those who are in the business of teaching the young, whether in the public schools or on college campuses, too often see this not as a responsibility to pass on what is known but as an opportunity to indoctrinate students with their own beliefs. Many "educators" and the gurus who indoctrinated them actively disparage "mere facts," which they say you can get from an almanac or encyclopedia. The net result is a student population that does not even know enough to know what needs to be looked up, much less how to analyze facts, so as to test opposing beliefs -- as distinguished from how to gather information to support a preconceived notion that happens to be fashionable in the schools and colleges. Yet people are considered to be "educated" after they have spent so many years in ivy-covered buildings, absorbing the preconceptions that prevail there. Facts that go against preconceived notions are likely to be ignored, even by many scholars. For example, slavery is an issue that is widely discussed as if it were something peculiar to Africans enslaved by Europeans, instead of something suffered and inflicted around the world by people of every race, color, and religion. Two books about more European slaves brought to North Africa than there were African slaves brought to America have been published in recent years. They are "Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters" by Robert Davis and "White Gold" by Giles Milton. Both books have been largely ignored by the media and academia alike -- and the first went out of print, less than 6 months after being published. Apparently scholars, as well as journalists, have made up their minds and don't want to be confused by the facts. Thomas Sowell is the prolific author of books such as Black Rednecks and White Liberals and Applied Economics. Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com townhall.com amazon.com amazon.com

To: epicure who wrote (1199)	4/12/2006 2:59:47 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14758

The Saddam files (continued) Clarice Feldman The American Thinker The treasure trove of captured documents from Saddam Hussein’s regime collectively known as Harmony, which are now available for translation by anyone with access to the internet, continues to yield indications of WMD programs. As much of the press continues to pick around at intelligence assessments and analyses pre- and post- war which were in error, it is carfeully averting its eyes from evidence that Saddam was hiding the illegal weapons he had, was working closely with terrorists and had every intention of continuing to produce WMDs as soon as the sanctions program -already weakened-was over. The bloggers are not ignoring the captured documents which contain this evidence. JVeritas, a Free Republic poster has taken on the arduous task of translating and posting these documents. Here’s the latest: <<< In pages 63 and 64 of document Document CMPC-2003-002284 , there is secret and confidential memo dated September 16 1998 concerning a meeting of the National Monitoring Department to discuss how to destroy some “non necessary documents” and keep the necessary one in a safe place according to the memo but the most important part of the memo is a paragraph on how to handle “The Researches That Cannot Be Declared and that is related with the previous Prohibited Programs of WMD and how to make sure that information about these researches will not leak to the outside because it will be too dangerous if this happened”. Yet another document that proves without any doubt that Saddam Regime never stopped working in his WMD programs and Research and they were just waiting for the opportune moment to produce these WMD again on a large scale. Also remember that in September 1998 the UN inspectors were still in Iraq and they were kicked [out] later on that year after some US air and missile strikes. So most definitely these Secret Research Programs related to WMD were still in existence and may have reached a more advanced stage from late 1998 to late 2002 where during this period of time there were no UN inspectors in Iraq. This document is another proof that we could have never trusted Saddam and that we had all the right to remove his brutal and terrorist regime after 9/11/2001. Partial translations of Pages 63 and 64.(more)” >>> Needless to say, official translations must be made to verify the open source translations, but the policy of opening up the files to the public is paying off big time, as the Vice President might say. americanthinker.com freerepublic.com