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Friday, July 7, 2017

Distortion, Dishonesty and Ignorance From the Media

In Warsaw yesterday, President Trump gave one of the greatest speeches in recent memory by an American president.  If you haven't read it, I suggest that you do.

So what was the reaction from the mainstream media?  I can sum it up in three words:  distortion, dishonesty and ignorance.  President Trump spoke at great length about the basis for Western civilization.  He spoke of belief in God, of freedoms of all sort, and of individual liberty.  The media response was to claim that by talking of "the West", Trump was actually criticizing the non-white or non-Christian segments of America.  People like Peter Beinart in The Atlantic claimed that Trump was defining Muslim-Americans or Asian Americans as not being included in the civilization which he praised.  That's both a distortion and dishonest.  I wonder if Beinart even read or heard the speech.  Trump praised Western ideals:  freedom, liberty, individual responsibility.  Any one of the people on Beinart's list of suspect identities who accept these ideals (as they almost all do) is fully included within Trump's definition of the West.  Further, despite Beinart's claims, Trump never even address the subject of people in the USA not included in the West.  Beinart is just making that up.

In the Washington Post, ultra-liberal Trump-hater Eugene Robinson claimed that Trump was describing an alternative universe rather than reality.  Trump was excluding China and India by talking of the "West".  Trump was declaring a culture war against 1.6 billion Muslims, most of whom just want to live in peace.  This too was a major distortion by Robinson, and a shocking display of ignorance by the WaPo columnist.  The President was not speaking of a geographical location when he spoke of the West.  He was speaking of Western civilization.  He was describing those concepts and ideals that led to the American Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Magna Carta, the establishment of the UN, the victories over Nazism, Fascism and Communism, the growth of the world's greatest economies, and the like.  Without a doubt, Japan is part of the West which President Trump described.  The West is an idea, a concept.  No one with any understanding who read Trump's speech could misunderstand this.

Please, don't just read columns about the President's speech.  Read the speech itself.  Click on the link in the first sentence of this post and read the speech.  You may never see a better defense of the concept of America and the entirety of Western civilization.  Each one of us needs to understand this.  Even if you read the speech and reject it, please consider carefully what it says.  It's too important to ignore or to get second hand from those who live by distortion, dishonesty and ignorance. 

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