Propagating Presumptions

Arend van Dam

Not to presume to dictate,
but broiled fowl and mushrooms -- capital thing!
--The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens

Show me the money!
--Jerry Maguire (1996)
________________

Ranger is tired of the media propagating presumptions as fact. Syndicated columnist and scholar Victor Davis Hanson gave a classic example in his recent, "President Obama: Our Chief Confessor."

Hanson says, "[O]ur president would do better to focus on ... continued terrorist attacks in the U.S. ..." What examples of terrorist attacks have occurred in the U.S. post 9-11-01? More specifically, what terrorist attacks have occurred in the U.S. since Obama's takeover? What, when and where were these attacks? We are a nation which abuses its Freedom of the Press by abdicating our responsibility to the truth.

Irresponsibly presumptive and false statements like Hanson's fuel the endless Phony War on Terror [PWOT ©]. While there have been low-level attempted attacks, there has been no successful attack in the U.S.

If Ranger is wrong, then please list these attacks. There is a world of difference when one omits the descriptor, "ATTEMPTED".

Hanson's piece is also contradictory in that it opens with:

"The first duty of national leaders is to worry about the self-interest of their own countries; utopian internationalism can come later. "

And concludes with:

"[O]ur president would do better to focus on the woes of the European Union, North Korea's sinking of a South Korean ship, Iran's plans to get the bomb, continued terrorist attacks in the U.S. ..."

Focusing on the EU, North Korea and Iran is exactly the Utopian humanitarianism the first sentence eschews. Afghanistan and Iraq area also bitter examples of this humanitarianism.

If the U.S. were to abandon Utopian humanitarianism, then we would no longer concern ourselves with these other "woes", and could focus on the self-interest of the American people.

Irresponsible reporting and opinion pieces fuel irresponsible reactions to a manufactured threat.