Patriot Update - A Free Press for the Conservative Revolution

It is now easier than ever to spread information, and thus reformation. The internet is today what Gutenberg was for Luther’s day: anadvancement in technology that drastically reduced the cost of spreading information, and thus greatly increased its flow to the masses.

Many people have caught on now for several years. Drudgereport.com assembles the most important and juiciest news headlines every day, and does it better than most of the competition. He has since the early days of the internet’s popularity. It was he who pulled back the curtains on Clinton and Lewinski. Else that story—which spurred an impeachment—would have been buried on the back pages of some now-bankrupt rag.

With the most stripped-down, plaint-text website out there Drudge will inform and educate you better than ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and most of the rest put together. It costs him almost nothing to do this—to out-fox the foxes.

Drudge gets 29 million hits a day. And this is the story of just one website.

Millions of people now get their news and views mainly online. They have left the world of black thumbs forever. The number is growing and will continue to grow until print newspapers exist only where there is no wifi. Major newspapers and some magazines are failing left and right already. Some can linger only because they are behemoth organizations that can resist falling by sheer inertia. But the technology is already dead. These giants will fall. That much is black and white.

Here’s a list of major newspapers that have filed bankruptcy, face bankruptcy, have closed, or switched to on-line only in the past few years: Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, Rocky Mountain News (Denver’s oldest company), San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Post-Intelligencer. There are many more.

Add to this list the troubled giant New York Times, which just last year borrowed $250 million at 14% interest. Why would such a titan put itself a quarter-billion dollars in debt? Why, to roll-over its already outstanding debts, of course. How long could they get away with borrowing to pay off their borrowings? After all, they’re not the government.

The same migration away from mainstream media is occurring with network news stations. This is now an old story. While the network stations still get higher ratings than cable news overall those higher numbers are dwindling steadily. Younger viewers have largely already left: compare the overall numbers with those for viewers aged 25 to 54. The young and middle-aged viewers make up only about 30% of network news viewers. This means more than two-thirds are 55 and over.

That the mainstream media is notoriously a front for the left, the growing move away from these outlets displays the largely conservative nature of the American reader/viewer. This may not be the case in other nations, but here it shows clearly, as Conservative FOX News Channel routinely beats their cable competition by wide margins—often earning higher ratings than all other cable outlets combined.

This is why the leftist administration is now scared to death. They have seen the power of non-establishment news and information sources to motivate and mobilize opposition like never before. The TEA parties are symbols of this power. Town hall tirades were a symbol of this power. The mainstream media try to squash, suppress, ignore, but the news gets out. Everyone knows the DC TEA party rally was bigger than they said—not 10,000 but well over a million people. It was bigger than the million man march, the million mom march, and every LGBT parade in the US put together. So the left tries to deny it. But the news gets out easily. We all know the truth.

So the left is terrified. Actual free and unfettered media points toward increasing freedom and independence. They can’t allow this. Speaking to the graduating class at the University of Michigan, President Obama expressed his fear, “Whereas most of America used to get their news from the same three networks over dinner or a few influential papers on Sunday morning, we now have the option to get our information from any number of blogs or websites or cable news shows. This development can be both good and bad for democracy.”

Obama said he fears that with such a plethora of choices, people will only listen to one side, and thus “deepen the political divides in this country.” So he wants you to spend your time reading the other side: “Still, if you’re someone who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in awhile. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website.” I had to chuckle at how he leans all choices to the left: does anyone still consider the Wall Street Journal conservative? But Beck and Limbaugh fans must jump all the way to Huffington. Sounds to me like the leftists get off lightly here.

What’s in the background of his comments here? The obvious fact that the leftist media is losing market share by the millions. The left is losing control over what information people receive and believe, and this makes them tremble.

Yes, there was a time when everyone got their news from only three networks. But praise God! Those days are gone. No more is the whole nation subject to the censorship of three gatekeepers. No more does cost and technology allow the elites and rich leftists to control public perception and information. No more. Obama laments this change. He personifies the elitist mentality. He says we doesn’t want one-sided news readers. He refuses to tell you that it was exactly that three-gate setup that forced only one side down our throats for decades. Now that we have more sides to the story, the left is shaking.

So now these tyrants are seeking ways to keep their stranglehold. Recently the FCC proposed a tax on internet sites that link to news stories. Guess who they had in mind? That’s right. Some have actually called the proposal the “Drudge tax.” And guess where the tax revenues will go. They are designed to subsidize the dying newspapers—papers that will, of course, only spin the news government wants. It’s the left’s attempt to use force to prop up their tottering gatekeepers at the expense of freedom and truth.

For so long the left had it easy based on the idea of monopoly control and gate-keeping. They controlled the media, the universities, the schools, the curricula, the textbooks, etc. They controlled who got to write, speak, and work in those fields.

That world is gone. I mean, gone. The only way government can recover it is to impose absolute tyranny through censorship and force. Sure, I don’t put it past them, but the outcry is already so large, I doubt it will actually take the step. If it does, it will be openly admitting that it is a tyranny. It would be the most honest admission this administration has made yet.

But it is now so cheap and easy to start a news website, to homeschool, the get a degree, to start a seminary, to create and publish anything including textbooks, timelines, charts, graphs, instructional videos, humorous videos, lectures, etc.

The only things you need to start any of these things are a good work ethic, a drop of talent, and a commitment to excellence. Find a project, and take dominion over that small corner of the media.

One of my next projects will be to help start an online seminary. It will be multi-lingual, especially eastern European languages. I hope we can find Chinese translators as well. Yes it will be unconnected to any particular church, and yes it will be unaccredited by any accrediting organization. And YES, it will be absolutely free.

“What qualifies you to start a seminary?” some suspicious cleric full of moderator-lust may query. An easy question really. I’ll tell you who credentials us to start our own seminary: HostGator.com. Easy. Who says we can? $4.95 per month web hosting says we can. $6.95 per year domain names says we can. And guess what? We will eventually have more people learning from us than all of the brick-and-mortar brethren combined, and we will be teaching in places and languages those fellows from the suede-elbow patch brigade would not dream of unless they had a government grant to send them.

The PCA or SBC may not accept our “degree” as sufficient (there’s no reason they shouldn’t, however), but the people pastoring churches or starting home study groups all over the world probably won’t care much about that. And they will prosper.

This technology has powerful effects in every area of media and information, and you can harness it. I wish people in every county in the US would start local political websites, outlining who their local officials are, what they believe, and posting continuous headlines on every council meeting, everything each one of these people does. You’re probably not going to change DC anytime soon, but you can have an enormous impact by spreading vital information in your locality or church. Fixing the socialism in your county and school district will likely be the most powerful thing you can do to help change this country.

I often tell people that the most important factor of the Reformation was a man who had no idea of reforming the church at all. Gutenberg today would be considered nothing but a greedy capitalist by many people. He had no lofty spiritual ideas, he was simply looking for a way to print more stuff faster and make more money.

He succeeded, and in doing so he enabled the spread of information in a way exponentially faster than in the centuries before. In the generation between Gutenberg and the 95 Theses, more books were printed than in all of the middle ages prior.

Because of the flow of information, and because of the concerned people who harnessed that technology, a single generation was able to change the landscape of human history. They spread the truth, and ushered in unprecedented levels of freedom.

The same is true today. We have the technology, the information, the freedom. Use it.

Signs of Freedom: The American Tea Party Message