“I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession
unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.” –Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson’s warning was offered in the context of creating what would become the University of Virginia. However, we like to read Jefferson’s warning in a broader context. Informed voters making an educated choice at the polls is tremendously important in a republic.
Take a look at New York City. A divided primary propelled a commi to the Democrat nomination and then the Democrat Party helped the commi win the General Election. He now speaks of the “warmth of collectivism.” Tell that to North Koreans huddled up in their freezing community housing.
One of the many great things about liberty in free-market capitalist republics is the citizens can rely on their own rugged individualism to filter out fake news and consume truthful works. As UVA falls back into DEI nonsense, students are free to go elsewhere, alumni is free to stop donating, and the university is free to destroy itself. The last part is an unfortunate quality of liberty, but one we must take with all the blessings.
It is fair to say Jefferson would disagree with any attempts to argue for DEI preferences. The truth alone ought to be enough of a pursuit worthwhile for all. Jefferson said, “The good are rare enough at best. There is no reason to subdivide them by artificial lines.” DEI foolishly takes the opposite direction and assigns everyone into infinity groups based on all kinds of silly criteria. Merit should lead the way.
This same free-market principle is also applicable in the news media. You don’t have to get all your news from tabloid trash NBC and MSNBC (which is called something else now). You don’t have to put up with the bias of George Stephanopoulos or the incompetence of Marget Brennan. You can simply consume news from other sources, or not at all. Jefferson also said, “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.”
Bari Weiss at CBS is trying to bring journalism to their newsroom. She wanted a 60 Minutes story to be less one-sided than their normal propaganda. But the reporter who led the story accused Weiss of malfeasance. Journalism is dead in this country. Weiss has a long, difficult road ahead. And so do consumers.
The solution is to take in news from different sources, even the ones you already know are tainted with bias. The truth, too often, needs to be molded from several sources, which any one alone tells an incomplete tale, but as a whole can gather what really happened. But that, in the context of an informed electorate, assumes that voters actually hold their elected officials accountable. They don’t. The all or nothing two-party choice has reduced accountability drastically. Sen. Ted Kennedy may have killed a girl, but never lost re-election.
Seeing surveys on how many young people admire communism is troubling. Education is the answer to that. And when our universities are plagued with commis, then the free-market offers alternative avenues for education. Consuming bias and incompetence in news can also be filtered out with free-market options. All this is burdensome on the voter, but it is needed. Any state of liberty could only be a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people are informed to a certain degree. So please be careful. The republic is counting on us.