By Warner Todd Huston ——Bio and Archives--May 18, 2011
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“That is, it would be like, I don’t know, National Public Radio or BBC or something like that, except it would have to be really independent and they would not express opinions, and their mandate would be narrowly confined to identifying relevant factual errors” he said. “And also, they would also have to have citations so that they could be checked in case they made a mistake. Somebody needs to be doing it, and maybe it’s a worthy expenditure of taxpayer money.”But isn’t that the rub? Whose “facts” will be presented? Will those facts be administered under the thumb of a fact-master like Clinton, Mr. “I did not have sex with that woman, Monica,” himself? Veracity would be a word hard to associate with the BMF, the Bubba Ministry of Facts. I am not saying there are no such things as facts. Certainly facts are facts, but what people think they can lead to is often ideological, philosophical, or driven by an agenda. There can be several ways to look at a fact and then extrapolate what that fact will “do” once put into play and that, after all, is the nub of politics — it’s even a root of human nature, for that matter. People’s perception of what facts mean will differ. So, if we have this “independent federal agency” deciding what is the right and proper way to view the facts, what do we have? No less than a ministry of right-thinking. This amounts to propaganda. Period. There is no official role for government to correct what people write on the Internet. Administrations, presidents, parties, individual politicians, they certainly have the role — no the responsibility — to let people know what facts and policies they think are best, but there is no role in government for any official fact-master. This whole idea, however, is quite normal for liberals. Their fascist desire to shut people down, to use the mechanism of government to quash ideas liberals are not fond of, is a core belief motivating liberal thinking. The fact is, it is up to we, the people, to learn the facts. As Benjamin Franklin is reputed to have said exiting the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, we have a republic “if we can keep it.” We are responsible to discerning the facts. It isn’t government’s role to lead us by the nose so. Big Bubba is not an idea whose time has come. But it isn’t surprising that the anti-liberty left might propose such a thing.
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Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as Breitbart.com, among many, many others. He has also written for several history magazines, has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.
He is also the owner and operator of Publius’ Forum.