The New Dark Ages - Orwellian Humanists seek to stifle dissent

Disclaimer: I am aware that today's Catholic Church is not the same Church that dominated the Middle Ages and committed gross sins against humanity, so this is not a diatribe against the Catholics of today. It is certainly true that I believe the Church of the Middle Ages was home to great evils, as you will see as you read on.

Delving into history deeply would take months, so to begin this discussion I am going to use shorthand to bring us up to the terror of today. The Dark Ages is usually referring to the early Middle Ages of about 500 to 1000 AD or so. The Middle Ages, as they are now called, would continue up unto the Age of Enlightenment in the minds of some and at least until around 1600 or so for others. Often we think of the entire Medieval period as Dark Ages. In terms of the advance of knowledge, there never was truly a totally Dark Age. But in Western Civilization there were dark times, times of the Inquisition and the totalitarian rule of the Catholic Church in league with secular leaders of the time that made it dangerous for the men and women of the time to express thoughts counter to the opinions of the ruling class (The Clergy and Kings). Hopefully I don't need to go on about the hideous tortures and murders committed in the name of God that were actually all about freedom of speech and dissent and man's right to worship any way that he believes to be right. The Church supposedly represented God but was actually more of a political organization that oppressed the people and kept the rulers rich and allowed them to satiate their basest desires. There were Popes back in the day that were so evil that commoners hid their daughters from them. The Church actually began selling "indulgences" as an additional money-making scheme. The clergy would charge common folk a price to be forgiven for sins, to ensure a dead relative would make it into heaven, to forgive the sins of another and so on.

In my opinion, there were two great movements that were born in response to this tyranny that repressed the thoughts and deeds of those who did not agree with the rulers and the Church: The Reformation and the Renaissance.

The Renaissance, or Rebirth, is generally thought to have begun in Italy in the 1500's. The Reformation can point to the year 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 Theses to the church door.

The Reformation was about freeing God from the tyranny of man. That is, taking God from the grasp of the ruling clergy and kings and giving the worship of God back to man. Luther wanted to worship and think as a free man, rather than being told how to worship and think. His act of rebellion in the form of those Theses began a movement that led to printing presses and the ability of the common man to own his own Bible and worship as he saw fit. It meant that the common man would learn to read and eventually that education would be available to the masses. This was revolutionary indeed! There would be no democracies, no United States of America, without freedom of religion and education for the masses.

The Renaissance was about freeing man from the tyranny of God. That is, the elitists of the day lumped the Church and God in together and decided that they needed to abandon both. Naturalistic Materialism became Humanism as the concept of God was abandoned along with the evils of the Church.

So on the one hand, common man began to become educated and freedom of worship a valued right that was wrestled over for centuries. Gutenberg built his printing press in order to print Bibles. It was in seeking freedom of worhsip that the Pilgrims emigrated to these shores and helped establish the USA. The first schools used the Bible as a textbook and in the early days of our country it was often the only book a man owned and had ever read. Yet, the USA was not formed to be a theocracy, for we had learned that to try to mix God and government led to disaster.

For the elite, who had the money to be educated and access to such education long before any Reformations took place, the Renaissance was a time to cast off God and seek humanistic philosophies. Of course, many of the elite were actually believers who continued to believe, but there was a goodly number of agnostics and atheists who sought to find ways to make God irrelevant. This kind of thinking led humanistic scientists to revisit various aspects of science and seek to find ways of excluding God. Thus, Lyell could posit a school of Geological thought that needed no flood, and the Darwins (Erasmus and Charles) could posit a school of Biological thought that needed no Creator, and so on.

History repeats itself. Now I see signs that the secularists are beginning to take over thought itself and seek to establish a tyranny of established thoughts equal to the tyranny of the Medieval Church! The evidences are all around you. Evolutionists have fought the teaching of Creationism in public schools and have often convinced gullible judges to agree. Scientists as thought police! I have shown one and all that evolution is nothing more than an unproven hypothesis that a majority of scientists agree with based upon philosophical rather than scientific grounds and yet now many teachers, by law, are forced to only present evolution as an answer to where life may have come from. This is a crime against freedom of thought!

I was accosted for having the temerity to question evolutionists and responded in "The Lords of Evolution do not deign the peasantry shall opine!"

Recently, I posted The New Inquisition in which Gary DeMarr reveals how widespread that thought tyranny has become in the sciences and media.

I can now point to two more pieces of evidence that our freedoms are in danger of being eroded in the name of Political Correctness and Humanism. George Orwell would understand my alarm.

First, the sciences are continuing to be co-opted by Humanists who seek to stifle all opposing points of view. Here is an excerpt from a column by Melanie Morgan:

What had been nice about The Weather Channel is that through most of its history it stayed clear of political propaganda and focused on delivering weather forecasts to the nation, supplemented with riveting live reports from the front lines of hurricanes, winter blizzards and springtime floods.

But no more. The Weather Channel is now engaged in a con job on the American people, attempting to scare the public that their actions are destroying the planet by creating a global warming crisis.

The move away from scientific forecasting of the weather to sensationalized leftist political advocacy is in part due to the influence of Wonya Lucas, executive vice president and general manager of The Weather Channel Networks.

Lucas admitted in a recent interview with Media Village that the reprogramming of The Weather Channel was influenced by her tenure at CNN when that network shifted from presenting straight news to personality-driven programming.

Lucas decided that what was good for CNN was good for The Weather Channel, and the objectivity and respectability of the network has now been thrown out the window. It doesn't matter that CNN's turn to the left has caused their ratings to plummet; The Weather Channel's embraced its model.

Media Village reported that the move by The Weather Channel "is intended to establish a broader perspective on the weather category and, says Lucas, to move the brand from functional to emotional."

Emotional weather forecasting?

The Weather Channel is launching a new website and broadband channel dedicated solely to global warming called "One Degree" and has a weekly program called "The Climate Code," devoted almost entirely to liberal advocacy on climate matters.

The network is running advertisements showcasing scared and confused Americans, including children and senior citizens, wondering about the coming apocalypse caused by global warming. (You can view the ad for yourself here.)

The chief martyr for the new "emotional" approach to broadcasting at The Weather Channel is Dr. Heidi Cullen, who serves as the network's cheerleader for global warming hysteria. Cullen's supposed expertise on climatology includes, among other things, earning a bachelor's degree in Near Eastern religions and history from Juniata College. One must indeed have to believe in the mystical to accept anything Ms. Cullen has to say about climatology.

Writing for the One Degree blog, Ms. Cullen recently threw a hissy fit that some meteorologists are openly questioning the conclusions drawn by the Greenpeace crowd about the nature, extent, causes and even existence of global warming.

Cullen's diatribe, titled "Junk Controversy Not Junk Science," called on the American Meteorological Society to start requiring all meteorologists to toe the line on liberal interpretation of global warming, or else lose the organization's certification.

George Orwell's 1984 couldn't have concocted a better form of thought control.

The global warming crowd, led by arrogant hustlers such as Heidi Cullen at The Weather Channel, has set up a no-lose situation for themselves.

Climatology is by definition the study of long-term climate trends, and it will indeed be many decades or longer before any definitive conclusions about even the existence of global warming – let alone its causes – can be determined to be true or false. This means that Cullen and her cohorts can't be held accountable for their erroneous beliefs.

Even still, we can see how foolish it is to allow people like Heidi Cullen to influence decision-makers to impose further restrictions and regulations on the actions of human beings. Global warming scaremongers jumped on the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the busy 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and went on to predict that 2006 would be a potentially devastating year of tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean.

As it was, not one single hurricane made landfall in the U.S.

If forecasters can't reliably tell us what will happen in two to three months from now, why would anyone trust that they know what will happen with the weather in 50 or 100 years from now and let them tell us how to live our lives accordingly?

This is all about Big Brother do-gooders trying to control how you live your life, and stripping away the freedoms and liberties of people to live their lives as they see fit, engage in commerce and raise their families.

There's a con job going on at The Weather Channel, and it's time that viewers let the network know it's time to stop the liberal politicization of weather reporting.


If you go ahead and read Cullen's post at One degree, you will be amazed at the responses to her statement (hopefully the responses have not yet been removed). There is tremendous opposition among climatologists and other scientists to her assertions. It seems that among weathermen, the tyranny of thought common among many of the other sciences has not made much headway, thankfully. But how long will that last?


Second, there is the call by the Democrats to reinstate the "Fairness Doctrine." David Limbaugh said in response:

Beware of liberals using such words as "fairness." In resurrecting the "Fairness Doctrine," liberals are trying to kill conservative talk radio and restore their media monopoly. Period. The doctrine would selectively stifle free political discourse, which is essential for our representative government.

The Fairness Doctrine, an FCC regulation in force from 1949 to 1987, required broadcasters to present "both sides" of controversial issues. During that time, liberals had a virtual monopoly on the media.

Since the rule was repealed, conservative talk radio has exploded -- Rush Limbaugh launched his syndicated radio show in 1988 -- and other media outlets multiplied: the Internet, including blogs, cable and satellite TV and satellite radio, among others. The conservative viewpoint has fared quite well in the new media.

This is not to say that the government's elimination of the regulation discriminated against the liberal message. The liberal viewpoint still dominates the mainstream media, cable TV, except for Fox News, and the overwhelming number of major print media outlets. Liberals also have equal access to new media outlets, though they've had enormous difficulty competing in the marketplace of ideas.

It's instructive to remember that while conservatives grew hoarse complaining about the monolithic liberal message, they didn't advocate suppression of liberal speech. Their remedy, instituted -- fittingly -- in the Reagan years, was to open up, not constrict or regulate the media market.

The results have been dramatic, with conservatives finally having a significant voice in the media, albeit mostly in the new media, though a singular liberal message still prevails in the old media, not to mention public broadcasting.

Liberals can't stand the competition. Democratic Congressman Maurice Hinchey is sponsoring the "Media Ownership Reform Act," whose proposed reforms include the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine. Hinchey denies wanting to muzzle conservative hosts. But, "This will ensure that different views … will also be heard. … People are being prevented from getting the right information." Really? Latest polls show 60 percent of Americans are opposed to the Iraq war. Will Hinchey not be satisfied until it's 90 percent?

This is nothing but abject sophistry. Different views are already heard -- and not just in the mainstream media. There have never been more media choices. Nothing -- except consumer resistance -- precludes liberal entry into the talk radio market. But the First Amendment doesn't require people to listen to and support your message.

Liberals had no interest in balance before the advent of conservative talk radio. They don't have any interest in balance now; indeed we're finally approaching a balance: new media versus old media. But to them "balance" means dominance, just like "bipartisanship" means Republican capitulation.

With the Fairness Doctrine liberals would use government to micromanage the content of talk radio, realizing that they simply can't compete on an equal playing field in that medium. Notably, they aren't advocating balancing the messages of the major print or broadcast media giants.

The reason liberals can't compete in talk radio, besides their hosts being boring, oppressively cynical and pessimistic, is that their would-be audience is already fed through the mainstream media.

Conversely, conservative talk has been successful, not just because it is more entertaining, professional and optimistic, but because conservative audiences were starved for a likeminded message.

The liberals' goal is not balance, but to destroy conservative talk radio by requiring that each nano-segment of every show contain the counterbalancing liberal viewpoint, instead of relying on other shows or other media to deliver that viewpoint. What will they demand next: that political candidates present both sides of every issue to ensure balance?

Such draconian hyper-monitoring would destroy those programs. Besides, there is no fair, sensible or practicable way to regulate content. Objectivity is impossible over such subjective matters.

What do the paternalistic proponents of the regulations mean by the representation of "all sides?" Would the terrorist viewpoint deserve equal time? Don't laugh, many believe that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and liberals routinely sympathize with tyrannical dictators like Fidel Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

What is truly scary is that liberals believe that media outlets predominately presenting their viewpoint are not biased. To them, the liberal viewpoint is objectively correct -- the only proper way to view the world -- and the conservative one, aberrant and reality-challenged, not even deserving of First Amendment protection. Perhaps a slight exaggeration, but not much.

This arrogant mindset is what has troubled conservatives for years. It's not just that the mainstream media has presented a monolithic liberal message; it's that they denied their bias and purported to be completely objective in their selection and reporting of the news and commentary. At least with conservative talk, the hosts admit their bias and are honest about when they are editorializing.

The Fairness Doctrine must be stopped again, dead in its tracks.


There is a movement in this country to throw God out of society and establish a system of thought policing that will silence all voices that disagree with the Humanists in all fields, whether political or philosophical or scientific. I will not go down silently and I will not go down without a fight! You who teach evolutionary fantasy as fact in the schools and go to court to rid the concept of God from society, who attempt to control the sciences and the media, you are like the dark-caped figures of the Inquisition, seeking to replace free thought with your own brand of propaganda, thus brainwashing the masses. How long before you set up your 21st century versions of auto de fe? Heidi Cullen is ready to cast the careers of dissenting meterorologists into the fire and Dennis Kucinich and his liberal Democratic cohorts are ready and willing to throw the First Amendment in right behind. How can you justify this, O Humanist? I await responses.