Fox News and “Propaganda”
Lt. Col. Ralph Peters has quit Fox News with this rebuke:
(Fox News) “is a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration,” he continued. “When prime-time hosts — who have never served our country in any capacity — dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller — all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of “deep-state” machinations — I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove.
His comments deserve a response:
1) Immigration law, passed in 1965, has gone too far and needs repeal. Though President Trump’s Tweets are not “Presidential,” Americans responded to his call for restrictions on illegal and some legal immigration.
2) There is a concentration of power in the federal government and that, too, needs pruning. Call it a “deep state” or “the administrative state,” it is too big, too intrusive and too expensive.
3) The intelligence community especially the CIA, like our universities, is one-sided and consequently often wrong in its assessments.
4) The Ninth Court of Appeals is manifestly Left-leaning and needs pruning.
5) And the U.S. military is much changed since Ralph Peters joined it forty years ago. We’re seeing more officers who are very “political.” “Global warming” and pollution are serious problems for the People’s Republic of China, but the greatest threat we face in Asia is that country’s Maoist regime, not global warming.
When we read comments like those of Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, we wonder why he didn’t seek a consulting assignment with MSNBC or CNN. Perhaps his military career omitted instruction in American politics and history.