Cease and Desist!

Cross posted with permission from Laci the Dog's blog, with my additions making it a joint effort:

To add a small measure of context,  and as an intro, we have endured statements from commenters, and commenter wanna-bees relating to Nixon that are the basis for the Nixonian references.  They are a microcosm for the larger conservative versus liberal argumentation fallacies.  While the comments were somewhat incoherent,  we have had broad rejection of any facts presented unless they come from the right wing media - which is notoriously fact-averse.

See the posts from the preceding day which address the break with objective reality on the right, including but not limited to bizarre conspiracy theories, rejection of science, and other problems they have with ideology in conflict with objective reality.

Facts are facts by virtue of being true and accurate data or information, REGARDLESS of the political preferences of the source.  It can be a justification for looking for bias in the factual accuracy of the reporting, but it does not invalidate the facts themselves.  We need to be fact checking to be clear about objective reality.  The right occasionally gets a fact correct, here or there; the left and center occasionally make a factual error.  The right rarely corrects their factual errors; the left and center do so far more conscientiously.

Just one source that has followed the Media as a critic, I would refer readers to FAIR and to other objective media critics.  I agree with Laci that contrary to the right wing myth popular with conservatives, our media actually leans right - and is too often more propaganda than informational.

Here is an excerpt from a FAIR article that I think highlights the problems with relying on such a narrow set of sources, and not fact checking those sources of information and opinion (emphasis added is mine - DG):

Monopoly vs. Democracy

In interpreting  the First Amendment in 1945, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black emphasized that “the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public.” As giant media companies continue to push an interpretation of the First Amendment that focuses only on their freedom to speak, the freedom to hear “diverse and antagonistic voices” has all but disappeared.
While the country is becoming more diverse racially—and remains half female—the heads of all 20 corporations are still white males. Lack of diverse ownership leads to non-diverse newsrooms and viewpoints: According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors (4/16/09), ethnic minorities make up less than 13 percent of newsroom employees, less than 4 percent of television station ownership, and less than 8 percent or radio station ownership. This in a nation revealed by the 2010 census to be 36 percent minority. Women, meanwhile, are 37 percent of full-time newspaper newsroom staff.

Writing for Extra! (6/87), Bagdikian observed, “The American audience, having been exposed to a narrowing range of ideas over the decades, often assumes that what it sees and hears in the major media is all there is.” Since that day, the range of what the American audience hears is controlled by fewer and fewer people. As fast as new technologies are created, they are consolidated in the hands of well-positioned corporations for commercial use.
As the newspaper industry attests, the market is failing to protect the core principles of diversity and localism. Major cities like Houston, Seattle, Denver and Cincinnati are down to one local daily newspaper, a status that is becoming the default condition. While the Internet has sparked optimism, its current news production through blogs and web pages cannot replace well-funded investigations produced by experienced editors and journalists.

As companies collect vertically integrated media properties, market logic inclines them to produce lowest common denominator fare on a national level, neglecting not only their public interest standard obligations, but their crucial responsibility as the fourth estate. Without paradigmatic shifts in the way national media is consumed and regulated, communication technologies, old and new, will continue to serve a corporate minority that is inherently contradictory to the values of democracy.

By modern sytandards of purity, both Nixon and Reagan, as well as earlier prominent Republican Presidents like Theodore Roosevelet and even secular Saint Ronnie Raygun would be deemed liberals rather than conservatives.  This is a measure of how far to the extreme right our modern conservatives have veered.

The title of the post is an off-hand reference as well to the Cease and Desist Order delivered to our harasser, one of several that are being delivered this week and next week.

Cease and desist  

OK, this is pretty hypothetical stuff and is aimed more at the US “Conservatives” who tend to be more moronic and fringy than non-US conservatives. After all, most of the readers of my blog are referred by a former member of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet! I should add that this is why I don’t usually look at comments. But here goes…
I am not sure of what objective oppositional commenters are trying to persuade about their “point of view”, but basing any argument solely upon an idea’s being “liberal” or "conservative" isn’t valid, especially if the programme in question happens to have been suggested by the likes of Richard Nixon (e.g., environmental protection, gun control, limited abortion, universal health care that was the foundation for Roneycare)! If anything, all such an argument tends to show is that the conservatives are fairly ignorant.
I don’t give a rip if you are a rocket scientist with patents, because ignorance means being in a state of not knowing. That means you can be sharp as a tack in one narrow area, but you are still an ignorant fool outside that area.
To go a step further, ignorant arguments are not persuasive–no matter how much conservatives repeat them in the hope that repetition of a lie will make it true.
If someone is too lazy to actually look into the topic, I am not interested in wasting my time listening to repetitiona of nonsensical propositions.
First off, I actually have a life and things to do that are far more important than listening to uninformed babbling (even if it is on a keyboard). The fact that our harasser is spending an inordinate amount of time just reading this blog makes me wonder about him.  He is putting far more into what I write than I do. [editor's note - harassers, like our current problem person appears to do, tend to read and/or comment upwards of a half dozen to a dozen or more times a day]
And as for comments, our harasser has been asked not to post them here since they are rude, harassing, and just plain off pointless. As I said earlier, he is only persuading us that he is a moron.
But, even more importantly, our harasser, a poster boy for ignorance of fact and poorly founded and poorly formed argument, is a moron who is coming close to breaking the law. The First Amendment only protects you against government interference with your speech, private entities are under no obligation to you in anyway.
And trust me, your “conservative” clowns will sell your arse out when it comes to free speech knowing full well that they would have to allow Unions, Socialists, and others to express their points of view. They can’t do anything which might cause people to actually think about what it going on--and you are one of the ones they prefer to see not thinking–because people might start to ask questions.
But, that is a digression, what you believe to be free speech can be seen as harassment, threats, and intimidation placing them firmly into the category of being illegal. That means such things as civil and criminal liability if you don’t get your act together (although, I seriously doubt you could get it together). You don’t want to loose your right to keep and bear arms, or are you hoping that people who harass and threaten are given a pass to keep their guns until they actually go on shooting sprees?
In short,  he is losing his argument, but is too dim to realise it. That means continuing a course of conduct which is just downright counterproductive to everything you are hoping to achieve.
I am also going to ask where exactly these conservatives get their “facts” as they don’t coincide with reality. Maybe they do in his universe, but not in the one the rest of us are inhabiting.
Is that in simple enough language to understand, or do I need to dumb it down further?