In 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the commencement address at Oberlin College when he famously said, “There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.” He was referring to the story of Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving, where the protagonist slept for twenty years. Said Dr. King, “While he was peacefully snoring up on the mountain, a great revolution was taking place in the world—indeed, a revolution which would, at points, change the course of history. And Rip Van Winkle knew nothing about it; he was asleep.” That revolution was the American Revolution.
Dr. King suggested that “There are all too many people who, in some great period of social change, fail to achieve the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands.” And so it is today, only with the mainstream media playing the role of Rip Van Winkle.
On September 20th, the Washington Post Ombudsman Andrew Alexander scratched the surface of the problem, pointing out that mainstream media outlets, including the Washington Post, were very late in reporting on the ever-developing ACORN scandal that featured videos of ACORN employees offering advice how to evade taxes, set up a brothel, and even use minors as prostitutes. The Post did not get on the story until two days after the now-famous videos emerged at BigGovernment.com.
Wrote Alexander of the Post’s delay, “One explanation may be that traditional news outlets like The Post simply don’t pay sufficient attention to conservative media or viewpoints.” He quotes the Post’s Executive Editor, Marcus Brauchli, who is worried that his paper is “not well-enough informed about conservative issues. It’s particularly a problem in a town so dominated by Democrats and the Democratic point of view.”
This is particularly refreshing coming from the Washington Post, and Americans for Limited Government urges the Post to look even deeper than missing the boat on the recent ACORN scandal. It’s just the tip of the iceberg of the revolution that’s brewing—wherein citizen activists are holding the entire political establishment, including the government, the political parties, and the news media accountable for how they govern, for what their ideas mean for the future of America, and what they report, respectively.
While perhaps not as revolutionary as the American War of Independence, what is currently taking place politically in America has the makings to reshape the political landscape for many years to come. Talk show host Mark Levin has termed it a “conservative resurgence,” wherein millions of Americans are speaking out against their government, voicing their objections loudly and often to their representatives, and even are actively organizing politically in their communities. They are rising, and it is a revolution. A civil revolution.
Despite the naysayers who wish for political reasons to dismiss this movement, what is taking place is truly a grassroots uprising. These citizen revolutionaries are seen—at the tea parties, at the town halls railing against ObamaCare, and at the national rally on September 12th. And as Levin noted yesterday in his program, nobody told them to do it. “We just did it,” he exclaimed.
Importantly, these revolutionaries favor a return to constitutional limited government governed by the rule of law. They want their lives, liberty and property protected by a government that today instead seeks to run their lives, circumvent their liberty, and redistribute their property.
They want low taxes, balanced budgets, and originalist, textualist judges. They want public corruption rooted out. They are extremely concerned by the spiraling national debt—now at $11.8 trillion. They do not want the economy to be transformed into a socialist system with state-owned and operated industries nor a corporatist one with public-private partnerships ala Fannie Mae or Max Baucus’ proposed health care “co-ops.” They find the bailouts despicable. They want the Federal Reserve reined in to save the monetary and financial system from unraveling.
These revolutionaries have great hope for the future of their nation. They are motivated. And they, the issues they promote and the principles they believe in all deserve an outlet in the pages of the Post. There is a genuine political movement afoot, but it is not receiving a fair reporting. For example, except for more conservative outlets, the national rally on September 12th in Washington, D.C. was practically ignored.
ALG calls on the Post, and all so-called papers of record, to live up to the journalistic creed “that suppression of the news, for any consideration other than the welfare of society, is indefensible.” Else, like one Rip Van Winkle, they will have slept through the revolution.
Robert Romano is the Senior ALG News Editor.
