-By Warner Todd Huston
National Public Radio (NPR) has a bit of foolishness penned by Daniel Schorr that really shows how useless NPR really is. In an pristine example of Schorr’s great intellect, he’s decided that the Internet is responsible for Nidal Hasan’s murderous rampage at Fort Hood earlier in the month. Folks, this is the sort of hack, stupidity that your tax dollars are paying for and a perfect example of why NPR and PBS should be stripped of federal funding immediately.
Seriously, the Internet caused the Fort Hood massacre? What nonsense.
Schorr notes that Hasan used the Internet to commune via email with a radical Islamofascist Imam named Anwar al-Awlaki and wonders if it is the Internet’s fault that this contact occurred. Schorr ridiculously asks, “…does the Internet merit some of the responsibility for helping the violence prone to fester there in communion with the machine?”
This argument is utterly without merit. But let’s explore Schorr’s premise…
Our revolutionary founders often met in taverns to discuss their gripes against the Crown. Using Schorr’s “logic,” then, bars are “responsible” for the Revolutionary War.
I hear tell that libraries have quite a few subversive books in them. I ask you Mr. Schorr, do libraries cause subversives?
What about that eeeevil Rock-n-Roll, Mr. Schorr? Maybe Rock-n-Roll has got to go because it makes the kids do all those rotten things, eh? While we are at it, let’s be rid of the influence of comic books on the fragile minds of young boys, too, right Mr. Schorr?
Of course, none of these things are ideologies, are they? The Internet, bars, libraries, music, comics, none of these things are systems of thought or ideological frameworks upon which to build a philosophy. Islam, on the other hand, is. And it is radical Islam that Nidal Hasan devoted himself to. The Internet was only a tool of communication. Just as the telephone or the U.S. mail would be should he have chosen either of those methods.
For NPR’s Daniel Schorr to pin the blame for the murders of 14 people on the Internet is facile at best, downright ignorant at worst. Unfortunately this is the sort of “reporting” our tax dollars are paying for.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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