The following article was first written in 1988 then expanded on in 1995 when it was printed in the Tabernacle Talks.  It was expanded on again for Voice from the Pews.

News-Speak

            With great anticipation, one afternoon in 1988 I hurried home in time to catch the 6 o’clock news and, hopefully, dispel or confirm the rumors of the day, which had roared louder than the hum of truck and air traffic leaving Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base. 
 But instead of answering with a simple who, what, when, and where, Peter Jennings began ABC News’ leading news item with a two-minutes hate tirade – a biased history lesson of the how and why the Reagan administration had fought with a [soft-on-Communists, liberal] mostly Democratic Congress in order to back the Nicaraguan Contras against the [Communists-backed] Sandinistas to a point where Jennings finally confirmed today’s rumors that Sandinista troops had crossed the Honduras border, thus giving the administration the “excuse” he claimed it needed to involve U.S. troops.

            In my college journalism classes, we were taught such a flagrant explanation of the news was called “editorializing.”  For those of us in the military who are familiar with psychological operations, we call such manipulating of the news “propaganda.”  I also like to call this manipulating and re-defining of facts and historical information “News-Speak,” in honor of its source, the news media.

 In his book, 1984, George Orwell theorized and fictionalized how a one-world government [actually three governments, but they were all the same totalitarian-type system] could control the ignorant masses by ensuring their ignorance.  If you can control vocabulary, that is, what people think words and concepts mean, you can control language, and if you can control language, you can control minds.  Orwell called this [deconstructive linguistics] concept Newspeak, the deconstructionist language of Big Brother, the symbolic leader of the all-powerful government.

            Although he was both an atheist and socialist, I believe Orwell was allowed a little divine insight.  Throughout the Bible, there’s ample evidence of God using godless men to perform His will (i.e., Balaam, Nebuchadnezzar, Augustus Caesar, Herod Agrippa, etc.).  Rather than the government alone controlling the minds of the masses, I see government courts and bureaucracies as just one of seven major groups or institutions who are succeeding in controlling what we think and believe by limiting what we think we know.  Knowledge, after all, is limited by the scope and depth of language, which is but a collection of words that describe things, events and actions, emotions and concepts.  Limit that description, and you limit language.  Limit language and you control peoples’ minds.

            History proves the most highly developed cultures have had a highly developed language.  There is also ample evidence of nations and entire cultures collapsing because the State or someone was trying to control every aspect of the people’s lives, including how they think.  God made us in his image, which makes us thinking creatures.  As Abraham Lincoln wisely pointed out, “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”  Sooner or later, someone’s going to catch on to your scheme.  So do you think it’s possible that someone is scheming to dumb-down Americans?

Consider what happens when you limit the discourse on the emotion love.  The news media, Hollywood and the public education system have conspired to confuse the differences between real love (apape and phileo in Greek) and lust (eros).  English speaking peoples used to use the word charity to describe a self-sacrificing love and the little word like to describe brotherly love.  Today the English language seems to be less adequate to describe our true feelings than it could even a generation ago.  But it’s not that English itself has changed; it’s our vocabularies that have been limited.

            Who taught us to refer to homosexual as gays [meaning "happy"] rather than any of the Anglo-Saxon terms that more aptly describe the repulsive nature of their unnatural affections?  Who programmed us to speak only in terms of a woman’s "right" to an abortion rather than the many moral wrongs of abortion?  As Ambassador Alan Keyes so succinctly points out, “No one has a right to do wrong.”  Nonetheless, we’ve been conditioned not to believe in the absolute moral rights and wrongs taught in the Bible in favor of ever-changing, so-called legal rights that were never granted by the Constitution.  Who has gained control of how Americans think, forcing us to see things their way and their way only, teaching us to disregard both the Bible and the Constitution? 

            Let’s go back to the issue of abortion.  What is it, really?  Is it murder as the Bible clearly teaches [Exodus 21:22-23], or is it something else?

            Academia attempts to re-educate us regarding how we’re suppose look at this issue, telling us it’s simply a medical procedure, not a moral one.  The business industry sees it as a money maker, and has made billions of dollars supporting it.  And the business of America is supposedly business.  I believe America’s god is no longer the Lord but the dollar.

Hollywood and the entertainment industry villainize all those who dare look at abortion in any way other than what moral relativists tell us it is with absolute certainty.  The government, especially federal courts, have decided it’s okay to murder a child in the privacy of a doctor’s office.  Religious leaders, except a few followers of that prophet-for-profit Balaam, have chosen to say nothing about the issue, fearing it might hurt church attendance, which is far more important than obeying God. 

The news media has been especially militant in their efforts to depict Bible-believing Christians daring to protest the slaughter of children as a menace to their idea of a civilized [collectivist] society, if only because these intolerant trouble makers refuse to recognize and obey their elitist authority.  Finally, all of the above malefactors have the unlimited support of scores of subversive organizations [ACLU, NARAL, NEA, GSA, NOW, Planned Parenthood, etc.], willing and able to do anything to re-educate [or marginalize] Christians, implement their tolerate world view and establish a socialist-humanist government.

 Now speaking of world views, have you ever been polled?  Have you ever met anyone who’s ever been polled?  Isn’t it odd though you’re always reading or hearing about poll results?  But who in the world are they polling?

            I was polled once, sorta.  I just happened to be home one day about a week before the 1990 U.S. senatorial elections, so I was there when the phone rang.  A man identifying himself as someone from the Charlotte Observer told me he was conducting a political poll and asked if I’d mind answering a few questions.  Having never even heard of anyone who’s ever been polled before, I was delighted.

            “Sir,” he began, clearing his throat to make himself sound more masculine.  “Are you planning to vote in the upcoming senatorial election?”

            “Yes, sir,” I told him, returning a deep-voice, masculine response.

            “You are familiar then with both candidates?” He asked.

            “Yes, sir,” I told him.  I could hear papers shuffling.

            “Well, then,” he continued, “would you mind telling me which candidate you’re planning to vote for?”

            “I don’t mind,” I told him but deliberately didn’t reveal my choice.

            “Well, then,” he pressed on.  “Would you tell me who you’re going to vote for?”

            “Jesse Helms,” I responded bluntly.

            There was a long pause on the line.  I thought we had been disconnected.

            “Uh….well, uh….” he finally said, stuttering and rattling more papers.  “Is there any particular issue or issues that led you to that choice?”

            “Sure,” I told him.  This was getting to be fun.  “The other fellah couldn’t be more liberal without confessing he’s a communist.”

            There was another long pause on the line.  Again, I thought we had been disconnected.

            “Sir,” he finally came back to the phone, his voice less masculine but more serious.  “What is your education level?  I mean, are you a college graduate?”

            “Yes, sir,” I told him.  “NC State, Class of ‘82.”

            That seemed to really tear him up.  He then wanted to know if I was married and if my wife was also a college graduate.  She is.  I could hear him mumbling to himself.  Then he wanted to know if my household income was within a certain bracket.  It was.  That  unnerved him terribly.  Boy, this was fun!

            “Sir,” he finally said, his voice squeaky.  “What do you do for a living?”

            “I’m a soldier,” I told him.

            “Excuse me,” he said, timidly.

            “I’m a soldier,” I repeated.  “I’m stationed here at Fort Bragg.”

            “Oh, oh, oh, oh,” he repeated himself with tremendous excitement, like he was having a great epiphany of some sort.  “Okay then.  Never mind.”

            With that said, he hung up.  Apparently, I didn’t meet the criteria he was looking for to fit his pre-determined poll results.  I may have had the right education and income level, but my being a soldier disqualified me.  I wasn’t polling material.

  About a week or so later, I watched joyfully as CBS’ Dan Rather forced himself to report that my dear Senator Helms easily won his re-election bid against his very liberal challenger.  Mr. Rather appeared personally stunned, even offended by our election results, saying on national television he had thought North Carolinians were too enlightened now to re-elect Mr. Helms.  Rather’s blatant bias could not have been more obvious.  Despite millions of dollars poured into the Democratic challenger’s campaign from every subversive organization on the planet, plus 24-hour publicity coverage from his party’s international publicity department, the Democratic news media, North Carolinians still chose to keep its honest, bare knuckles statesman.  Imagine that.  How could we be so, so uneducated?!

            I wonder though, will it still be so in a few more years with the continued combined efforts of academia, business, entertainment, government courts & bureaucracies, news media, counterfeit churches and subversive organizations – all committed to making this country into a socialist-humanist state or destroying it entirely?  Will Americans become so dumbed-down that we give away our freedom to elitists, who love neither our Lord Jesus nor America?  God forbid!