A Closer Look
It’s a new commentary on Relevant Radio I want to point you to and ask you to participate in, both here and there. What’s the connection?
The commentator.
I’m thankful for the opportunity the network has provided to expand on this ability to speak directly to listeners daily in a brief expansion on a news item or current affairs topic, adding some perspective to the headlines. Or a bit of the ‘story behind the story’ that I’ve always looked for as a news and investigative journalist. Whether it’s something new to think about, or a different way of looking at something we hear all the time in the news, I’m trying to give readers here and listeners there a different look at what’s going on in the world – local, national or global. After all, borders have fallen everywhere, communications have exploded in their reach and speed, and we’re now referred to as ‘the world community’. Just look at how often that phrase has been brought up lately in reporting on Israel and Hamas, how ‘the world community’ is reacting….and so on.
How is this any different from the glut of other voices and commentators and bloggers and news reporters out there? I hope it’s more respectful, for one, and charitable and intellectually honest. Words mean things, they have consequences. Let’s look at that in the way news is reported. The language has been distorted and redefined to shape public opinion so much that people in the modern culture have lost their ethical reference points.
Pope John Paul II said “communications is a moral act”, and he called on the communications media to take seriously our responsibility to the truth in “that delicate exchange” between hearts and minds. The premise of everything I do is that truth exists, that it is knowable by the natural law “written on the human heart” (it’s the ‘ought’ when you say ‘that guy ought not cut in front of me in line’), that all human beings have equal dignity no matter what, and that each and everyone deserves respect.
If you’ve just come here via ‘A Closer Look’, a warm welcome. If you’ve been here as somewhat of a regular, check out Relevant Radio’s online audio streaming and archived programming. It’s a necessary resource of morally informed voices in a noisy culture of politically correct chattering classes. Politics don’t determine what’s correct, after all.
And while you’re here, check out the links over on the right. And at those sites, check out their own links. Exponentially, you’ll get great coverage of important news and issues of the day. It’s a hopeful sign that there are so many intelligent, witty, ethical and incisive voices in the conversation we’re having around the global table.
When some of President-elect Obama’s supporters got riled up about his friend Pastor Rick Warren having a role in the inauguration ceremony, Obama said Americans tend to be noisy and opinionated, but we have to listen to each other and respect other views. Hopefully, his supporters and opponents alike can agree to that, and maintain that attitude.
But I’ll take a closer look at that, sometime after the inauguration…
0 Comment
Obama said a mouthful when he opined that Americans tend to be noisy and opinionated. If he watches”The View” one can understand how he has come to that conclusion. But our disagreements have not always been so vacuous. Much of the dissonance in what passes for political dialog can be traced back to our educational institutions. Higher education has largely been hijacked by leftists imposing doctrinaire liberalism in the social and political studies departments of our universities. Millions of graduates are woefully ignorant of the historical development of western civilization and the contributions of the Churhc, nor did they learn the art of critical thinking. They go on to become journalists and editors. It is no surprise that when they express an opinion (or worse yet, vote) we get the results that we do.