War is Peace

Freedom is Slavery

Ignorance is Strength

Published during the Soviet Union's rise as a global superpower, George Orwell's 1984 offers a prescient window into the soul of the propaganda apparatus of a utopia dictatorship. While Barack Obama has yet to transform the United States from a constitutional republic, his effort to redesign Old Glory notwithstanding, enough similarities have arisen during his presidency and his campaign for re-election that it is worth taking notice. When reality is refracted through the prism of the state propaganda machine, we lose sight of who we are as a society.
 
Inhabitants of Orwell’s 1984 live in rat infested Victory Mansions and drink Victory Coffee that can generously be described as swill. The Ministry of Plenty allows them to purchase one pair of threadbare pajamas per annum. The Ministry of Truth re-writes historical news events and promulgates Newspeak, a language that seeks to confuse citizens into believing they are not living a dystopian nightmare.
 
Conservatives have long complained about an unfriendly press. More than ever before, the Obama administration and its sycophants in the media are driving an Orwellian dystopian narrative to distract voters from the true misery of the economy and the dangers that face the United States abroad. Reasonable people can debate whether Mitt Romney or the solutions he proposes offer a superior alternative to the policies of the present administration. In a free country with a free press, the American people are entitled to the unvarnished truth. Our ancestors fought a revolution to free us from imperial rule. The modern day Tea Party movement is a metaphorical revolution against the heavy hand of top down, one size fits all, centrally planned government from both Republicans and Democrats. If the strength of the regime is our ignorance, we will surely lose our freedom.

The Polls

The Department of Justice sued The Gallup Organization after Gallup expressed an unwillingness to publish polls favorable to the Obama administration. Polls commissioned and released by media organizations should be intended to inform the public on the state of the election. Instead, polls are commissioned to reflect a desired outcome and drive voter perception. Individuals polled should be chosen to reflect an accurate representation of voter sentiment. Instead, pollsters heavily weight their samples with Democrats to give the impression that there is a wave of support for President Obama and Governor Romney is losing the election. In the critical swing state of Ohio, pollsters weight their samples with as many as 10% more Democrats despite evidence that Republicans have requested 40% more absentee ballots than Democrats and Republicans are outpacing their own absentee ballot requests from four years ago. Misrepresenting polling data is significant because many news organizations cite the average of these poll results reported at RealClearPolitics.com. When the website UnskewedPolls.com reports these results without a Democrat polling bias, they report a 7% lead for Mitt Romney as compared to the 4% lead RealClearPolitics reports for Barack Obama as of this writing.

The Economy

While the media continues to criticize Mitt Romney for a comment he made at a fundraiser several months ago, one that is technically accurate, they ignore the fact that the labor participation rate is the lowest it has been in 25 years resulting in a real unemployment rate of over 11%. Since President Obama took office, gasoline prices have more than doubled and one out of every four homes is worth less than the value of its mortgage. Despite the passage of a nearly 3000 page bill President Obama promised would reduce health insurance premiums by $2500, they have risen by nearly 20%. Nearly nine million people are collecting disability payments and the number of food stamp recipients has more than doubled under President Obama's watch. It is no wonder that median household income is down 8%. With our economy in freefall, the Federal Reserve has been forced to monetize 3/4 of the $6 trillion in new debt President Obama has accumulated. Rather than focusing on the disaster that is President Obama's economic record, or President Obama's own remarks acknowledging a desire to see welfare recipients as a 'majority coalition', or even President Obama’s outright lies on 60 Minutes about not raising taxes or his admission of lying in his paid advertisements, the media chooses to focus on Mitt Romney's supposed missteps and other campaign minutia. It is no wonder that only 8% of Americans have a 'great deal' of trust in the media.

Terrorism and the Middle East - Libya, Egypt and Iran

A United States consulate is set ablaze and our ambassador is murdered on the anniversary of 9/11 in an act of terrorism White House spokesman Jay Carney referred to as “self-evident", a characterization the President of Libya and Secretary of State Clinton agree with, and President Obama professes to the United Nations that this was the result of an out of control mob upset with a video that was released months earlier. Since the attack, we have learned that the United States government knew that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attack within 24 hours, that Secretary of State Clinton hired a 'security' firm that agreed to send UNARMED! 'guards' to ‘protect’ a consulate in one of the most dangerous corners of the world and that United States Marines guarding our embassy in Egypt were not permitted to be armed with live ammunition. When engaging in such reckless behavior, President Obama ignored growing evidence of Arab radicalization in North Africa. In response to these attacks, reports have surfaced that President Obama is considering releasing the convicted mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb the tunnels leading to New York City and a federal building in lower Manhattan. To add insult to injury, President Obama has decided to give $450 million in NEW aid to Egypt despite evidence of Muslim Brotherhood connections to the Libya attack and after proposing a $129 million cut from the embassy security budget. While the Prime Minister of Israel draws literal red lines at the U.N. and his country hands out gas masks as Iran races toward becoming a nuclear power, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta calls 'little red lines' a political ploy. Meanwhile, U.S. soldiers continue to be killed in 'friendly' fire incidents in Afghanistan where the U.S. suffered the worst single day loss of air power since the Vietnam War as the Taliban destroyed eight Harreir jets while parked at an air base.  

Lying has become the new normal among the Obama Administration and its allies. It has gotten so bad that FreedomWorks CEO Matt Kibbe and conservative allies authored a letter expressing their outrage. At a recent Cato Institute Forum, Kibbe wondered rhetorically “how it is possible that so many diverse people can come together and create something that is better than themselves... when Barack Obama stood in front of Solyndra two months before it went bankrupt and said with a certitude that should disturb everyone ‘I know what is better’”. Orwell recognized that ignorance is power because it affords the government greater control. Barack Obama and his liberal allies recognize this too. To paraphrase Kibbe, freedom is the disintermediation of government control. Only with freedom of information is this possible.