{"id":3287,"date":"2011-02-14T14:54:17","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T19:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/?p=3287"},"modified":"2011-02-14T14:54:17","modified_gmt":"2011-02-14T19:54:17","slug":"boehner-defends-rights-of-americans-to-be-ill-informed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2011\/02\/boehner-defends-rights-of-americans-to-be-ill-informed.html","title":{"rendered":"Boehner defends rights of Americans to be ill-informed"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Speaker<\/a>
Boehner is eager to do the will of the ignorant<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On NBC’s Meet the Press this weekend, Speaker John Boehner was pressed by host David Gregory to repudiate<\/a> the baseless allegations of Obama being a Muslim and having not been born in the USA.\u00a0 Boehner declined.\u00a0 In the process, he said, “David, it’s not my job to tell the American people what to think. Our job in Washington is to listen to the American people.”<\/p>\n

On the face of it, Boehner is merely restating what has become a tired mantra of many politicians\u2014they are listening to the American people.\u00a0 Yet the larger implications of his statement on a whole, especially in the context it was stated, are particularly troubling.<\/p>\n

The Speaker told Gregory that people have a right to their beliefs and it wasn’t his job to tell them what to think.\u00a0 However, as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, \u201cEverybody is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 Where the President was born and what religion he practices are not matters of belief or opinion.\u00a0 This is evidential information.\u00a0 Boehner himself says he accepts Obama’s Hawaiian birth and Christianity as “facts as he understands them”.<\/p>\n

Not only is Boehner saying he considers the views of the ignorant and misinformed to be equally as valid as everyone else, but he strongly feels that as a leader he has no obligation to lead.\u00a0 He will just follow blithely where the unwitting wish.<\/p>\n

This would merely be a comical interlude<\/a> except that studies show that Fox News viewers are already the most misinformed<\/a> citizens, and a Fox News insider has revealed a news culture where “facts” are routinely just made up<\/a> to suit the desired narrative.\u00a0 Boehner is making it all the more clear that misinformed constituents are now part of the Republican strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He considers the views of the ignorant and misinformed to be equally as valid as everyone else, but he strongly feels that as a leader he has no obligation to lead. He will just follow blithely where the unwitting wish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[50,54,21,16,40,23,41,15],"class_list":["post-3287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-boehner","tag-congress","tag-conservatives","tag-fox-news","tag-gop","tag-obama","tag-republicans","tag-tea-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3287"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3297,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3287\/revisions\/3297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}