Meanwhile, David Brooks identifies a dislike of Big Government as the problem with Republicans and conservatives, while the “conservative” National Review summit brings in John Podheretz and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough to discuss how best to fix conservatism so that it can compromise with contemporary pragmatic (big) governance.  Which, from what I gather, involves re-labeling RINOs and moderates “conservative” and lopping off the “fringe-right” Hobbity Visigoth extremists altogether.

Like leftists, these people look for easy marks — after all, how brave is it to demonize conservatism and the TEA Party movement when the press and the Democrats have been doing so since it galvanized around what Brooks calls a dangerous and unwinning “encroachment” narrative favored by anti-intellectual wingnuts — and in exchange for taking pot shots and mirroring leftwing assumptions, they are praised as the true “thinkers” on the right.  Even though there’s hardly a conservative, classical liberal, constitutionalist, or libertarian anywhere in the bunch.

Just more government-worshipping statists who, as they become part of the media matrix, aid the leftwing agenda by giving ostensible cover to the idea that divergent viewpoints are being aired, when in fact all they are doing is helping the left redefine itself as moderate, claiming for themselves the mantle of conservatism, and pushing the founding principles out to the fringes in a way that is entirely cynical and self-serving.

But I digress.  Kind of.

Because what I really wanted to point out here is how two stories have been covered.  The first involves some tricky editing, and is being pushed by the mainstream press as part of its attempt to demonize the NRA and shame legal gun owners until they willingly disarm in exchange for a reversal of pariah status.

Stephen Gutowski:

In the wake of a gun control hearing involving the father of one of the victims of the tragic Sandy Hook shooting BuzzFeed, The Telegraph, and other liberal media outlets have resorted to using a deceptively edited video in order to smear Second Amendment supporters.

A video promoted by all of the aforementioned sites purportedly shows the “father of Newtown victim heckled by NRA supporters.” However, when the heavily edited video of Neil Heslin is compared to the raw video, available at Twitchy, it becomes apparent that important context has been removed from the interaction.

Clearly the gun owners in the crowd are reacting to Mr. Heslin’s repeated request that somebody in the room tell him why “assault weapons” shouldn’t be banned. In fact, the crowd reacts only after Mr. Heslin takes their silence as a form of agreeing with his point.

This is the only time that gun owners in the crowd appear to interject in the testimony – and it, in no way, constitutes heckling.

Furthermore, the fact that many media outlets were perfectly willing to forward one of the most deceptively edited videos I’ve ever seen in order to smear gun owners is disturbing. After all these are the same media outlets that tarred and feathered James O’Keefe and Andrew Breitbart for far less. Where is there outrage now?

Why did they forward such an obvious deception? Where have all the fact checkers gone? Why is this smear allowed to propagate?

I’m going to take Gutowski’s queries as earnest rather than rhetorical and say that obvious deception and the perpetuation of smears is part and parcel of any propaganda effort aimed at shaming and scapegoating.  And as the left and its media lapdogs have determined that onerous gun control is a necessary ingredient for the Greater Good of the society they wish to erect on the ruins of our own, the ends — weakening the 2nd Amendment, disarming law-abiding citizens, solidifying governmental power over subjects by claiming only for the State and its servants the right to weaponry that can be used to repel tyranny — justify the means.  Which in this case involves manufacturing false narratives, perpetuating them, and rationalizing the dishonesty as being a necessary evil in the service of a moral good, even as they know that it is nothing more than propaganda in the service of centralizing power and providing cover for the unconstitutional machinations of  their Marxist cult figure president.

Here’s the video, both edited and unedited, courtesy MRC:

The second bit of propaganda I want to point out comes in the form of an after-study about the make-up of the “Occupy” movement. Presented as a vibrant, organic uprising of multi-ethnic, cross-generational patriots alarmed at the way corporate money and “the bankers” were controlling the country (with the help, naturally, of right-wing financiers and the GOP), what it really was was largely homogenized, carefully planned, and a product of left-wing activism given cover by a sympathetic media that agreed to go along with the ruse.

Overwhelmingly peopled by educated, rich, white, and male “protesters”, the “movement” was nothing more than an attempt by useful idiots to play at radical chic, while leftwing activists, the Democrats, and the mainstream press — which at this point is nothing more than the media arm of the progressive agenda — parlayed the optics into a class-warfare message that it carried into the 2012 elections and continues to use today.

From the perspective of Marxism / Alinskyism, the goal is to pretend to support the middle class and the poor against the voracious iniquity of “the rich” — all the while implementing policies that shrink the number of “rich,” increase dependency on the state by destroying small business and the private sector, and ultimately, to rid the country of any kind of middle class, leaving behind only the ruling class and the working masses, who the ruling class will benevolently and lovingly lord over.

That our journalism schools and academies have been overrun by leftists, who self-select during faculty hires, is hardly news. But what we need to recognize is that the mainstream press is now part of the government matrix, and its function is to destroy opposition to the party lines, shame dissenters, and punish those who stray.

They are the communications arm of a soft ongoing coup. And rather than worry about how we can get into their good graces, “conservatives” should be working on ways to defang and then kill off the Statist guard dogs.

That a once venerable magazine like the National Review is throwing in with an anti-gun MSNBC host, pretending he’s representative of anything remotely tied to conservatism, suggests that we must be wary about taking advice from institutions that are largely living off the fumes of a past that was once rich with integrity.

(h/t JohninFirestone)