Many of you have spent an uncomfortable evening listening to a group of lefties rail on about how Republicans are stupid, evil, and still ruining the world. As people in the majority often are, they were completely oblivious to the possibility that not everyone shares their views. To be sure, any individualist or capitalist who lives in a far left city or collectivist enclave needs a thick skin. Still, lefties can be quite a boor when they behave like jackasses. So, here is Shout Bits’s gift to the leftie in your life: how not to be a left-wing jackass:

1. Get your left-wing information from the best sources. The left-wing ideas in the US come from basically one source: the New York Times. Read Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd because they are all you need to know about how the progressives think. If you need science to support your left-wing views, read Scientific American, which has a monthly diatribe against Republicans and capitalism. After reading these primary sources, you will quickly notice that your local leftist columnist is merely parroting the Times. Keith Olbermann, The Huffington Post, and the Daily Kos are all predictable two minutes of hate based on the left-wing wellspring. You will come across more informed and less of a wacko if you lay off the fringe stuff and stick to the true prophets of socialism.
   
2. Be careful of how you use the word ‘we.’ If you catch yourself saying something like “we need to do something,” you are probably being a left-wing jackass. Human civilization survived for 8,000 years without Obama, so saying we need to take action on this or that by August is patently foolish. Also, by invoking ‘we,’ you are implying that anyone who disagrees with you is outside the consensus. Unless ‘we’ means your immediate family, using ‘we’ may make people think you are a left-wing jackass.
   
3. Along the same lines as ‘we,’ be careful of ‘community.’ You seem quite pompous citing the “Latino community,” or the “African American community.” You are practicing an ugly form of identity politics by doing this. You are assuming that everyone from that ethnic background shares a common political belief. While the Democrats dominate certain ethnic demographics, nobody wants to be taken for granted. Des Moines is a community; every black person in the US is not.
   
4. Don’t assume everyone is a leftie like you. If you are sitting with four strangers, there is a good chance one of them is not a leftie. Someone must have told you not to discuss politics with new acquaintances, yet you just can’t let it go because the fire of justice overwhelms you. Even if everyone at the table is a Democrat, that still doesn’t mean they want to hear your views on Ward Churchill’s mistreatment.
   
5. Stop equating big with bad. Lefties expose themselves as fools when they cite terms like ‘big pharma’ or ‘big oil’” Some endeavors simply work best when run by a large organization. It takes a lot of money to drill an oil well or research a new drug. In order to diversify such risks, a company needs to drill a lot of wells and research a lot of new drugs. Small companies simply can’t compete when the stakes are so high. Simply attaching the term ‘big’ to an industry does not prove anything other than a general contempt for the capitalist system.
   
6. Stop using ‘corporate’ as a moniker of despot evil. A corporation is nothing more than a framework that allows people to join together to perform some task. Your local NPR station a corporate entity. What the average dreadlocked leftist usually means by ‘corporate’ is ‘for profit.’ Most non-leftists would respect you more if you simply said you were against profit seeking, rather than against anything ‘corporate.’
   
7. Try to keep your manufactured outrage in check. Sen. Boxer recently epitomized this leftie trait when she bristled at being called “ma’am” by a Brigadier General Walsh. She was outraged by the slight and demanded to be called “Senator.” No sensible person should be offended by being called “sir” or “ma’am.” At most, the California Senator should have privately requested Walsh call her “Senator” in the future. Boxer, however, manufactured outrage because she could not contain her contempt for traditional pleasantries and the non-leftist culture they represent. You can see the same ugly manufactured outrage in the likes of Bill Maher, Janeane Garofalo, and a host of other leftie celebrities. Hyperbolic outrage reveals your lack of substance and certified left-wing jackass status.
   
8. Enough with the ‘Rush Limbaugh speaks for Republicans’ ploy. Pundits like Limbaugh and Ann Coulter do not represent each of the 77 million Republicans in the US. This was an obvious ploy to tie the Republican Party to the most polarizing figures. I doubt Sen. Nelson would like to be tied to Speaker Pelosi or Cynthia McKinney (former Democrat). The main difference is, of course, that Coulter and Limbaugh were never elected to any office; they are private citizens. Hard leftists like Pelosi, Sen. Majority Leader Reid, and Sen. Boxer are elected leaders of the Democratic Party. Quit using hack political tactics that have already run their course as a part of your conversations. It makes you look like a spineless true-believer and a left-wing jackass.
   
9. Stop the vitriol against V.P. Cheney. We get it, you never liked him. You equated his mannerisms with those of a hateful mass murderer. It’s perfectly OK to hate your government, but Cheney is long gone now. If he deserves some kind of punishment, the slow wheels of justice will search out that truth, but he is no longer a hot-button issue. To reserve such hate for the largely figurehead position of V.P., especially after his retirement, is just plain weird. Turning red in the face over the mention of his name clearly exposes you as a left-wing jackass.
   
10. Finally, have a sense of humor, for heaven’s sake. Lefties are in charge now; you have the most radical socialist President since FDR (maybe ever), a super majority in the Senate, and a San Francisco liberal as the House Speaker. It’s OK to allow a little joke or two about V.P. Biden’s moronic gaffes. You need to be a good winner if you want to stay in power.
    

Last Saturday, Shout Bits passed the one year milestone, and this blog would like to thank everyone who has read and commented on the work. About 7500 people read the blog over this time – not too shabby for a fledgling effort from a no-name author.

Interestingly, the most popular entries were not the ones reporting new information (like the banned books http://www.shoutbits.com/2008/07/read-banned-books-if-you-can-find-them.html, or DNC http://www.shoutbits.com/2008/08/liberal-lies-in-mile-high-city.html entries). Comments on current topics were far more popular (the GM boycott was the most popular by far http://www.shoutbits.com/2009/05/boycott-gm.html).

Popular or not, the goal was to offer the libertarian free market perspective. Even when Shout Bits agreed with the conservative position, it was often for a different reason than given by GOP mouthpieces (like the blue law entry http://www.shoutbits.com/2009/03/blue-laws-kill-jobs.html). Unlike fellow pundits that only sought to fight the cultural battle, Shout Bits offers a different viewpoint from the Red / Blue framework.

Some people have asked whether Shout Bits will run out of ideas for its blogs. Considering the many thousands of people who work each day to formulate new ways to destroy the system that has created the America we know, there no lack of new topics on the horizon.

Even though the evil and stupidity coming out of Washington lately is worse than the evil and stupidity of the past, there is always reason to hope. The free market grows around the barriers to freedom imposed by the unproductive political class. Even though Obama may kill off entire industries like drugs, finance, manufacturing, and anything dependent on energy, the US has often reinvented itself and thrived. Furthermore, by attempting to do more, Obama may achieve less of his evil agenda (http://www.shoutbits.com/2009/06/will-senate-be-obamas-waterloo.html).

Finally, a few people have asked about the image at the top of the blog. It is titled “White Wedge,” and is a takeoff of the 1919 Lazar Lissitzky lithograph “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_the_Whites_with_the_Red_Wedge. Back then, the prevailing opinion was of classical liberalism, signified by white. The red wedge was meant to signify the unity of the Bolshevik minority. Today, most of the socialist agenda has been achieved through Democrat activism and Republican complicity, making the majority red. Free market thinkers are now the unified opposition, or “white wedge.” Shout Bits works to be part of the white wedge disrupting and fighting the socialist assumptions common in politics, the media, and education. Wish us luck.

CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite died yesterday, so it is this blog’s duty to tread lightly on his memory. His moniker as the most trusted man, however, speaks volumes about the naivety of Americans in the 1960′s and the limited news sources then available.

While this blog hopes to tread lightly, the mainstream media rarely returns the favor. When Sen. Thurmond died, the press jumped on his segregationist past as a Democrat (while omitting the Democrat part). When Charlton Heston died, the press jumped on his supposedly controversial support of basic gun rights. When Pres. Reagan died, the media openly speculated as to whether the disease that claimed him explained his shaky second term. To this day, Hollywood slimes the late Pres. Nixon. Of course when Sen. Ted Kennedy fell seriously ill, the press had a blackout about Chappaquiddick. When the time comes for the ailing Sen. Byrd, don’t expect a retrospective on his Ku Klux Klan activities.

Certainly, Cronkite was a likeable, nerdy news man grown from the days of radio. His delivery set new standards for dryness and apparent objectivity. Still, Cronkite was an active liberal, and he used the power of his anchor chair to advance his agenda.

Most famously, Cronkite declared the Vietnam War unwinnable, much to the dismay of Pres. Johnson. All evidence suggests that victory was quite possible. The US and South Vietnam troops won every notable battle of the war. The US, despite Chinese and Russian opposition, maintained air superiority throughout most of the war. The ratio of Allied to Northern casualties was also fully consistent with victory. The desperate suicidal Northern tactic of late January 1968, the Tet Offensive, was a disaster for the communists, costing them ruinous losses and revealing many of their secret resources. At that moment, when the US had repelled the North’s efforts, Cronkite handed the communists a sword with his unwinnable editorial. Even years later when Pres. Nixon returned the fight to the North’s resources with operation Linebacker, the weight of public opinion, fueled by the evening news, resulted in political capitulation.

But it is simply not reasonable to pin Vietnam on Cronkite. Cronkite certainly didn’t devise Johnson’s limited warfare sensibilities. Nobody elected Cronkite, and nobody was forced to believe his message of defeat. Most importantly, Cronkite was perfectly clear he was editorializing, not reporting. Rather than dig into Cronkite’s politics, this blog asks why 1960′s America believed him so. Frankly, it is hard to blame the public, because they were working in the dark.

1960′s America had pathetically limited news resources, most of them left leaning. Public opinion was cultivated by three channels of TV, each a clone of the other, plus one PBS channel. The traditional news paper had already peaked in its media dominance by then, and many radio stations got their news from the same TV oligarchy. No cable, internet, or blogs then existed to challenge the media elite’s filtering of the news. The media of the early and mid 20^th century was famously cozy with Washington, making the term spin wholly unnecessary.

How times have changed. When Dan Rather, Cronkite’s media heir, presented a letter suggesting that Pres. Bush (43) had received inappropriate favors during the Vietnam War, bloggers tore the document’s credibility to shreds within a single news cycle. Rather, with the hubris of the old days, simply dismissed any criticism out of hand. Rather is now a reporter for HD Net, an extended basic cable special interest broadcaster. Independent thinkers, armed with the internet, reduced the most powerful newsman to a disgraced hack.

In Cronkite’s day, no one was watching the watchdog. In the modern era, there is no single watchdog, and the people are better off for it. People remain vulnerable to groupthink and manipulation by the media they trust, but today there is no excuse for ignorance. While the US rightly mourns Cronkite’s passing, we should also celebrate the passing of his era in media.