Many of today's liberals are very self righteous about how George Bush lied or how conservative talk radio brainwashes the people with lies. But the truth is that from early on for progressives and socialists the truth is an inconvenient nuisance that gets in the way of the Utopian socialist agenda. We frequently hear from the left that they are being oppressed when someone disagrees whit their philosophy. Yet it was under the progressive leadership of Woodrow Wilson that people were actually thrown in prison for opposing WWI, people who refused to buy Liberty bonds were marked as unpatriotic. A government force literally went door to door and anyone who opposed the war was taken in. This is an inconvenient truth the left wants us to forget as the history books in our schools are sanitized leaving out many facts.

Marx, Lenin and Stalin new that manipulation of the truth and facts could be used to control and whip the masses into a movement. Georges Sorel a hero of the left propelled the Marxist movement by holding that the Marxist prophecy, admitting that it did not make much sense, could be moved by showing Marx as a prophet not a policymaker thus the masses would absorb Marxism unquestionably as a religious dogma. The Soviet Union sold the socialist system by keeping the masses uninformed and misinformed with non-stop propaganda and state run media. Wilson and FDR also used heavy tactics of propaganda and the media willingly went along. This philosophy was adopted by many elite universities and professors in the early days of the progressive movement and has been taught for over a century now.

As some early progressives noted "Reason is a tool, but it can never be the motive force of the crowd". This continued when Al Sharpton said when confronted by the fact that the Tawana Brawley "assault" was a fake. "It doesn't matter", he was reported to have said "We're building a movement". Sharpton knew the events were not true but continued to push them as fact for the cause. This is the common thinking of many on the left. The facts are irrelevant as long as the movement prospers.

The right is not completely innocent of the same manipulation but for the left it was part of the initial doctrine from the beginning in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries and was promoted as standard practice not the exception. It was adopted and is being promoted by University and Media elites alike. Propaganda was to be used to manipulate and motivate the masses for the socialist cause and the power of the state.

In the Media journalist for decades lied about how well socialism worked in the Soviet Union. They were so enamored with the socialist ideal that they willingly turned a blind eye to the atrocities of systematic starvation of millions, the gulags for political prisoners and the thousands executed for speaking out. This is still common today, facts that get in the way of pushing the agenda are to be ignored or manipulated. Newsweek's disproved story of flushing the Quran down the toilet caused riots and death. CNN refused to report on Saddam's atrocities so they could keep their Baghdad office. NY Times putting out a story they could not confirm about McCain. CBS Evening news knowingly used forged documents. News stories intentionally leaving out relevant facts. The IPCC deliberately changing their 2001 report and changing charts to eliminate warming periods to propel global warming as unprecedented. These items are not the exception but the norm.

One simple fact the left overlooks is that disagreeing with them is not oppressing them. They have Air America no one is trying to shut it down. It's the left who protests conservative speakers and throws food at those who disagree. It is the left who have repeatedly rounded up conservative papers on campus and burned them. They are the ones trying to get conservative hosts off the air. They are the ones who complain about conservative forums and want them stopped. Just because we disagree with them we must be silenced. Now this obviously does not apply to all who believe collectivism will work but it does apply to most of their leaders throughout history. Most revolutions started by convincing the masses they were oppressed and manipulating them to create the movement. Once they bought into the cause they could then be easily controlled.

For many on the left the truth and facts are just inconvenient things that get in the way of the Idealistic movement.