Good Afternoon, America.  This being my first venture into the Blogosphere, I hope that you will allow me to share my thoughts and opinions of what made this country great, and will help keep it great far into the future.

If you read my Bio, you will see that my core belief is that it is the right, no the duty, of every American to THINK FOR THEMSELVES.  Never let anyone else's thoughts, ideas, or beliefs form your belief system.  Don't get me wrong, plenty of people have influenced my ideas and beliefs over the years, but I flat refuse to let anyone cram their ideas down my gullet unchewed.  I believe it is our moral obligation as thinking, reasoning people to question, research, and maybe disregard, any idea that is presented to us, even if it is attractive to our own belief system.

This touches on the central idea of this post.  Any person capable of thinking can make good decisions, but they must have accurate, unbiased information to do so.  In my humble opinion, the Main Stream Media falls far short of this ideal, which should be their ultimate goal, but is not.  The founders of this country guaranteed our right to speak the truth as we perceived it by authoring the First Amendment to the Constitution.  I happen to believe this is one of the most important sections of the Constitution.  It protects your right to speak out, against church, state, authority or what have you.  Unlike the campuses of certain universities, it protects the right of everyone to state their opinions, not just those in keeping with the institutions current mindset. 

The unfortunate trend that has developed is the introduction of bias into media, be it conservative or liberal.  No story of events can be objective if the person or institution disseminating it injects their slant, or bias, into the reporting.  The media, be it radio, television or newspaper, seems far more concerned in pushing their agenda than reporting the facts.  This makes it nearly impossible for the average American to make a clear, thinking decision on most issues without digging very, very hard for the "nugget" of fact in the center of a swamp of innuendos, assertions, and opinions.  The average American probably doesn't want to work that hard for information, and it is my observation that most people will swallow the most popular opinion whole, letting it be their belief system, rather than influence it.

So I implore you, America, question everything.  Don't be the sheep, be the sheperd.