The propagandists, spinmeisters, group-thinkers, and phony do-gooders have even infiltrated golf

I keep reducing my television viewing. The first to be clicked off years ago was network news. Next was 60 Minutes. Then local news. Now I'm down to watching golf tournaments, although I don't play golf.

The same with reading material. The first to go were Newsweek and Time. Next was the New York Times. Then I even stopped reading the local daily newspaper.

As my reading and watching of the popular media have shrunk, my knowledge and wisdom about current events and history have grown, especially about government, economics, and politics. That's because I've filled the time by increasing my reading of books and in-depth analyses from nonpartisan journals, magazines, think tanks, and websites, including, to name several out of too many to list here, the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Independent Institute, Reason magazine, Liberty magazine, The Economist, and CafeHayek.com. I've also increased my primary research. For example, instead of relying on the popular media to interpret a new law passed by Congress, I now read the law and draw my own conclusions, which are almost always at odds with the media's interpretation.

The farther one gets from the popular media, the more one realizes that almost all contemporary politics and government is about theft and other illegitimate uses of force. It's not about justice, fairness, humanity, saving the world, or Democrats versus Republicans -- as the popular media and their fellow propagandists in the two political parties would have you believe. It's about some people banding together to use government force to pillage and plunder others, to remake the world in their narcissistic image, or to stick their noses in other people's private affairs. But not once in a half-century of watching and reading the popular media did I ever see a reporter or pundit ask a pillager, plunderer, narcissist, or busybody where he got the right to use force against another person for any purpose other than defending life, liberty, and property. Not once.

The question was never asked by former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite. Yet the journalism school of Arizona State University is named after Cronkite. ASU is 20 minutes from my house and is where President [sic] Obama will be giving the commencement address in two days to students who agree with the president [sic] that college should be free; that is, money should be forcefully taken from working stiffs who don't attend college and given to college students, in the hope (often false) that the students will graduate and earn higher pay than the working stiffs. Students call this social justice, proving that they have learned nothing about justice, morality, or thinking. Heck, many haven't even learned how to write a grammatically-correct sentence or calculate a simple percent, as I know from years of hiring hundreds of college graduates.

Tellingly, the ASU journalism school is not named after the best journalist of all time, H. L. Mencken, who never stepped foot in a journalism school but who would be asking the question if he were alive today.

I've veered into the weeds. Let me swing back to golf.

I used to watch a lot of sports on TV, especially baseball, until professional teams began using force to wring subsidies from non-fans, including the team co-owned by President Bush, the coercer extraordinaire, whose successor also sees nothing wrong with using force, albeit for different illegitimate reasons. Now I watch golf. Not only are the players gentlemen instead of tattooed thugs, but the scenery is nice, the commercials are few, and the rules are clear, unlike football, where a touchdown is scored only if ball crosses a plane formed by an isosceles triangle, with the ball being at the tip of the triangle, with one of the two equal sides being parallel to the goal line, and with the other side being parallel to the left foot of the ball carrier.

Unfortunately, televised golf is being ruined by the same propaganda that has ruined the rest of the popular media -- with public-service baloney about the glories of volunteerism; with claptrap about diversity, which always excludes my ethnic group; and with horse manure about global warming and green energy. Just play golf and shut up, for God's sake.

The public-service spots for Teach America are the worst. They spread the poppycock that college graduates can improve K-12 education for the "disadvantaged" if they volunteer to teach in government schools before pursuing their careers. The truth, of course, is that public schools suffer from government control, from the political power of teacher unions, and from the behavioral and learning problems of students who come from families and neighborhoods destroyed by 40 years of government dependency and the War on Drugs. Naturally, you won't see public-service messages with these truths.

Come to think of it, I'm going to stop watching golf. Maybe I'll watch billiards instead. I don't think it has been corrupted yet by propagandists, spinmeisters, group-thinkers, and phony do-gooders. Besides, the rules of the game are even simpler than golf.