Reza Aslan, a Joyous Media, and the Denial of the Biblical Jesus

The mainstream media’s hatred of Christianity has become more blatantly obvious. Pastor John Dickerson writes:

• Reza Aslan, author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” has been interviewed on a host of media outlets in the last week. Riding a publicity wave, the book has surged to #2 on Amazon's list. Media reports have introduced Aslan as a “religion scholar” but have failed to mention that he is a devout Muslim. 

Why are these media outlets systematically omitting any mention that Aslan is a devout Muslim? Instead, they are touting him as if he is a scholar in the area of New Testament studies. However, this is not the case:

• His book is not a historian’s report on Jesus. It is an educated Muslim’s opinion about Jesus -- yet the book is being peddled as objective history on national TV and radio. Zealot is a fast-paced demolition of the core beliefs that Christianity has taught about Jesus for 2,000 years. Aslan is not a trained historian.
  
  Its conclusions are long-held Islamic claims—namely, that Jesus was a zealous prophet type who didn’t claim to be God, that Christians have misunderstood him, and that the Christian Gospels are not the actual words or life of Jesus but “myth.”

How would Aslan know “that Christians have misunderstood” Jesus? Where does he derive his evidence that Jesus “didn’t claim to be God?” Well, from the Koran, compiled about six hundred years after the New Testament!

Did Jesus claim to be God? He did in many cryptic ways! Why was He not more explicit about His identity? Well, he wasn’t explicit about many things. Not only were His disciples unable to comprehend much of what He had taught, His adversaries were all too eager to catch Him making indictable statements. Nevertheless, Jesus did say many things equating Himself with God. Here are several examples:

• For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. Jesus gave them this answer: "I tell you the truth…[21] For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. [22] Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, [23] that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him. [24] I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. [25] I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. [26] For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. [27] And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. [28] "Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice [29] and come out--those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned. (John 5:18-29)

Notice that the religious leadership correctly understood that Jesus was “making himself equal with God,” and Jesus never contradicted their impression.

In verse 21, Jesus claimed that He gives eternal life. In the Hebrew Scriptures, this is something only possible for God to do. Therefore, Jesus cryptically claimed to be God.

In verse 22, Jesus claimed that He is the judge. Once again, Scripture informs us that only

God can judge.

In verse 23, Jesus claimed that the same honor due to God was also due to Him, equating Himself with God. No human can claim anything distinctly close to this. It would be the worst blasphemy, and the Muslim knows this.

In verse 24, Jesus claimed that His word brought eternal life. Only God could say such a thing.

In verses 25-29, Jesus claimed that He would call forth the dead. This is something that only God can do. Therefore, Jesus was equating Himself with God.

   

Jesus also proclaimed that eternal life was a matter of trusting in Him:

• “I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins." (John 8:24) 

• Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." (John 6:29)

The Hebrew Scriptures demanded that trust be placed only in God:

• This is what the Lord says: "Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord.” (Jeremiah 17:5)

If Jesus were a mere human, trusting in Him would make us accursed. Therefore, if Jesus isn’t God, He is a false teacher – not a position that a devout Muslim wants to take!!

Jesus equated Himself with God in many other ways. He taught that He is pre-existent, and only God is pre-existent:

• "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds. (John 8:58-59)

The Jewish leadership knew that He was equating Himself with God – a blasphemy which deserved stoning. Therefore, they tried to kill Him. (I trust the Jewish understanding of Jesus’ self-revelation far more than I do the Muslim understanding, six hundred years after the fact!)  Jesus had not only indicated His pre-existence, He also applied to Himself the divine name of God – “I am.” This was how God had identified Himself to Moses (Exodus 3 and 4).

Afterwards, the leadership pressed Him to tell them explicitly if He was the Messiah. Jesus answered:

• "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, [26] but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. [27] My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. [28] I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:25-28)

Once again, Jesus claimed for Himself powers and authority that only God can have. It is Jesus who gives “them eternal life” and is able to protect them against any adversity (verse 28). Only God can do this. Therefore, anyone else saying this would be stoned.

The leadership understood His words and wanted to stone Him to death. They explained that they were doing this because Jesus, “a mere man, claim[s] to be God” (John 10:33).

Instead of correcting their “misunderstanding,” Jesus continued to affirm what they already understood:

• “Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." (John 10:37-38)

This doctrine of the Deity of the Messiah is not an invention of the Apostles. There is even a lot of evidence for this in the Hebrew Scriptures:

• "The days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will raise up to David a righteous branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.” (Jeremiah 23:5-6) 

• For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. (Isaiah 9:6-7)

This type of evidence is important because the Muslim, when backed into a corner, will claim that the NT has been altered, even though the Koran doesn’t support this claim. How then can he explain the fact that the OT teaches the very same theology as does the NT!

Muslim apologists also claim that Jesus never taught that He should be worshipped. However, as these verses point out, He did teach this. In fact, He never forbade people from worshipping Him (Matthew 9:18; Matthew 14:33; Matthew 15:25; Matthew 20:20; Matthew 21:9; Matthew 28:9; Matthew 28:16-17; Mark 3:11; Mark 5:6-7; Mark 11:9-10; Luke 4:41; Luke 5:8; Luke 23:42; Luke 24:52; John 5:23; John 9:38; John 12:13). Even kings worshipped Him:

• And [the Magi] asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." (Matthew 2:2, 11)

In contrast to the worship of Jesus, Paul and even an angel had strictly forbade others from worshipping them.

There are many more lines of reasoning in support of the claim that Jesus is God, especially the more explicit affirmations found in the Epistles and the wealth of OT evidence. However, I am equally impressed with the implicit New Testament evidence that Jesus is both God and Messiah. Take, for example, the way the NT applies to Jesus OT verses that refer to “Yahweh,” thereby cryptically indicating that Jesus is Yahweh!

For instance, Matthew writes of Jesus:

• This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: "A voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.' " (Matthew 3:3)

However, Isaiah had identified the coming “Lord” as “Yahweh.” In essence, Matthew asserted that Yahweh would come in the Person of Jesus, equating Jesus with Yahweh!

There are many such verses, and they are very significant. They answer Aslan’s charge that the Gospels do not reflect the true words of Jesus but instead represent later embellishments. However, if the NT wanted to make the case that Jesus is God, it wouldn’t have resorted to such cryptic references. Instead, it would have trumpeted, “Jesus is God,” loud and clear!

John records Jesus as saying that He is “the First and the Last”:

• When I saw him [Jesus], I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: "Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last.” (Rev. 1:17; also, 22:13)

This is a title that only God uses in regards to Himself (Isa. 44:6)! In using this title, Jesus is equating Himself with God!

The Book of Hebrews also applies OT quotations regarding God to Jesus:

• "In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed. But you remain the same, and your years will never end." (Hebrews 1:10-12) 

Implicit references to Jesus’ deity make up the very fabric of the NT. These references are so intimately woven into everything that Jesus did and said that they couldn’t have been mere insertions, as many so glibly charge. Instead, it can be argued that virtually everything that Jesus said reflected His divinity. Here are several examples:

• For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16; KJV)

This phrase is derived from Psalm 2, widely regarded as Messianic in Jesus day. However, Jesus wasn’t merely equating Himself with the Messiah by referring to Himself as the “only begotten son.” He was also proclaiming His divinity, because, at the end of the Psalm, the nations must do homage before Him.

Matthew records Jesus comforting His disciples with these words:

• For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20)

In order to accomplish this feat of omnipresence, He would have to be God! Even the more “mundane” things that Jesus taught pointed to His divinity. Implicit within his reference to “My Father,” was the assertion that He had always had a special relationship with God. He told His disciples that He would send them the Holy Spirit (John 15:26). Only God could presume to make such a promise! Then He claimed that the Spirit “would testify of Me” (15:27)! It would have been bold heresy to claim this Jesus isn’t God!

In many ways, Jesus proclaimed that He was greater than Moses and the Mosaic Covenant:

• I tell you that one greater than the temple is here…For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." (Matthew 12:6-8)

Only God could proclaim Himself greater than the Sabbath and the Temple. He was also greater than the Covenant. He initiated the New Covenant with His own blood (Mat. 26:27-29). In the end, when He commissioned and sent out His Apostles, He claimed that He had been given all authority in heaven and earth, and He commanded them to preach Him:

• "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20)

Once again, Jesus claims to be omnipresent. He will remain with them always! Also, it is no longer Moses who will be taught but Jesus. Perhaps most astonishing is His command to baptize into the three Persons of the Trinity, of which He is One. He doesn’t say to baptize into the names of the Three but into the name, signifying that they each partake of the same essence.

The fabric of the NT is impregnated with a Divine Jesus. His miracles, His forgiveness, His authority, and His self-revelations all proclaim the same message. However cryptically they might have been delivered, they all partook of the same message – Jesus is God!

It is not at all surprising that the Muslim Reza Aslan would write such a book. He is merely reflecting traditional Islam. However, what is surprising is the evident media enthusiasm for anything that will denigrate the Christian faith – a hatred that is evidently so intense that they embrace and promote a Muslim’s critique of Jesus. When have you heard the media promote a Christian’s critique of Muhammad?

Are Christians Self-Righteous and Pharisaical?

 For one thing, it depends on how you define these terms. In a just-published study entitled Are Christians More Like Jesus or More Like the Pharisees, Barna.org investigated this very question. However, their measures of what it means to be “like Jesus” and what it means to be “like the Pharisees” are somewhat questionable. Here are some of their statements that are intended to equate with “Actions like Jesus”:

• I listen to others to learn their story before telling them about my faith.
• I regularly choose to have meals with people with very different faith or morals from me.
• I am personally spending time with non-believers to help them follow Jesus.

According to the first statement, it would be un-Christ-like to do street preaching or to hand out Christian tracts without first listening. Therefore, we are no better than self-righteous hypocrites when we do these things and claim to be following Jesus! Consequently, I fail to see how these statements touch upon the question of pharisaism or even of being Christ-like.

Perhaps I’m just overreacting to the barrage of criticism systematically aimed at the church and Christians. We are routinely accused of being “Pharisees” because we make assessments about others’ behavior – especially in regards to sexual sins. Meanwhile, the “Progressive” church claims that they are more Christ-like, because they accept everyone, just as Jesus did. (Needless to observe, they are not very accepting of Evangelicals!)

Although Jesus did accept everyone, it was always with the proviso that they repent of their sins – the very thing that the Progressives refuse to require. In fact, Jesus insisted that we all had to repent:

·        But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them--do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish." (Luke 13:3-5)

While the Progressives accuse us of “pharisaism” because we judge, Jesus did as much judging as anyone in the Bible. Here’s just a small sample of His denunciations:

·        "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” (Matthew 23:13)

·        "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.” (Matthew 23:25)

·        "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (Matthew 23:27-28)

In light of this, it is surprising that Barna would list the following statements as reflective of Jesus’ attitudes:

·        I see God working in people’s lives, even when they are not following him.

·        It is more important to help people know God is for them than to make sure they know they are sinners.

Rather than reflecting the Jesus of Scripture, these statements are more reflective of popular, unbiblical notions about a soft, mellow, and user-friendly Jesus. Instead, the Jesus of Scripture talked more about sin, condemnation and hell than anyone else in the Bible. However, today a holy and righteous Jesus offends modern sensibilities. He explained: “The world…hates me because I testify that what it does is evil” (John 7:7). Should it be any surprise that the world also hates us terrible “fundamentalist Christians” who also talk about sin (John 15:18-20)?

According to Barna’s understanding of Jesus, we are not very Christ-like. We judge and we make offensive distinctions between the saved and the unsaved, righteousness and unrighteousness. However, these are the very distinctions that Jesus made!

I’m not saying that we Christians should be immune from criticism. I criticize myself and also the church. We both deserve it and need it. Besides, it’s healthy to confess our sins. Humility and transparency are to be esteemed.

However, I do object to the one-sided disparagement of the church. It has descended from constructive criticism into destructive condemnation and has become a source of widespread contempt towards the church and has tragically caused many of our youth to turn against the church.

Well then, what does it mean to be self-righteous and pharisaic? Here are the statements that Barna associates with “self-righteousness”:

• I find it hard to be friends with people who seem to constantly do the wrong things.
• It’s not my responsibility to help people who won’t help themselves.
• I feel grateful to be a Christian when I see other people’s failures and flaws.
• I believe we should stand against those who are opposed to Christian values.
• People who follow God’s rules are better than those who do not.

However, these statements have little to do with self-righteousness or pharisaism. What then is it? Jesus told many parables to expose the sin of pharisaism – a trust in one’s righteousness and merit before God. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, he exposed the self-righteousness of the prodigal’s older brother who rejected him, because he regarded himself as more worthy than the prodigal (Luke 15:11-31). He was convinced that he was the deserving son, but the prodigal was being hosted to a celebration by simply returning and confessing his sin to his father. Convinced that he deserved better, it was the self-righteous brother who willingly excluded himself from the blessings.

Jesus told a parable about two people entering the Temple to pray. One was a rank sinner who understood his desperate condition before God, and the other was a self-righteous Pharisee who didn’t. Jesus introduced the parable this way:

·        To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'” (Luke 18:9-12)

The Pharisee merely congratulated himself. He lacked any consciousness of his own sin and need for forgiveness. He was in denial. His problem wasn’t that he had strong convictions. Instead, it was that he had erroneous convictions about himself – that he was righteous, deserving, and better than others. His problem wasn’t that he followed God’s rules and regarded them as more important than any other rules – the very thing that Barna suggests – but that the Pharisee was convinced that his adherence to the law made him a superior and deserving person.

Meanwhile, we are maligned as Pharisees because we follow the teachings of the Bible and regard them as the ultimate revelation of truth. However, Jesus never taught against these beliefs. Instead, He reaffirmed them!

Also, Barna indirectly maligns Christians because they might feel grateful for the freedom they have in Christ (John 8:31-32), when they see the moral confusion of non-Christians. Such gratefulness for the blessings we have in Christ has nothing to do with self-righteousness or pharisaism but everything to do with the goodness of Christ to His children.

Nor is it pharisaic to observe that we are acting more morally than another. (We all make such comparative assessments!) However, it is pharisaical to take credit for it.

Jesus did a lot of judging. Contrary to Barna, He stood “against those who are opposed to Christian [Biblical] values.” Arguably, everything He said was in judgment of a distortion of Biblical truth. And we are supposed to think and act like Jesus (1 Peter 1:15). Therefore, it is inconceivable that by merely making moral judgments or by insisting on repentance, we are un-Christ-like, as the world would tell us!

Barna wrongly equates self-righteousness with the statement, “It’s not my responsibility to help people who won’t help themselves.” However, Jesus taught that there are times that we have to shake the dust off our feet, as a sign of God’s displeasure, and move on. He also warned against throwing our pearls of wisdom before swine (Mat. 7:6). Therefore, it is sometimes Christ-like to not extend ourselves to others. Sometimes, we even harmfully enable people by helping them.

You might think that I am making much out of nothing. However, the secular world has no reservations about calling us “hypocrites,” thereby encouraging acts of violence against the church. We are termed “homophobic” and “Islamophobic,” essentially pasting a target on our backs. Consequently, many are now seeing the target and have begun firing away. Here’s one example:

·        The Southern Poverty Law Council's decision to label ministries that oppose same-sex "marriage" as "hate groups" led directly to the Family Research Council (FRC) shooting, according to a chilling new video. 

However, the mainstream media refuses to adequately report the very violence they incur. This merely perpetuates the problem.

Some Christians believe that when wrongly accused, we should merely rejoice. Yes, we should rejoice, but we should also denounce the injustice. When the high priest unjustly ordered Paul to be struck, he protested:

·        "God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!" (Acts 23:3)

Was Paul’s response un-Christ-like? Certainly not! Jesus responded similarly at His arrest and trial. May the Lord also give us wisdom to respond in truth and grace when mistreated and maligned.

Returning to the question of self-righteousness – It is we Christians who have been freed from this life-consuming preoccupation of trying to prove ourselves and our worth. This abscess has been absolutely filled by our Savior who has given us the gift of His righteousness. Therefore, we no longer need to deny the ugly things we carry within. Instead, we can be transparent and cry out, “Christ has set me free!

Media’s Offensive War on Christmas and Christianity

There has been a lot of talk about the “war on Christmas.” There is only part of what seems to be a war on all positive expressions of the Christian faith. I just received this mass-email last night, and I tend to believe it:

• On the Today Show, Matt Lauer interviewed the wife of one of the Navy Seals killed in Benghazi.

• He asked her what she would say to her children about their dad and how she would want them to remember him.  She said, and I quote, "His love for Christ," and then continued with a few other things.

• Throughout the day and on MSN homepage, when the story is replayed they have edited the "His love for Christ" part out. Why? Because using the word Christ might offend someone.

• Well, I am a Christian and I am offended! Offended that they would edit it out. Offended that we as Christians are asked to tread lightly so as not to offend someone of another religion.

• I think anyone who missed the original broadcast this morning should know what NBC has done.  This man loved his country and loved his God and gave his life for both, just as Christ gave His life for him.

Although the media has been very free to report on the negative aspects of Christianity, it shows sublime restraint when it comes to anything that might cast Christianity in a positive light. How do they justify this? They sometimes justify their bias by claiming that they do not want to give offense.

This is hypocritical to the max. They have shown little regard about offending people like the above commentator. In other words, they are very selective about whom they are willing to offend. And they have been applying this double-standard for quite a while with almost no one to call them to account.

This is serious! The media is supposed to function as the watchdog to point the light upon injustice. However, who will point the light on the media when they systematically apply their double-standards!

As some in the media have confessed, they are more interested in social activism – promoting their own cause – than in truth. Without the vital role of media to provide accountability, “news” becomes propaganda and “knowledge” becomes a euphemism for politically correct indoctrination. Consequently, those who stand on the “right” side of political correctness can proceed with their devious plans without worry that the light will shine on them.

In Defense of Rush

I am not going to defend Rush Limbaugh for calling the 30-year-old Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute,” and neither does he. (Fluke had argued that she was entitled to insurance coverage for her birth control pills, even though this would force Christian institutions to subsidize them against their beliefs.)

However, the left-leaning Mainstream Media seems to be taking a hypocritical stance by trying to eliminate Limbaugh, while they themselves have a well-established history of going beyond a few offensive words to an avalanche of words amounting to character assassination. Newsbusters details some of these:

• Everyone remembers Ed Schultz calling Laura Ingraham a “slut” on his radio show.

• MSNBC suspended him for a week, but none of Schultz’s advertisers dropped his show under media pressure. There was no pressure. Some of the same sponsors now pulling out of Rush’s show still support Schultz.

• What Schultz said is nothing compared to his colleagues.

• Fellow talk show host Mike Malloy hoped Sarah Palin “drives herself into madness” and insisted Michele Bachmann is an “evil bitch from Hell” who would have gladly supervised the Holocaust.

• Montel Williams rooted on Air America for Bachmann to slit her own wrist or throat.

• Randi Rhodes insisted that teenage boys weren’t safe from Palin’s advances if they stayed over at her house. There’s no news coverage or “war on women” narrative when the mud-covered women are conservatives.

• Maybe these hosts aren’t prominent enough?

• Then consider the case study of Bill Maher, who’s welcomed all over TV news shows.

• A year ago on his HBO show, he called Sarah Palin a “dumb twat.”

• He followed up days later in a Dallas stand-up routine by calling Palin the C-word.

• Last July on HBO, he said Palin was “a bully who sells patriotism like a pimp, and the leader of a strange family of inbred weirdos.”

• Last September on his show, Maher said Palin would have sex with Rick Perry if he was black.

• Maher bragged on his show Friday critics can’t touch him because “I don’t have sponsors.” But that doesn’t mean he should be coddled, either, and yet he’s regularly honored across the media as a special guest, be it news networks or entertainment shows.

• Days after he called Palin the T-word, he appeared with then-CNN host Eliot Spitzer, where Spitzer concluded, “Your show is brilliant. I love watching it.”

• On Sunday, Democratic Party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz huffed on “Meet the Press” that "I don't know any woman in America that thinks that being called a slut is funny." But two months ago, she accepted an invitation to sit on the set with the man who called Palin a “c---.”

• Limbaugh has been singled out and condemned across the national media – ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. 

Character assassination has become a team sport, where only the winning liberal team is allowed to play. Such hypocrisy is egregious and unacceptable, especially when coming from an institution charged with the important task of providing oversight and accountability for a democratic nation – an institution that has therefore been granted special First Amendment protections.

The late Andrew Breitbart saw through the Media hypocrisy and wrote:

• “For these people to tell me with a straight face that they don’t come to the media and their jobs from a political perspective, from a left-of-center perspective, is just a bald-faced lie.”

• “I want to break down this politically correct paradigm. These are rules that tell conservatives: you're not allowed to say this, you're not allowed to think that. This type of Orwellian thought crime crap is what I'm fighting against." 

And we have a long way to go! (Please view one of the last Breitbart interviews: http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/the-need-for-the-right-voice/1445859698001)

Andrew Breitbart and His Battle to Expose the Media

The Mainstream Media has been granted many protections under the First Amendment because of the role it was to play in holding politicians accountable. And this they have performed very well when it comes to politicians which they find distasteful.

This imbalance raises in important question – Who will hold the Media accountable? One small, yet significant, but now silenced voice had been that of Andrew Breitbart. On May 7, 2010 LifeSiteNews.com wrote:

• The bias of the liberal media is so deeply ingrained that it is an essential part of its structure - one that conservatives must fight hard to challenge effectively, according to conservative new media guru Andrew Brietbart. "The left, to me, in essence, is the media," said Breitbart an interview with CBN's Matt Brody.

About liberals like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Breitbart observed,

• "Their ability to get what they need to get done is because they're carrying the water of the media. The media is a left-of-center ecosystem, it's a left-of-center organism. So the media can change the dynamics of what we're talking about."

Although he wasn’t “strongly religious,” Breitbart stated that the media’s incessant attack on Christians "angers me to no end." However, he did take issue with turn-the-other cheek Christians. He was also disturbed by Mainstream Media’s attempts to undermine the traditional values upon which this country rested: "It's a distinctly Judeo-Christian one and I think that it works":

• “I aim everything at attacking the media for its biases and holding them accountable for their biases, and the things that they report incorrectly, or the things they fail to report,”

• “By aiming everything at the media I’ve pretty much done the one thing they ask you not to do. ‘Please accept the premise that we’re fair, and let’s move on.’ No. I’m not going to accept that premise.

• “For these people to tell me with a straight face that they don’t come to the media and their jobs from a political perspective, from a left-of-center perspective, is just a bald-faced lie.”

• “I want to break down this politically correct paradigm. These are rules that tell conservatives: you're not allowed to say this, you're not allowed to think that. This type of Orwellian thought crime crap is what I'm fighting against."

The Mainstream Media has become far too powerful and influential, but who is left to sound the alarm? The Media clearly won’t do it. Andrew, you will be missed!

(Please see one of his last interviews:  http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/the-need-for-the-right-voice/1445859698001