Pro-lifers have long understood the issue of media bias. Years ago, the late, pro-choice David Shaw wrote a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times showing how biased his own newspaper was when reporting on abortion. Shaw showed that bias came through not just on stories about abortion. Shaw showed how even stories that related to surgery on unborn children were skewed or spiked to avoid anything that might have a pro-life message.

Now, we have National Public Radio (NPR) lining up to support the pro-abortion side in the ongoing struggle over this issue. Managing Editor David Sweeney recently issued a memorandum to staff ordering them to use only the politically correct designations for the contending sides in the debate: abortion rights advocates is the approved way of referring to those who favor liberalized abortion; abortion rights opponents is the only way NPR will refer, from now on, to pro-lifers.

This should not come as any great shock to us. NPR has long been hostile to conservatives and traditional values. The part I object to most strenuously, that I think we should all object to, is that NPR takes public tax money to spread its pro-abortion bias.

You are more likely to hear about transvestites in Mongolia on “All Things Considered” than to learn about the 3,000-plus Pregnancy Resources Centers created and staffed by American volunteers. “Fresh Air” would be more likely to cover a hole in the ozone layer than to report on California’s underground reporter Lila Rose. Lila Rose’s brave and truthful reporting blew the cover off Planned Parenthood’s racist practices and disclosed how that world trafficker in abortion ignores laws on statutory rape. (more…)

Holland today is probably the worst country in Europe, a sinkhole of social pathologies that would make Berkeley blush.  And yet, at every step, the decisions the Dutch took to liberalize their formerly straitlaced Calvinist society seemed to make sense at the time, at least to some

Today, with crime rampant, social tensions brought on by enormous, apparently unassimilable migration from the Muslim world, and the collapse of its social cohesion and cultural self-confidence, the Netherlands is the Sick Man of Europe.

I originally wrote this story for the now-defunct Mirabella Magazine, to answer the editorial question: why are the Dutch so tolerant. “Tolerant” seemed like the right word at the time; today, nearly 18 years later, “suicidal” might be a better choice.

This is what I found.

The smoke is overpowering as I climb the steep stairs and enter the tiny second-floor room at a neighborhood joint called “Balou.” A group of young men are sitting at a handful of tables, talking, listening to loud rock music, looking out the window at the street below or watching a Detroit Pistons – Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game on the television perched mutely in the corner, each puffing away contentedly. The 25-year-old owner, Jerry, is standing behind the bar and gabbing affably to some of the regulars, displaying upon request a menu of the evening’s offerings. This might be anywhere, in any bar USA. Except it’s not.

Jerry shows me the menu. Compared with competing locals like “The Grasshopper” and “The Bull Dog,” it’s rather small. This is what it says: (more…)