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Comment by Carltonian | Hacker News Reader

Addiction really is the operating word here. It's what keeps you in front of the TV in the same way it keeps people in front of slot machines. The worst part is the thesis of conservative media; that while you do everything right, some nebulous liberal agenda is taking away everything that you hold dear, and are entitled to as a working person (ignoring all information regarding demographics and welfare recipients). Fox News makes good money off of convincing people who feel they are victims of the world at large that they are in fact autonomous conservatives/libertarians.

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"The worst part is the thesis of [...] media; that while you do everything right, some nebulous [...] agenda is taking away everything that you hold dear, and are entitled to as a working person"

That's not particular to conservative media; it's the same tactic used to convince whole swaths of the population that the rich, the white, sexists, racists, jingoists, big corporations, government, etc. are keeping you down.

Leveling it at only one side of a debate is falling into the trap polemicists set up. They all do this, from every angle and via all means possible. It's just propaganda, and one insidious aspect of it is that they convince people only the other side engages in it.

True, but Fox News is the best at it, so they get the flak. I'll give the other channels for convincing people Obama was going to change things, but those people already mostly wanted change (especially after the financial crisis). Fox News did more than that. They convinced people who had been Republicans for 30 years that they have been libertarians fo 30 years. That's just really scary.

Meanwhile, people who have been actually libertarian for 30 years have to find another word to use for themselves. Again.

If you want to be truly libertarian, guys, you also have to embrace open borders, support non-interventionist foreign policy, and desire that drug prohibitions cease. Defending gun rights and complaining about taxes and welfare is just a tiny part of the package. You can still oppose state-sanctioned gay marriage if you want, but only to the extent that you oppose government involvement in any kind of marriage.

As I am a long-time libertard, the people who talk about freedom after watching Fox News make me laugh. They fill their heads with mass-media talking points all day, meet with like-minded people to create an echo chamber for the ideas they were force-fed, then worry about having adequate self-determination.

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