By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
February 8, 2001
For those of you who were looking for us in the past couple of days, we have been making a major move out of one server to another and from one name to another. We moved to a larger server which will give faster service and the name change is two fold. We have become www.bannerofliberty.com!
Original Sources has been a site for political information for adults from first hand "original sources" since the Summer of 1998. I created it in the summer of 1998 with the Year 2000 presidential election in mind. After nearly 50 years in politics, I could see the Internet having a major impact on the election process.
Why? Because, I believe, it will once again enable the public to hear directly from candidates, rather than having to rely on professional candidate handlers and often biased news reports on what the candidates actually believe.
Once upon a time, before the advent of television, people got most of their political information about a candidate from rallies where the candidates spoke personally. From that personal observation they could make their own judgment about the persons asking for their vote.
In the 1956 election campaign, for example, my husband and I put the two little ones in the car and drove for several hours from Minneapolis to hear Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic Presidential Candidate speak at a small airport in Wisconsin. That was the last time we did that. By the 1960 election, we were watching the presidential candidates debate on television. It is generally agreed that John F. Kennedy won that debate in the eyes of many, women primarily, because he agreed to use the service of the make-up artist. Kennedy appeared as the more appealing candidate, rather than Richard Nixon, who thought using make-up was a bit deceitful, and therefore came across on television as slightly unshaven compared with Kennedy.
It was a very close election, as was the 2000 election. It appeared that technology won over old campaign methods in 1956. And, that, I believe, was also true in the year 2000 election. From 1998 to 2000 the number of voters who made up their minds about the candidates from Internet sources rose from an estimated 7% to perhaps as high as 20%. George W. Bush is going forward with his promised agenda because at least HE is convinced that he won because people were attracted, not to him personally, but because of his new agenda and especially because he promised to bring a new less contentious, more civil climate to Washington, D.C.
I chose the name "Original Sources" in 1998 to reflect the goal of presenting the candidates in their own original words by posting all the candidate websites for top State and federal offices sides by side, on pages for each of the 50 States. That allows voters in a matter of minutes to go to their State website, find their congressional district, for example, and then read the websites of the candidates. That, to me, is the modern version of going to rallies for each candidate and making a judgment. And, I leave the state pages intact between elections to allow readers access to their state and federal officials, state news and political parties. (http://www.bannerofliberty.com/Candidates/statepolitics.html>
In the two and a half years since I made that decision, millions more people have started accessing information via the Internet, rather than TV news from the major networks. The concept of going to "original sources" has caught on again. The term "original sources" is actually an old before television journalistic term which young journalists were taught to respect. Once upon a time reporters were required to actually GO to the original source of a story - i.e. to actually race out and watch the fire, or go to the front lines and watch the battle and then report, from the original source, what they saw.
That concept had so deteriorated by 1999 that almost all the news the world got about the bombing of Kosovo was gotten by reporters sitting around waiting for the NATO spokesman, Jamie Shays, in Brussels Belgium, or Clinton spokesmen in Washington tell you what was happening in Yugoslavia. Much of what those reporters were told was not, and could not be verified on the ground. So, they reported both a "genocide" and "victories" that simply never happened.
However, a few Internet reporters were reporting the story, from e-mail sources in Belgrade and in Kosovo. I was one of those reporters. I asked during the entire bombing campaign, because of my background in reporting actual "original sources" where is the proof? We were being shown pictures taken from 13,000 feet in the air of disturbed ground in Kosovo and told it contained hundreds of bodies of dead Albanians slaughtered indiscriminately by the Serbs. However, I was getting, from sources inside Kosovo and Belegrade, e-mails from people near the so-called "graves" which told me the ground had just been plowed for the spring crop. There were no graves. Months later, the e-mail, original source reports turned out to be the accurate reports when the so-called "mass grave site" reported from Brussels was accessed by on the ground forensic experts from 23 nations.
Now that the election is over and we are looking ahead,Original Sources is sprouting wings and is about to become a major reference website, an "original source" not just for political concerns but for all issues. Western Standard Publishing Company(http://www.westernstandard.com) who, in cooperation with World Book Encyclopedia, developed the American Reference Library wanted the "Original Sources" name.
For over 50 years I have used World Book Encyclopedia as a favorite source of accurate information and since 1996 my "secret weapon" in producing accurate, timely background information from American History has come from a CD I bought of Western Standard's "American Freedom Library." (http://www.westernstandard.com/WBARL.htm) It contains in easily researchable format the documents and histories of American Freedom, presidential papers from George Washington to Clinton, classics of Western History and as well as modern writers on America's traditional values.
Because I believe in these two great "original sources" I agreed to let Western Publishing have the name and ALL of the files from my website have been moved, as you can see, to CTR Publishing's "Banner of Liberty" site at www.bannerofliberty.com.
The logo for Banner of Liberty's logo is a family. As Gavin Grooms, Banner of Liberty's founder said, "Family is what really matters. All successes in society can be traced to strong families in that society." That, I believe, fits perfectly into the new, family centered, less contentious role of politics as articulated by President George W. Bush.
So, welcome to our new home - Banner of Liberty! The purposes of Banner of Liberty and the purposes of my website are the same. We have come together because we believe that not only is truth important in reporting the news of the day, but so are honor, courage, freedom, morality and justice important. It's not just truth that is under attack in our declining culture. Honor is under attack, as we saw from the vicious attacks on John Ashcroft. It will take courage to restore honor to Washington, D.C. and the nation. We must not lose our role in the world as defenders of freedom by allowing freedom to be curtailed through attacks on groups like the Boy Scouts that use freedom to declare its goals. We will need courage to stand up for morality in a culture that ridicules it. And, without justice for all, every one of the standards we believe in is in danger.
So, keep your www.originalsouces.com bookmark. It will become a great source for you and your children in the coming weeks. And, bookmark www.bannerofliberty.com as your daily stop for news and news analysis. We are proud to transfer www.originalsources.com to Western Standard Publishing,http://www.westernstandard.com and we salute their dedication to expanding your access to original sources.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
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