Proudly Letting The Freak Flag Fly

After composing my recent post where I listed some of the journalists and public figures I actually respect and enjoy listening to, I realized that I had left off many, many names from that brief list. Given the highly polemic nature of my posts lately, I figure it's important for me to lay more of my cards on the table, to give you an idea how I have been forming some of my ideas and opinions.

The following list is still not complete, by any means. I'm sure I've forgotten a few important ones even now. But I've also left off a few on purpose, for my own reasons. Partly this because some names are so polarizing and controversial that for purposes of rhetoric, I'll keep them to myself for now, lest they distract my readers from the broader message I am trying to convey.

Do I agree with every opinion of the following folks and sources? Of course not. They don't agree with each other, after all. But just because I don't agree with a particular opinion, this does not mean I necessarily disagree with them either. In many cases, I am purposely withholding judgment on a topic until I feel that I have enough information to form a solid conclusion based on evidence and reason. I am a slow, plodding thinker, as it turns out. I have many open case files, and I like to be right. Can't emphasize that enough.

One might ask: if I don't agree, and often even disagree, with many opinions of these people, why do I watch and listen to them, instead of the mainstream public figures I have excoriated in other posts ? Didn't I say the same thing about those folks as well? (re: add the following to my shit list: George Stephanopolous [thanks Baby Sister], Bill O'Reilly [bloviating bully, even though I like this old clip], Tucker Carlson, RadFemHub, Admiral Poindexter, Fareed Zakaria, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Paul Wolfowitz, Charles Krauthammer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, any public figure named Kagan, Diane Sawyer, Conan O'Brien, Bill Kristol, Jimmy Carter, Dan Quayle, Dr. Eric Pianka, Ted Turner, whoever put up the Georgia Guidestones, Al Fucking Franken, Ken Fucking Lay, Goldman Fucking Sachs, Gary God-Damned Fucking Hart [that one really hurts], Maurice Strong...)

For me the essential difference is that the people listed below are not engaged full-time in feeding energy and legitimacy back in to the maintenance of the Death Machine. All of them are outside of it in some form, heretics in their way, collectively acting as the solvent that is breaking apart the current paradigm, rather than building it. The mainstream is very good at "co-opting" dissent, repackaging it in a sanitized way, and feeding it back into itself. This has worked for a very long time. But it's starting to break down in accelerating fashion, and they are getting increasingly desperate to maintain the monopoly of attention that they have enjoyed.

I'd like to think I'm going to have a lot of fun watching the Death Machine Apologists all come crashing down, and suffer the fates that await them. But half the time I think they will bring us all down with them. Let's hope they just f-f-f-fade away.

But enough about them. Here's a bunch more names for my honor roll. Quite a rogues gallery, I realize:

Gerald Celente
Wayne Madsen (ex-NSA, gutsiest American journalist alive)
Peter Schiff (the more correct he is, the more marginalized he is by the mainstream)
Professor Griff (fight the power)
Syrian Girl (the best journalism being done about Syria right now)
Birgitta Jonsdottir
Adam Kokesh (am not participating in his July Fourth 50-state-capital rally)
Naomi Wolf
Ben Swann
Sibel Edmonds
Abby Martin
Greg Palast (the quintessential alternative lefty, anti-NWO, admirer of Hugo Chavez)
Dr. Tara J. Palmatier
Jon Rappoport
Paul Craig Roberts
Daniel Ellsberg
Cindy Sheehan
Governor Jesse Ventura
Nigel Farage
Christopher Monckton
Billy Corgan (of Smashing Pumpkins)
Lt. Col Bob Bowman (ex-CIA)
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer
Gen. Hamid Gul (ex-ISI/CIA)
Col. Buzz Aldrin
Dr. Steve Pieczenik (ex-CIA)
Chris Duane (destroy the Death and Debt Paradim through silver)
G. Edward Griffin
Sheriff Richard Mack
Freeway Ricky Ross
Stewart Rhodes (had pleasure of meeting him last year)
Judge Andrew Napolitano
John Taylor Gatto (teacher of the century)
Charlotte Iserbyt (runner up to Gatto)
Dr. James Manning
Daniel Estulin
Joel Gilbert
Ed Asner
James Randi (the true heir to Harry Houdini)
Holland Vandennieuwenhof
Bill Burr 
Tommy Chong
Eugene Volokh
Bernard Chapin (aka Chapin's Inferno---men's rights)
Karen Straughan (aka Girl Writes What---post-feminist men's rights)
Dalrock (Christian, anti-conservative men's rights)
The Amazing Atheist (men's rights, warning: crudeness, NSFW)
The Hawaiian Libertarian
The Angry Cabbie (NSFW)
John Perkins
ActivistPost
StoryLeak
LiveLeak 
MoxNews.com
Matt Drudge (after so many years of hating him--mea culpa)
The Ulsterman Report
Paul Joseph Watson
Truthstream Media (Aaron Dykes & Melissa Melton)
the late Gary Allen
the late Bob Chapman 
the late Pat Tillman
the late Jim Tucker
the late George Carlin
the late Andrew Breitbart
the late Russell Means
the late Hunter S. Thompson (ex-CIA)
the late Benazir Bhutto 
the late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
the late Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 
the late Jane Jacobs
the late Richard P. Feynman
the late Robert A. Heinlein
the late Senator Frank Church 

and just a few of many historical figures who have inspired me, while we're on the subject:

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968, the real guy, not the sanitized version we now celebrate)
Robert Welch (1899-1985---can we finally talk about this guy without the fog of lies about him?)
Whittaker Chambers (1901-1961, very sad that Alger Hiss is now more well known and respected, but go figure)
Ida Tarbell (1857-1944, the mere mention of her name made John D. Rockefeller fly into apoplexy)
General Smedley Butler, USMC (author of War is a Racket, 1881-1940)
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
The Hon. Robert Smalls (1839-1915)
Grover Cleveland (1837-1908, served as president without feeling the need to kill hundreds of thousands/millions of people just to make a point)
Walt Whitman (1819-1892, newspaper publisher, famous freak and sexual deviant)
Lysander Spooner (proved Constitution prohibits slavery, 1808-1887)
The Hon. Clement Vallandingham (Civil War dissenter, a great Ohioan, 1820-1871)
Stonewall Jackson (1824-1863, my French friends think I am his reincarnation)
Henry David Thoreau (famous war and tax dissenter, 1817-1862)
Dr. Benjamin Rush (medical freedom pioneer, 1746-1813)
Patrick Henry (warned that the Bill of Rights would actually backfire, 1736-1799)
John Peter Zenger (1697-1742, a hero of Cecil Neth)
Galileo Galilei (noted heretic, 1564-1642)
Rumi
Archimedes
Jesus of Nazareth (also Luke 22:36)

and, despite his somewhat inaccurate portrayal in one of my all-time favorite Hollywood musicals:

John Dickinson (1732-1808, author of my personal creed, which used to be on my Facebook profile page until they disallowed such expressions):

From my infancy I was taught to love humanity and liberty. Enquiry and experience have since confirmed my reverence for the lessons then given me, by convincing me more fully of their truth and excellence. Benevolence toward mankind, excites wishes for their welfare, and such wishes endear the means of fulfilling them. These can be found in liberty only, and therefore her sacred cause ought to be espoused by every man on every occasion, to the utmost of his power.

OK. Any other folks I should know about? I'm always looking for excellent suggestions.