A smart, savvy high school student recently asked me to recommend some sources for real news, or what is commonly found in new media -- truth.  For most readers, it is a long-held foregone conclusion that mainstream media is little more than a mouthpiece of the left -- celebrity wannabes clinging to the coattails of the ruling class elite.  And yet, far too many of our youth and, far more startlingly, right-of-center adults are still dangerously unaware that the mainstream media of old is a wholly unnecessary exercise in head-banging frustration.  Yes, Virginia, there really is another media.  The media.  Maybe it's time we spell out how to get there.

For all the lessons youth have crammed down their throats by leftist teachers, MTV, Steven Colbert, and even Planned Parenthood, the ideals of conservatism are largely, if not entirely, left to parents.  This is not exactly a news flash.  But it does make it all the more alarming that so many adults are still in the dark when it comes to finding reliable, truthful news without spin and without the taint of progressivism.  There really is a media that exposed the coming fundamental transformation at the hands of a composite fraud long before youth voted for him in droves in 2008, and long before David Maraniss came along and made even old media scratch its collective head for the first time in years.  For Maraniss, it's one thing to expose embellishment (lies) for the sake of narrative -- a deception that is practically the left's modus operandi -- and there's missing the forest for the cover of a few trees.  Because the truth is, the ultimate Barack-Barry-Soetero-Hussein-Obama fraud, as Maraniss fails to report, is that Obama didn't actually write his auto-biography (autobiographies), so much as close friend and terrorist Bill Ayers did, as has been exhaustively and expertly established by author Jack Cashill, at American Thinker and elsewhere.  If this is news to you, it's time you had a blueprint for finding real media, no matter your generation.  

Dictating thought is virtually protocol to the left, so I don't presume to borrow their pulpit.  New media thinks far too much of your ability to reason, as do I, to consider offering anything more than friendly suggestion on your new path to information.  I certainly don't have the blueprint, and this is far from an exhaustive list.  The only thing to really remember is there is no path to truth, and certainly to conservatism, through old media.  We can talk fair and balanced until the cows come home, but there's simply none to be found between the right and wrong.  Compromise with communists still begets only communism, if only in very small and incremental doses.

First, let's get one big question out of the way -- why are we still having this conversation?  Why are so many smart friends, under no delusions of mainstream impartiality, still wading through old media looking for glimmers of hope amid the inept, and nearly defunct, cesspool?  How is it that a friend was aghast to only just discover honor killings and female genital mutilation under Islamic law?  How can Republican friends, by no means Obama supporters, herald Mrs. Obama's garden, wholly unaware that the Obamas plant the illusion of personal responsibility with one hand and sow millions of new food stamp recipients with the other?  Why, on the day John Roberts betrayed the Constitution and the American people, did I leave a lunch meeting almost more distraught over my companions' reactions than Roberts's decision itself?  One lunch partner was equally devastated by the Court's decision, but resigned to his fate.  What can I do about it?  Two admitted that they simply can't stomach mainstream news of any kind, and are thus all too happy to concede willful ignorance, which they prefer to call ignorant bliss.  And my last lunch partner, in what seemed a scene from the Twilight Zone, asked, "What's ObamaCare?" 

If I may, let's begin with making sure both parent and child know one simple truth about the old media company they still keep.  Take again, for example, ObamaCare -- a tyrannical tax behemoth and an egregious constitutional breach of the limits of federal government, passed by the vilest political maneuvering in history, against the will of the people.  Unless ObamaCare is repealed in its entirety, doctors will flee or practice medicine according to bureaucratic dictate, private insurers will implode, joblessness will increase, and states' rights and what we know of individual liberty will be a thing of the past as much as actual medicine.  ObamaCare makes every person from his birth to his death property of the state, and the IRS the enforcement mafia.  This is fact.  Not that you would ever know ObamaCare was anything more than free health care from the land of magic government fairies for the gazillions of poor and put-upon denied medical care, according to old media.

Now think for a moment that following Robert's decision, not one conservative, or any of the majority of this country that opposes Obamacare, took to the streets to pillage.  Not one conservative occupied anything, nor demanded the fruits of another's labor.  John Roberts didn't receive death threats, and no one camped on his front lawn and threatened his children's lives.  This seems like good company to keep.  And yet, it is those who oppose government-run health care, wealth redistribution, runaway entitlements, rewriting the Constitution, crippling taxation, and tyranny over liberty who are the uncivil according to old media: Republicans, conservatives, Sarah Palin, Christians, opponents of illegal immigration, the Tea Party, gun owners, the military, and pro-life advocates.  Truth be told, barbaric behavior is the sole property of the left, and that includes its media.  This is not company you wish to keep, let alone those from whom you should receive information -- any information.

So -- here goes.  It is not my intention to highlight any particular new media, much of which has been around for some time -- print, blog, radio, or otherwise -- and with none of which I have any association, other than American Thinker, which I unashamedly believe to be one of the best op-ed sites around.  Once you really begin to find your way around new media, click on other links you find listed from site to site, and find your own favorites.  Old media does make for some near-hilarity as it attempts to deny bias and spin the economic and jobless misery it aids and abets.  Think Andrea Mitchell stammering her way through economic fallacy.  Brent Bozell has been hard at work for many years exposing the inanities.  For the highlights, peruse his site, NewsBusters.

Read the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and bookmark it on your computer for easy access.  It is an especially useful source for college students who will notice all too soon to which media most of their professors are beholden.  Investor's Business Daily is another excellent op-ed site.  Michael Ramirez's brilliant cartoon on that same page puts the absurdity of liberalism in perspective as well as any editorial.  These are some personal blog favorites you might consider: Lucianne, Michelle Malkin, Mark Steyn, Drudge Report, Badblue, Fox Nation, Legal Insurrection, HotAir, Breitbart's Big Government, Townhall, Daily Caller, Real Clear Politics, Gateway Pundit, Red State, Right Wing News, Pajamas Media, PowerLine, and American Thinker.  You certainly won't agree with every conservative, nor should you.  But it will be an education no matter what you eventually call your comfortable new media home.  And you will find you are among more friends than the MSM led you to believe you had.

There are phenomenal writers at American Spectator, Weekly Standard, National Review, American Conservative, and Human Events, to name a few in print medium.  All have websites.  A few of my favorite writers include Quinn Hilyer, Paul Rahe, Jonah Goldberg, George Will, Andrew McCarthy, Shelby Steele, John Fund, Katie Pavlich, Kimberley Strassel, and Dinesh D'Souza. 

Study Islam and the threat of sharia law under the tutelage of the great Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch, Pamela Gellar at Atlas Shrugs, or Brigitte Gabriel at Act! For America. 

The organizations working on behalf of conservatives are an invaluable resource: the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, Cato, FreedomWorks, Ludwig von Mises Institute, John Birch Society, Hoover Institution, and Hillsdale College, to name just a few.  Read Hillsdale's Imprimis newsletter.  And read conservative authors -- the greats, such as Frédéric Bastiat; Milton Friedman; Hayek; de Tocqueville; William F. Buckley, Jr.; and anything by Thomas Sowell.  If you don't know where to start, try Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Society, Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, or Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny.

Follow -- or better yet, join -- the TEA Party.  Know what it really stands for -- not just the imbecilic, racist picture old media and Saturday Night Live paint.  Listen to Rush Limbaugh.  No matter what you believe him to be, Limbaugh is still the standard-bearer of truth in the muddied political world.  Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Prager, and Dennis Miller are other good conservative radio choices.  Just beware the conservative who speaks from the borrowed grandiose Greek columns so loved by Barack Obama.  They can be a bit of a distraction, considering that the message of conservatism itself speaks volumes. 

Because conservatives are not as humorless as the old media would like you to believe, enjoy the brilliant satire of David Burge at Iowahawk (as well as his Twitter feed), I Own The World, Weasel Zippers, Sunny TV, and the incomparable wit of Mark Steyn.  Call it civil disobedience. 

Finally, beware what is easily mistaken -- likely the intention -- for reliable media.  Those who claim to be above the fray -- who shirk "divisive" labels, claiming moral, middle high ground -- Third Way, Americans Elect, NO Labels.  Many of them claim conservatives among their ranks, but they are progressive fronts -- as incapable of real compromise as any leftist, despite their rhetoric.  For that matter, write off any organization that has "open" anywhere in its title.  It is almost always funded by George Soros. 

With a few noted exceptions (Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, or Allen West, for example) even most teens are smarter than those elected to rule -- excuse me, serve -- and that includes at least five Supreme Court justices.  You deserve a media that respects your intelligence, protects your liberty, and speaks truth to power, even if it takes a bit more effort to seek it out.  It's really quite simple -- without the media, you would never know what the old media is keeping from you.  And our representative republic simply will not survive such ignorance.

It's a brave new media world out there, but don't just take my word for it.  I will never lead some to that water, but thinkers, like you, will glory in the refreshment.  Enjoy your journey.