During this Christmas season, Thomas Paine's famous words – "These are the times that try men's souls" – seem especially relevant and poignant.

For while everything good, decent and generous about America tends to assert itself at Christmastime, we are simultaneously witnessing outrage after outrage in Washington, D.C., as a disgraced and repudiated administration continues in its attempts to transform America into something that would horrify Thomas Paine and the other Founding Fathers.

Many people have attempted to analyze, pontificate and write books about how we got to such a low point, but please allow me to remind you of what is undoubtedly the No. 1 reason America is today writhing under the "leadership" of the most destructive and dangerous president in American history.

Do you remember why 69 million Americans voted for Barack Obama?

It's because he had an advantage no other presidential candidate has ever had – the total, unabashed support of the "mainstream media," which was so enchanted by the prospect of a young, eloquent, cool, liberal – and for the first time in history, black – president, that they ignored his anti-American, socialist and communist associations and his unbelievably subversive track record. Instead of vetting him as was their solemn duty, the media lifted him high overhead and giddily raced across the finish line, all the while reassuring Americans Obama would be a great, "historic" and "transformative" president.

As if to assuage their guilt, immediately after Election Day, when it no longer mattered, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell publicly admitted the paper's reporters and editors had utterly neglected to vet either Obama, who "deserved tougher scrutiny," or Biden – an omission she referred to as "one gaping hole in [the Post's] coverage."

But the problem with journalism today is not just "gaping holes in coverage" and temporary abdication of professional journalism standards. Our "big media" have come increasingly to resemble the state-run press we see in China, with its gigantic Xinhua "News" Agency, in reality a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party. Or maybe a more apt comparison would be with Russia, where although criticism of the government can be found in some newspapers and on the Internet, the country's national television channels are essentially extensions of the state: "They are all either controlled by the Kremlin or run by editors who know what not to say," says Allison Gill, director of the Human Rights Watch office in Russia.

Here's the problem: You cannot have a free country without a free press. Yet America's "big media" today – especially the national broadcast and cable TV news (except Fox), as well as the major trendsetting newspapers like the New York Times – have devolved into a de facto government propaganda ministry.

That's where WorldNetDaily comes in.

At WND, we don't mock patriotic Americans trying to set their country right. We don't rewrite White House press releases and call it news. We don't bow and scrape before President Obama or anyone else. We don't pretend abortion is OK, or that same-sex marriage is good, or that global warming is "proven science," or that more government is the solution to all problems, or that Palestinian leaders wants peace, or that the Constitution is old-fashioned, or that the "Federal Reserve" is good for America. In short, we're not politically correct and we have no sacred cows. Instead, our team of experienced, professional journalists strives to do one thing – to tell the truth that Americans desperately need and deserve to hear.

Now, many of you read WND every day, you appreciate it, you trust it, you wouldn't want to be without it. For that we are endlessly grateful.

But what you might not realize is that what we do is very difficult and costly. It isn't easy taking on the media elite, slaying the dragons of political correctness, bucking the tide of conventional wisdom, and constantly challenging tyranny, injustice and lies.

If you believe, as Thomas Jefferson did, that "the only security of all is in a free press," and if you want to see major growth in WND's kind of courageous, watchdog reporting – rather than the submissive, lapdog approach coming from what Rush Limbaugh calls today's "state-run media" – I'm asking you to consider becoming a WND "subscriber."

But wait, you say, I thought WND was free. Yes, it is free, and will remain that way. However, here's what I'm getting at:

Traditionally, newspapers have relied not only on advertising, but also on reader subscriptions for financial support. But in the Internet age, we find we can deliver the news to far more people by keeping the service free. Does that mean we have to lose the needed subscription revenue? Not necessarily.

It's a time-honored tradition in the newspaper business that free newspapers ask for voluntary subscriptions. As a rule, satisfied readers who depend on a free publication for their news don't mind paying a little bit for it.

That's why voluntary subscription donations have been the lifeblood of many "free" newspapers over the years – it's the honor system, you might say.

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Thank you very much. All of us at WorldNetDaily deeply appreciate your support. It's truly what enables us to keep going. And I think you'll agree, with everything going on in America today, we need a vibrant, free press more than ever.

Sincerely,

David Kupelian Vice President and Managing Editor

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