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Controversialization: A Key to the Right’s Continuing Domination of Public Debates
Yesterday, our local NPR station hosted a debate about what themes should and should not be included in school-sponsored drama productions. The discussion followed a pattern that has become quite familiar on our airwaves within the last three decades. In this oft-repeated dance, an earnest moderator conducts a series of interviews guided by what he or she portrays as a desire to find the appropriate “balance” between our constitutionally guaranteed rights to free expression and the possibility imposing “offensive” messages upon an unwitting public.
At first glance, this line of inquiry would appear to have few, if any, real drawbacks. After all, those of us of a certain age know that life is often about balancing what we have a formal right to do or say against that same action’s potential for generating negative or disagreeable side effects.
But when we look at this practice of automatically seeking balance in a different light--one that takes into account the widespread use of what the investigative journalist Robert Parry calls the practice of “controversializing"--we can see how it has greatly lowered quality of our civic discourse.
At the core of the practice of controversializing is an age old political problem: how to get your way--or at least seriously blunt the prerogatives of your opponent--when you enjoy neither strong popular support nor a clear-cut legal basis for instituting your ideological project.
This is exactly where the American Right found itself in 1971. At that moment, long-standing American business and military elites were reeling. Disaffection with the Vietnam War, and the entire establishment that was seen as having created it and having sustained it, was enormous, especially among the huge and ever more politically crucial Baby-boomer demographic. Moreover, for the first time in the Post World War II era, large parts of the mainstream media were actively and openly questioning the wisdom of top-level players in Washington and in the highest levels of corporate America.
It was precisely at this juncture that Lewis Powell, a corporate lawyer still two months removed from his elevation to the Supreme Court, laid a out a blueprint for an Establishment counterattack on what he saw as the fast-rising hegemony of the Left in this country. He did so in a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, the head of the powerful US Chamber of Commerce.
The Powell Memo includes a number of important strategic suggestions, almost all of which were adopted by the emergent Right in the 80s and 90s and which remain as core elements of the Conservative tool box today.
None of these were to prove more important in the long run than his suggestion that Conservatives actively press for the enforcement of “ideological balance” in both university life and the mainstream press.
The stealth power of the suggestion lies in its apparent innocuousness. Since we all like to think of ourselves as fair, why should we object, when pressed, to a request to strive for greater balance in these key institutions?
Very simple. Because no important social institution is, nor can ever be, made up of a perfect mix of the society’s dominant ideological tendencies.
Why? Because each social institution has a history and a daily practice which tend to privilege one way of looking at the world over another.
The training needed to become a university professor or a journalist places a great deal of emphasis on the empirical gathering and analysis of information. This outlook meshes quite naturally and organically with what we in this country call “liberal” thought, that is, the set of political doctrines and cultural practices which grew out of the rationalist revolution known as the Enlightenment which, though it has many forms, tends to privilege individual freedom over the achievement of group identity and group projects. Perhaps more importantly, people in both professions operate with a high degree of autonomy, something that allows much more space than most have to develop points of view which may differ from those of the great mass of society who do not enjoy this same privilege.
Similarly, it is highly likely that in a given sample of corporate businessmen or soldiers there will be sharp prevalence in the group toward conservative positions. The reasons are clear. Because while individual soldiers or businessmen may in fact be both highly analytical people and lovers of individual freedom, both work in institutions that regularly ask their members to sublimate their desire to express their individual critical insights to the organization’s overarching pursuit of “stability” and/or hierarchical “discipline”.
Am I saying that journalists and academics are totally free of similar demands to tame their own personal “take” on social and political matters? Not at all.
Rather I am suggesting that the demands that they do so are--thanks in no small part to the existence of tenure in the case of academics and the First Amendment in the case of journalists—generally much less effective than the similar attempts to intimidate or bully or silence people in military or corporate environments. This is no doubt the reason that that this core academic institution and people like Julian Assange irritate many Conservatives so much.
The second great fallacy in the Lewis-inspired call for the achievement of balance in the press and academia resides in its highly selective nature.
The argument is made by Conservatives that the special role of these institutions in molding public discourse, makes them subject to special ideological scrutiny and, hence, demands for balance.
Leaving aside the telling fact that when serving as Supreme Court Justice, Powell voted against the continuation of the Fairness Doctrine, which had been established in 1949 precisely as a means to insuring ideological diversity in the US media environment, there is the larger question of whether, according to the Conservative credo, these areas of life are alone in molding the shape of public discourse.
Corporate board-rooms and the Pentagon, to name just two other institutions, have an enormous ability to affect the public’s perception of ideas. This is what the whole public relations and advertising industries, to which they both massively subscribe, are all about.
It is often said that this is different because such entities run these campaigns largely with private funds. But, of course, this is flatly untrue in the case of the Pentagon. And if there is anything that has been laid bare by the financial crises of the last decade it is the extent to which the supposedly hard division between public and private initiative can, and does, exist.
But just for the sake of argument, let's assume that post-Powell conservatives are sincere in their passionate pursuit of ideological balance. Wouldn’t that require them to make sure it exists in every crucial decision-making sector of the society including corporate board rooms, the military high commend and each and every law firm, hospital or small business?
I don’t know about you, but I won’t be holding my breath waiting for these things to happen.
So, if it isn’t really about the pursuit of ideological diversity what is the vaunted Conservative insistence on ideological balance really all about?
It is, as they in boxing, about finding a way to “punch above their weight” in public debates.
Let’s go back to our friendly moderator on NPR. In his structuring of the discussion on the “proper” limits on themes to presented in school plays he establishes an implicit equivalence between constitutionally right to engage in free speech and other people’s “right” not to be offended or disturbed by what they see on stage.
But guess what? No such equivalency exists. While we all wish to lead our private lives in a way that minimizes incidents of gratuitous offense to those around us, the founders could not have been clearer about the fact that in the public square this concern about fellow citizens suffering “moral offense” was definitively subordinate to the goal of guaranteeing the vigorous and unfettered flow of provocative and challenging thought.
So why did this reporter, like so many of his colleagues in the business, build the discussion around this implied equivalence?
My guess is that it is because he came of professional age during the last three decades, a time when the ideological operatives of the Right made crystal clear that they will work overtime to controversialize any and all points of view they see as affirming the core principles of the Left, even when, or perhaps especially when, as in the case above, no serious intellectual case could ever be made about the two postures having equivalent claims on the public mind within our Republic of Laws.
Knowing that to come right out and say this, that is, that there is no real debate to be had for a believer in the constitution, would leave him open to attacks from the right wing watchdog apparatus about his “liberal bias” and his “lack of balance”, he decides discretion is the better part of valor and accepts as real the patently false equivalence “demanded” by the enforcers of the Right.
As a result, we now have a population that is largely unable to discern the difference between a core constitutional right and the allegedly “competing” (but in fact intrinsically subordinate) claims of the Right, and sadly, of an ever-increasing sector of the Obamite left.
45 Comments so far
Show AllStephen Colbert put it _
'Reality has a strong Liberal bias.'
Thank you, It is not a centering move when we form every issue for polar opposites. Democracy by it's nature makes a assumption that when most people have the same needs and desires, it is mutually beneficial for them to work together. It's not perfect, some claim it represents the tyranny of the majority -- but when discussion starts from the extreme, each believing the other is designing to bring down the society that cause the collapse of economy, morality, and personal integrity these discussions move us backward, not forward. It's time to agree of common dreams, goals, needs, values, and possibilities.
Thank you for this analysis. An ancillary concern is how we convey our tensions inherent in working through these to our children.
Posted for parents in middle east in supporting their children through times of profound change and stress to meet what can be forms of trauma
http://opsafeintl.com/2011/02/how-to-help-children-recover-from-trauma-middle-east/
excellent historical commentary...
>>>>>>>>>
This article has a good thesis and makes a good case for it. However, it is full of so many typos and mistakes, it's difficult to read without becoming frustrated. I wish the author would have proof-read it and done some editing.
Yes, I agree. And I must therefore refrain from "sharing" it with others for this very reason.
I had the exact same thought, and just explained the concept of editing to my grandkids, who were wondering why Grandma was having so much angst over this admittedly good article.
You've got to be kidding! The article is very carefully written, and except for a slight over-use of the conjunction, "which", and the use of "importantly" instead of "important" (an incredibly common error, these days), is quite error-free. The writer is a polyglot linguist, very conscious of grammar, style, and punctuation.
You may wish to support your criticism with an example or two - or perhaps you just don't know how to read longer sentences that contain subordinate clauses and apposite phrases.
Also, you should be using a semi-colon before the word, "however", and finally, Mr. Arrogant-but-Ignorant, your last sentence should read "I wish the author had proof-read it..."
Please sit down now.
It's a very academic piece and may just be over all your heads.
Admit it.
"The training needed to become a university professor or a journalist places a great deal of emphasis on the empirical gathering and analysis of information....
Perhaps more importantly, people in both professions operate with a high degree of autonomy, something that allows much more space than most have to develop points of view which may differ from those of the great mass of society who do not enjoy this same privilege."
What a frackin crock of crap Mr Harrington. You've either not been exposed to the demands ...oh wait, I just looked at your bio, well, ok, maybe where you live and the private school you work at, allow some leeway in what you say and do.
I daresay, you think those people know what's going on because they got good teachin...
sorry, the best liberal learning curve happens at the table.without creating new buzz words...come on you sound like a misunderstooding......very strange very strange
Notimpressed.
Having been a professor at a major public research university and daily newspaper journalist, I can attest that both institutions are heavily influeneced by groupthink that will produce maximum income from corporate sponsors.
Are you claiming the academic or journalism worlds are even more controlled than corporate or military? That of course, was the point of his argument...
I would agree that many in academics or journalism are not at all any more free than corporate or military, however, that would only mean things have gotten even worse, but there is still a notable difference after all, and again, I believe that was the point...
I see this has created another intellectual cluster f...
Short and sweet...sour
The right does everything it can to make everything seem wrong so they can make it their 'right'. There, done.
Right on, Stone Pig! The paragraph making the assertion that academics and journalists have a high degree of freedom is dubious at best, or, if they do have such freedom, they gladly exchange it for a cozy lifestyle. " The well-trained dog no longer requires the whip", just an NPR moderator to tell it what to do.
When you have them by the wallets, their hearts and minds will follow.
The author may be exaggerating a bit the job security that tenure gives academics, but not by much. Friends who taught geology courses involving evolution usually prefaced their discussions by saying something like: "Believe what you will, but these are the facts, and are what you will be tested on." And this is in Indiana, not Alabama.
With regard to the subversion of truth by the desire for balance, I believe it was Edward R. Murrow who once said that to the media the opinions of Judas are of equal value to those of Jesus.
This article provides a good deal to think about. The information about the influence of Powell is good to have.
However, there was a more insidious bi-partisan belief which had led up to the time on which this article focuses.
Its most prominent manifestation was McCarthy-ism, but it was already well established before the end of World War 2. Its creation was signified by the building of the Pentagon and the ascendancy of Harry Truman.
No one did more to try to lift this nation out of the despair of the depression of the 1930's than did Henry Wallace. He was by no means aware of some of later attendant harmful effects of some of his policies, like the shift to petro-agriculture and some aspects of "hybridization", but overall, his ideas and the ideas of Frances Perkins set the foundation for the prosperity which is now taken for granted.
I mention Henry Wallace because of what happened to him.
After serving Franklin Roosevelt as Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of the Treasury, and as Vice President, he was summarily dismissed and forced out of Washington because his ideas were branded as Communist.
What both major parties in Washington demanded was someone more militant and hostile.
Truman was brought in to ensure the militarization of the economy and society.
Wallace was despised as a traitor by the majority of people because he thought we needed to talk to the Soviets and try to reduce tensions. He also believed that women and blacks should have the same rights as white men and should be paid equally.
He was driven out and he went back to farming and poultry research.
The militarization escalated and escalates still because it is not "controversial."
In fact, it is worshipped by the majority.
Good points - nothing new about how business and military-industry interests have always drawn the line of "controversy". And one crosses to the left side of this line only at the peril of their jobs and livelihoods. Robert Oppenheimer's career just came to mind.
Peace at any price? I think not.
Eventually, reality will assert itself into the debate. This seems to be happening now with food and gas prices soaring (despite the news that we are in a "recovery". Global warming deniers are at a loss to explain increasingly extreme weather events etc.
Scientific fact is true, whether you believe in it or not.
One of the best articles I have read on CD in a while....
fyi: here is the full Powell Memo:
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/powell_memo_lewis.html
from that Memo:
It is still Marxist doctrine that the "capitalist" countries are controlled by big business. This doctrine, consistently a part of leftist propaganda all over the world, has a wide public following among Americans.
Yet, as every business executive knows, few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders.
listen to bbc reporters... they ask short... straightforward... simple... objective questions... they don't start every question with a 'mini-speech'... recitation of opinion... or 'frame' anything...
they just ask the question... and GUESS WHAT... they listen to the answer... and OMYGODHOLYBEJESUS!!!.... they don't argue with the person.... UNLESS... the person answering is patently bullshitting them... has no grasp of the facts... or is avoiding the facts of the matter...
bbc also doesn't have news 'stars'... they introduce themselves as reporters by name and sometimes as part of the name of the program... then dive right into... OMYGODONECEAGAIN!!!... asking questions... preceeded by or followed sometimes by... YOULLNEVERBELEIVETHIS!!!... reporting!
what makes the premise laid out here possible is the buy up of media... starting with the tossing out of the fairness doctrine... failure to enforce antitrust... and private corporate money... fox corporation LOST 1/2 BILLION in its early years... they have used the word "news" in promoting their network and naming many of their shows... which are exactly that - "shows" - to entertain... (and advance an ideology... thet YOUGUESSEDIT... makes LOTS OF MONEY for Fox Corp. Inc.
until individuals take it on THEMSELVES to educate THEMSELVES and being independent and critical of what they hear and read...
the premise laid out here will continue
One of the best ideas of the Seattle days and for a few years afterward was the Indymedia Movement - the development of appropriate internet tools in the form of Indimedia sites in every city where everyone can be a reporter and investigate and publish stories. Sadly, indymedia sites are dead in a lot of cities.
Moral absolutes and ethics do exist. They are real, believe it. Or, deny it --- at your soul's peril.
RtTBt
He really loses me at the end when he refers to the "Obamite Left." Is that like the Hitler left, maybe? The Sarah Palin Left? Or is it just a plain oxymoron?
Further, while he may have a point, he doesn't even mention the degree to which the corporate media frames the area of the debate, so that we can have all the sound and fury we want over issues of the Right--the Left is not allowed to bring anything up within mainstream--corporate--media. The situation wouldn't be so bad if we had actual "balance" even if not always appropriate. When, to take an example, a slight majority of the American people opposed the Iraq invasion in 2003, and no media corporation allowed more than 3% of the voices discussing the subject to be antiwar voices--that's hardly balance. When 80% of the people a couple of years ago thought some sort of single-payer option in health care would be good to explore, most stations totally censored the whole idea. The problem is really not too MUCH balance.
IF YOU DON'T DO THE HARD WORK TO BUILD A TRULY PROGRESSIVE, CORPORATELY UNFILTERED MASS MEDIA PLATFORM, MESSAGE CONTENT DOESN'T MATTER BECAUSE IT WILL NEVER REACH ENOUGH PEOPLE TO DO ANY GOOD.
At this exceedingly late date, when there are successful full frontal assaults on the very last strong bastion of the working middle-class (public sector unions) spreading across the country; that are also a direct attack on the last effective union-funded opposition to corporate campaign support and attack ads, it blows what's left of my olive oiled mind to see McLiberal academic wonks STILL getting it so effing wrong.
While professor McArglebargle or whatever his name is makes some very laudable comments about TACTICS in the Right/Left McNews wars, the fact is that Amurka's McLeft and the scattered and anti-solidarity "true Left" both fail on the key component of MEDIA STRATEGY. Neither establishment DLC campaign finance & dividend whores, or true Lefties in the U.S. ever bothered to build up mass media platforms to effectively oppose the corporate consolidation of corporatist, militarist mass media in the hands of the Establishment Right and the even more directly plutocrat bankrolled far-right.
The ONLY hope to get out an unfiltered populist progressive message with enough mass audience penetration in this country is low power FM stations-- operated by enough non-profit leftist organizations to mimic audience penetration in populous areas now entirely dominated by the corporatist, militarist Big Boys. Sooner or later, if the scattered Left doesn't figure this out and get off their asses to seek funding from more affluent liberals and progressives for this, then the religious Right or Tea Baggers will run to more generous right-wing billionaires to do it. They don't really need to yet since their message dominates, but of the tessellated Left doesn't seize on low power FM very quickly they will do it just to sew up this idea to micro-shape their message to localities. Then the Left will be truly DOA from here on.
The question now is: How stupid does Amurka's left really wanna be to let their last chance at even some form of cobbled together mass media be usurped by more energetic fundamentalist whackos and "libertarian" petty bourgeois Tea Bagger fascists on the Right.
Uhm, wow where to start...
I'll leave the rest of that mighty rant alone and just ask, how is the left supposed to compete with the likes of the Koch brothers and billionaire media moguls?
Without some deep pocket lefty (do they even exist???) throwing good money after bad "to build a truly progressive, corporately unfiltered mass media platform" it just isn't going to happen.
If you have suggestions let's hear them, otherwise your post is just bitter flakes with sour milk.
As I said: The ONLY hope to get out an unfiltered populist progressive message with enough mass audience penetration in this country is low power FM stations-- operated by enough non-profit leftist organizations to mimic audience penetration in populous areas now entirely dominated by the corporatist, militarist Big Boys. Sooner or later, if the scattered Left doesn't figure this out and get off their asses to seek funding from more affluent liberals and progressives for this, then the religious Right or Tea Baggers will run to more generous right-wing billionaires to do it. They don't really need to yet since their message dominates, but if the tessellated Left doesn't seize on low power FM very quickly they will do it just to sew up this idea to micro-shape their message to localities. Then the Left will be truly DOA from here on.
Right-wing and far-right centemillionaires and billionaires are LAVISHLY GENEROUS with the sums they spend to create and maintain their mass media platforms and a bewildering variety of political organizations from the college level to regional and national Tea Party organizations themselves.
It's time for ostensibly liberal or progressive centemillionaires and billionaires like Ted Turner (who once created CNN, which was far more progressive before he sold controlling shares to AOL/Time Warner, and who could create another more progressive network to suit the times), Warren Buffet, who has twice correctly criticized the top-down class warfare in America, Bill Gates' dad (who needs to put some of his liberal pressure on his son and daughter-in-law), and several other "left-leaning" billionaires and centemillionaires (Hollywood is full of nominally liberal centemillionaires) to put their money where their goddamned mouths are, and cease being so unquestioningly wedded to a failed post-Reagan Dimocrap Party that has been treacherous in nearly every respect to the working-class and remnant middle-class. Letter writing campaigns to these rich allegedly liberal and progressive fat-cats may be all we have left to fund any opposition mass media because the levels of ignorance and brainwash in this country now are astronomic.
Oh, and Kiely, right-wing and far-right billionaires routinely throw good money after bad to create and subsidize right-wing and far-right media at substantial short-term losses to themselves. Glenn Beck has lost dozens of major sponsors due to his whack-job rants, but Rupert Murdock keeps him on to pit poor brainwashed non-unionized dupes against private and public sector unions and every other aspect of pre-1980s American progressivism. Bill O'Reilly has been a ratings loser in several major markets as has Sean Hannity. Rush Limbaugh's last five year contract paid him more than all the anchorpersons on ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN combined--over $360 million dollars. These right-wing plutocratic parasites more than recoup those hefty expenses with legislation and deregulation that benefits them later as the last 16 years since NAFTA have clearly shown.
I'm just not convinced the people you seek are out there. As my father said "The Left has left" (meaning the ones with any real power). He said that after he got booted from his featured writer job by Southam Newspapers.
They have hunted our lions to extinction metal. The fact Ted Turner and the Hollywood pseudo-left are the best examples you can come up with says it all in my opinion.
Ah man... gotta go eat my own bitter flakes with sour milk now :)
This is a terribly important essay throwing another angle of light (Chomsky has gone here as well, of course) on what is one of the most, if not the most, critical pillars of the infrastructure of the intellect, the reason, the critical thought - such as all these are in their cuirrent state - of modern American life. Indeed, the life of humanity. It was quite an eye- and brain-opener when I heard a radio broadcast several years back about The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education - www.thefire.org.
Certainly this essay, the investigations and exposures of F.I.R.E., the Chomsky body of work, etc., etc., have laid bare one of the central problems of the American state and the question of whether or not it will be rescued from the right-wing, or will even survive the 21st century: the insidious, creeping - no, avalanching - rot of anti-intellectualism and Gore's 'Assault on Reason', driven in no small part by the extremes of 'political correctness' which seem to've begun to infect all thought and discourse around the time of the Dark Age of Reagan. Much of the 'modern age' of America's war with itself saw its biggest boost while the parasite that Noam Chomsky recently called 'a miserable creature' - Reagan - was soiling the oval office. And now we are soiled with the pathetic spectacle of the right's attempt to deify, canonize this murderer and corporate whore.
"Controversialization: A Key to the Right’s Continuing Domination of Public Debates"
Incorrect.
The reason for the Right's continuing domination of Public Debates: the Left's argumentation sucks and the Right's argumentation does not suck.
Common sense is common for the common man.
Common sense is absent for the Left who does not identify with the common man who clings bitterly to Bible and Gun.
The Left has to smother the stench of its sh#t entrée with a heavy dose of suckorrific platitudinal crapastic sauce. The stench is still permeating in the air.
Controversialization: a sucky pseudo-concept which so suckingly sucks and the idea sucks chunks.
Only scatophiles find suckongulous Leftoid argumentation (it is the only kind of Leftoid argumentation) to be suckilicious.
Unwittingly, the suckastic Left (a redundacy) and its Argumentation are becoming more and more suckonified.
To paraphrase the great philosophy team, the Three Stooges, if you (yes you, the Left) do not first suck seed, suck and suck again.
Wow, that is some kind of stupid you're smoking.
Friedfish:
An excellent observation above, with one troubling exception--you clearly don't know your Left from your Right.
In my mind, the issue here can be reduced into one very very simple concept.
I think Zell hit upon it right from the start with, "'Reality has a strong Liberal bias.'
What's the need to complicate this issue with all this nonsense of an insidious false equivalency foisted upon us? The hue and cry should have been raised all the way from the beginning. Jaws should have dropped and the academics and journalists should have cried foul all the way from the beginning.
The fact of the matter, is if academia IS NOT Liberal, and if journalism IS NOT Liberal, its not good academia, and its not good journalism.
Culture and knowledge, and the dispelling of a false understanding of the world is a specifically liberal pursuit. Reporting the malfeasance of bad-actors in the public sphere, revealing political lies, empowering the populace to understand and make better decisions... even providing quality humor and entertainment are LIBERAL pursuits. The results in all cases of conservatism 'gaining equivalency' in journalism, or in the classroom (think Intelligent Design) ruins journalism and academia.
Now why didn't journalists and academicians stand up and point out this lie of false equivalency in the first place?
Is it *their* fault? Yes.
Is it *our* fault (i.e. the masses)? Yes.
And is it the fault of a group of busy ideologues who desire to overthrow American democracy, and the middle-class in this country, and who also have much more voice and (perceived) power than the rest of us? Yes also.
So it's all our faults. But at least we should begin again starting from a solid, consistent, and clear platform: conservative journalism, and conservative academia are OXY-MORONS.
The left needs a powerful, consistent, and easily understood basis for its dialog – That is how we will eventually win the argument, if we're ever able to do so again.
Didn't see this in any comments, but I think it's a needed point to go with this essay. Harrington's focused on the Rights efforts to erode speech rights by false equivalency. I'm confused that he ignored that liberals also wound up embracing the very same rationale in the "hate speech" movement at the level of principle.
The notion of controlling policy outcomes by "punching over" one's weight is not uinque to the Right.
The entire "politically correct" and public health movements have been executing that same strategy for many years now.
In the end, too many people want to rule the world, and when that happens, abstract ideas like rights become completely instrumental. It's not fair to pin that on the Right alone, even though most of us despise what they've done.
isn't your comment just a perfect example of what the article is about? this is a right-wing strategy that has proven effective for them, not for the left.
Don't know why Thomas was surprised at what he heard on NPR–National Propaganda Radio. Sheesh! The issue he tackles though is important. It's just that he isn't really up to it. The last sentence of his essay–simply a travesty. But I'll give him a B for effort. Cheers.
The conservative animal doesn't care about the truth
the reason the left and right must bark on each other is the impossible alternative - doing something constructive themselves
an example : millions upon millions await single payer system and nobody wants to give the people hand - no shortage of lip service though
Now let's all be "fair and balanced."
-30-
Ugh
: )
the powell memo, the heritage foundation and he hoover institute were big pre-reagan turning points...
Why are we acting like 20% of the voters, who identify themselves as Republican, have as much or more say as the other 80% who disagree with them?? We keep acting like the Republicans represent 50% of the population. They are a small minority. As a country we need to do what California did and let the top 2 contenders for an office run against each other. Forget what party they are from!!
Conservatives "win" their arguments because they hold the fort, i.e., the traditional institutions of church, military, and finance. Liberal institutions are on the outside, seeking truth (journalism, academia) or imagining other possibilities (the performing arts). When you're a conservative, and defending the fort, you can and must fight dirty, because you are surrounded by the inevitability of change. When you are on the outside, you can lay siege, and just bide your time, because time is in your favor.
Of course, once the liberals do win and take over the fort, they will become the next class of conservatives. Sometimes liberals can become co-opted by the conservatives if they share some of the fort with them. What seems bipartisan will usually become a pile of rubbish.
"The training needed to become a university professor or a journalist places a great deal of emphasis on the empirical gathering and analysis of information. This outlook meshes quite naturally and organically with what we in this country call “liberal” thought, that is, the set of political doctrines and cultural practices which grew out of the rationalist revolution known as the Enlightenment which, though it has many forms, tends to privilege individual freedom over the achievement of group identity and group projects."
Yeah, but the cultural liberals on campus (is there any other kind?) since the 1960s haven't exactly promoted that epistemology or politics, have they?
Don't talk down to the public. The public gets enough fairy stories from Obama.
Liberal academics screwed the pooch on this one.