I've come to the not-so-profound conclusion that conservatives who truly believe in Fox News are watching too much television (probably while complaining about the vulgarity and rampant "liberalism" on the tube).  How else to explain the success of the myth of the liberal media, the liberal academy, the liberal government.  We already know the news media is not liberal, but generally staffed by an upper-middle intellectual elite who couldn't care less about the working class and the virtues of New Deal liberalism.  Aside from the loud-mouth professors who quote Chomsky and blather on about totalitarianism but who know nothing of the significance of the G.I. Bill, most of the professors I worked along side with are either old and conservative or young and republican.  And since the late 60s, the federal government has steadily been undoing the entitlements of liberalism.

But if they live in a myopic world of television make believe, where "reality" is contrived survivalism, "news" is which celebrity is boinking which star, and the Nixonian "Law and Order" is life as it should be, then I think it's possible we have a constituency that prefers myth to reality every time.

Look Out!  The evil Liberals are gonna come get your daughter.  And then the Big Bad Wolf went "Huf" and "Puf"...

Posted at November 28, 2005 5:54 PM in response to Brent Bozell, Chicken?

Because the Cheney administration is borrowing their incremental strategy from Johnson and McNamara, perhaps the conservative critics are also recalling a tip from LBJ: Kick a man when he is down.  The logic, of course, being don't rain on the parade but trash the loser.

Posted at October 24, 2005 5:17 AM in response to The Backstabbers

John, yours is a thoughtful and thought-provoking post.  However, just how truly international was the post-WWII Cold War era?  The polarization of the two superpowers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., kept much of the developing world's interests subordinate to the strategic aims of these superpowers.  Today, just the idea of post-colonialism seems more akin to naive optimism if not postwar delusion.

Obvoiusly, it's easier to be pessimistic about the future of liberal  internationalism.  Let's keep in mind, however, that the capitalist internationalism that came into place in the late nineteenth century played a huge part in the rise of nationalism, not to mention socialism.  (Recall Lenin's prescient essay "The Higher Stages of Capitalism".)

Surely, globalization all but mandates political and economic internationalism, but it also inspires quite a bit of reactionary populism--which IMHO we are going to see more of in the immediate future.

While future American administrations may not adopt the arrogant and intimidating attitude of the Bush administration, the bigger picture suggests to me one of a world-wide trend toward conservatism, not liberalism.  The European Enlightenment, which birthed modern liberalism, has been discredited by both the right  (theists, conservatives, royalists) and the left (postmodernists, Marxists).

As a footnote, ultimately the ideals of liberalism may be silenced not by an aggressive conservative political movement, but by the more mundane needs of a market in the death throes of its dependence on oil and natural gas--just as the transition from agrarianism to industrialization in the first half of the twentieth century help to galvanize popular support for radical change in Central Europe.

Posted at October 10, 2005 6:11 PM in response to The Future of Liberal Internationalism

We have here a serious conflict of interest.  With Miers headed for the court, and the administration in a legal mess that could conceivably go before the court--to weigh in on the constitutionality of the Reagan-era secrets law--we have a line of affiliation running right over the fence.  She's Bush own lawyer.  She's been nominated for the Supreme Court.  The court is now hovering in the background behind the Fitzgerald inquiry.  If I were to speculate on Bush's motives--which are largely authored by Cheney and Rove--Plame-gate is PRECISELY why Bush nominated her.  Indeed, this line of reasoning may be what STOPS a Republican filibuster of her nomination.  As far-fetched as this sounds, just stop for a minute and try to think like Rove (I know, it's painful), and you'll see what I mean.

Posted at October 7, 2005 12:03 PM in response to Harriet's Odds

First and most important, religion is on the rise in the United States, or rather religious sentiment.  By that I mean individual interest and commitment to some sort of religious or spiritual paradigm, be it traditional or non-tradition.

The problem with tracking such a phenomenon is that statistical models are beholden to traditional organized demoninations.  Unscientifically, one has only to note the huge increase in shelf space in your local Barnes and Noble devoted to books on religion and spirituality--there is a fundamental increase in the consumption of religious knowledge.  Interest in 'religious sentiment' appears to be qualified by suspicion of tradition organized religious denominations and deeply individualistic, a trend with antecedants in the 1960s counter-culture movement which challenged traditional authority and promoted self-help psychology--immanence over transcendence.

As to the study's correlation between social dysfunction and higher rates of religion, I suspect that the survey questions were not sufficiently specific as to what constitutes 'religion'--a problem that continues to dog scholars of religion to this day.  Nonetheless, I doubt one can establish a certain causal link between such dysfunction and religious affiliation or belief.  In fact, to note one instance to the contrary, divorce is far less common among orthodox Jews and Catholics compared to their secular American counterparts.

Lastly, it would be a huge mistake for those on the left to make much of this study. Deriding religion or blaming it for societal dysfunction would play right into the hands of religious conservatives who claim the left is less interested in being good stewards of society and more interested in attacking religion and its followers.

Posted at October 5, 2005 6:16 AM in response to Religion and Social Dysfunction

Looks like the boys in the band are getting a little anxious over that really huge elephant in the international room--China.  Like magnets with a very predictable set of properties, these nuts love polarity.  Actually, they NEED polarity, so they can talk in simplistic either/or tones of good and evil.

I suspect they imagine an alliance between the U.S. and Europe along not just corporate lines (already in place) but in terms of world-dominating ideology.

Posted at October 2, 2005 12:18 PM in response to Neo-Cons for a "Strong Europe"

No surprise here.  The Christian Right and their political allies in the GOP share the apocalyptic orientation of the so-called "radical Muslim" terrorists as well as ultra-Orthodox Zionists: all ashew broad, positive popular social change for reactionary, scorched-earth destruction, ostensibly so we can all begin with a clean slate.  Indeed, to "clean" society of the irreligious is their ambition.

Posted at October 1, 2005 9:27 AM in response to A true story about Bill Bennett

Relativism in both academia and political discourse certainly did NOT  begin with Reagan.  Dan is correct: it was indeed so-called 'left-wing' academics who first began trumpeting the virtues and greater truth (or anti-truth) of Nietzsche's perspectivism, Derrida's deconstruction, and Fish's manifold interpretations.  Rush Limbaugh embodies the postmodern par excellence: parody, satire, and no commitment whatsoever to a universal truth.

Let's not pull any punches here.  Late-twentieth century academic liberalism (perhaps unwittingly) provided the intellectual platform with which to dismantle New Deal liberalism.  The problem is that we have tenured egos incapable of owning up to their unwitting part in deconstructing the American Dream and deriding any notion of moral foundation or philosophical truth.

This isn't meant to disparage liberalism or the left (of which I happily align myself), but accountability for social and political problems has been sorely lacking among many on the left as well as the right.

It goes without saying that Republicans and in particular this administration is utterly incapable of admitting mistakes and taking responsibility.  It's not in their mission statement.  Only cronyism, maximum profit, moral hypocrisy and the goal of reconstituting a disenfranchised working class for cheap labor and the psychological importance of showing they're on top. 

Posted at September 7, 2005 3:17 PM in response to SORTING OUT OPINION FROM FACT ON KATRINA

This disaster illustrates perfectly Paul Fussell's outline of class in America, with the two ends of the spectrum being the upper out-of-sight (Bush Administration) and the destitute out-of-sight (the impoverished).  Senator, I implore you to speak out on the issue of class and race in this country, hold town meetings on this issue, and galvanize the public to the very real concerns of growing unemployment, skyrocketing poverty, and the obvious abysmal failures of the current administration in handling all manner of national crises.

We are being dragged back into the nineteenth century by an overclass not simply indifferent to the hard times of working people, but actually hell-bent on consolidating wealth and power and solidifying the impassable boundary between privileged overclass and a working class near destitution.

You might want to remind your less mindful and unhistorical peers that out of such circumstances, revolutions are born.  Bloody revolutions.

Posted at September 2, 2005 6:12 PM in response to Two Americas

A point of clarification, and with all due respect, Ed, we're not really dealing with a RELIEF effort in New Orleans.  We're dealing with a SEARCH AND RESCUE effort.  What relief there is has been established in alternate cities, my hometown Houston being the most visible.  I just returned from the Astrodome where the situtation is both one of hope and despair.  Hundreds of locals are streaming into the arena complex to donate food and clothing and volunteer.  But there are countless refugees wandering the grounds in a state of shock and confusion.  We need more volunteers.  And we need a lot more coordination.

In New Orleans, the Coast Guard and National Guard are still retrieving trapped survivors from flooded houses and buildings.  And we are poised for an unrelenting outbreak of disease.  Let's keep in mind that in addition to the thousands of displaced people, millions of disease-carrying rats have now come out of hiding.

If you're reading this and want to do something, please donote to the Red Cross immediately, and specify that your donation of food, clothing or money go directly to the victims of Katrina.

Posted at September 2, 2005 11:15 AM in response to Base First