Confused on the Left, Blinded by the Right (Part II, Blinded)
I'd like to introduce everyone to David Brock, author of Blinded by the Right and The Republican Noise Machine. In Blinded, he introduces himself as a progressive and idealistic young lad who had a rude awakening during his college days in Berkeley. He went to cover Jeane Kirkpatrick's speech to the college, and was deeply disturbed when protesters interrupted her until she was forced to leave the stage:
The scene shook me deeply: Was the harassment of an unpopular speaker the legacy of the Berkeley-campus Free Speech Movement, when students demanded the right to canvass for any and all political causes on the campus's Sproul Plaza? Wasn't free speech a liberal value? How, I wondered, could this thought police call itself liberal?. . . . The few outspoken conservatives on the faculty, and the Reagan regents, raised their voices in support of Kirkpatrick's free speech rights. The liberals seemed to me to be defending censorship.
(David Brock, Blinded by the Right, Three Rivers Press, 2002, p. 4.)
This and other incidents burned in his mind, Brock turned from liberal and progressive issues and became a cheerleader for the Other Side. He rose in prominence, publishing his first piece in Policy Review, "a theoretical organ of the Heritage Foundation in Washington." He eventually landed a job writing for the conservative Washington Times in 1986, went on from there to a fellowship with the John M. Olin Foundation and wound up later writing pieces for The American Spectator. (One piece almost assuredly helped Clarence Thomas get his seat on the Supreme Court. In it, Brock attacked Anita Hill, coining the phrase "a bit nutty and a bit slutty" and thus impugning her testimony.)
During this whirlwind of a political activist career, Brock met the movers and shakers of the conservative movement . . . and learned their techniques first-hand. He was paid handsomely to spread conservative causes through written pieces by people that literally invested millions -- some hundreds of millions -- for just that purpose.
I've written before about one of these institutions, The Cato Institute. For the purpose of this post, I'll focus mostly on those institutions David Brock came to know well. Let's start with the Heritage Foundation.
In 1969, Paul Weyrich "attended a political strategy session run by liberal operatives." He learned from that encounter:
Weyrich acknowledged that from that moment on, his life was "changed": He spent the early part of the 1970s working "to get these people who really have the same morals, who have the same ideals, but who came to it from different traditions to work together."
To pursue that goal, Weyrich founded the Heritage Foundation (with start-up money from Joseph Coors and Richard Mellon Scaife) in 1973.
Next, the John M. Olin Foundation, given its present mandate in 1969. That mandate:
". . . to provide support for projects that reflect or are intended to strengthen the economic, political and cultural institutions upon which the American heritage of constitutional government and private enterprise is based. The Foundation also seeks to promote a general understanding of these institutions by encouraging the thoughtful study of the connections between economic and political freedoms, and the cultural heritage that sustains them."
Of Brock's observations, those he makes of Richard Mellon Scaiffe are especially interesting and entertaining. Brock describes him as the most prolific "sugar daddy" of conservative politics:
According to calculations made by the Washington Post, Scaife gave more than $200 million to conservative institutions between 1974 and 1992 in an attempt to influence governmet policy and train personnel. Though he operated in the shadows, Scaife was the most important single figure in building the modern conservative movement and spreading its ideas into the political realm.
(Brock, Blinded by the Right, Three Rivers Press, 2002, p. 87, emphasis mine.)
Oh, and what a colorful person this Scaife is! He is linked with more than one murder, noted as a "gutter drunk" (by his sister!), and when approached "by a reporter for the Columbian Journalism Review who tried to question him, Scaife railed, 'You fucking Communist cunt, get out of here.'"
I'm going to add one more bit of history to this list, a memorandum cited as influential in the conservative politics we see today. Lewis F. Powell, Jr. was a prominent Richmond, Virginia attorney. At the request of his neighbor and long-time friend Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Powell composed a letter to the National Chamber of Commerce referred to today simply as The Powell Memorandum. The date: August 23, 1971, two months before Mr. Powell was nominated to become a member justice of the Supreme Court of the United States by Pres. Nixon. Powell begins:
No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. . . .
There always have been some who opposed the American system, and preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism). Also, there always have been critics of the system, whose criticism has been wholesome and constructive so long as the objective was to improve rather than to subvert or destroy.
But what now concerns us is quite new in the history of America. We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.
Powell continues by outlining the source and flavor of these attacks: "Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic." Though the more extreme elements of this attack remain in the minority, they are receiving support from an unexpected source:
The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. . . .
Moreover, much of the media -- for varying motives and in varying degrees -- either voluntarily accords unique publicity to these "attackers," or at least allows them to exploit the media for their purposes. This is especially true of television, which now plays such a predominant role in shaping the thinking, attitudes and emotions of our people.
One of the bewildering paradoxes of our time is the extent to which the enterprise system tolerates, if not participates in, its own destruction. . . .
Most of the media, including the national TV systems, are owned and theoretically controlled by corporations which depend upon profits, and the enterprise system to survive.
Once identified, Powell outlines a broad and ambitious strategy for countering these anti-American forces. Since business as usual is under attack, he reasons that businessmen should recognize that they have traditionally " . . . shown little stomach for hard-nose contest with their critics, and little skill in effective intellectual and philosophical debate." It was time to reverse that tradition.
What specifically should be done? The first essential -- a prerequisite to any effective action -- is for businessmen to confront this problem as a primary responsibility of corporate management.
The overriding first need is for businessmen to recognize that the ultimate issue may be survival -- survival of what we call the free enterprise system, and all that this means for the strength and prosperity of America and the freedom of our people. . . .
Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.
Moreover, there is the quite understandable reluctance on the part of any one corporation to get too far out in front and to make itself too visible a target.
That last consideration requires that separate and new agencies take up the fight to defend businessmen everywhere. He suggests the National Chamber of Commerce form a more active arm of its organization, one that can implement a multi-part strategy designed to ultimately defend and promote the American Way of Doing Business from the left-leaning forces attacking it.
This promotion starts on The Campus, where "the Chamber should consider establishing a staff of highly qualified scholars in the social sciences who do believe in the system." Supplementing these scholars, the Chamber should establish "a staff of speakers of the highest competency" to spread the work of the scholars and "a Speaker's Bureau which should include the ablest and most effective advocates from the top echelons of American business." These people should "evaluate social science textbooks, especially in economics, political science and sociology" as part of a "continuing program." They should "insist upon equal time on the college speaking circuit" with emphasis on "(i) (having) attractive, articulate and well-informed speakers; and (ii) (exerting) whatever degree of pressure -- publicly and privately -- may be necessary to assure opportunities to speak." I emphasized that last one simply because it speaks to their real aim -- success at any cost.
Powell continues:
It is especially important for the Chamber's "faculty of scholars" to publish. One of the keys to the success of the liberal and leftist faculty members has been their passion for "publication" and "lecturing." A similar passion must exist among the Chamber's scholars.
Incentives might be devised to induce more "publishing" by independent scholars who do believe in the system.
To clarify that last sentence, those "independent" scholars should be well paid.
Powell outlines many areas of political interest that should be attended to by the enhanced Chamber he envisions -- legislation, the courts, advertising, shareholder influence on companies -- but I intend to focus here on media. With this in mind, I find his passively reactive position on television and radio curious, especially since he says early on how important those media are becoming. Look at his proposal for television:
The national television networks should be monitored in the same way that textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance. This applies not merely to so-called educational programs . . . , but to the daily "news analysis" which so often includes the most insidious type of criticism of the enterprise system. Whether this criticism results from hostility or economic ignorance, the result is the gradual erosion of confidence in "business" and free enterprise.
This monitoring, to be effective, would require constant examination of the texts of adequate samples of programs. Complaints -- to the media and to the Federal Communications Commission -- should be made promptly and strongly when programs are unfair or inaccurate.
As a future Supreme Court Justice, Powell undoubtedly felt more comfortable with the printed word and academia than he was with the Boob Tube. He may not have realized that television programs, like newspapers and magazines, are written and produced by people who get paid. Why demand "equal time . . . when appropriate?" Why would the Chamber insist "that the forum-type programs (the Today Show, Meet the Press, etc.) afford at least as much opportunity for supporters of the American system to participate as these programs do for those who attack it" . . . when they can just buy television stations and air whatever they feel like?
What Powell may have missed was not missed by everyone. The early 1970s were a time of enormous broadcast and later cable consolidation in the United States, a power grab that resulted in probably the most homogeneous programing ever seen within as vast a number of possible outlets. Some of the moguls control their holdings quietly, exerting a light touch on the editorial direction of the stations they oversee. Others have no problem whatsoever with exerting a very heavy hand indeed.
Rupert Murdoch:
"I like to win."
Powell, Weyrich, Olin, Scaife and others reacted against the excesses of the late 1960s and early 1970s exactly as Karl Marx reacted against the social and technological upheaval of Victorian Europe. These major institutions and foundations, these star Chambers and the funders thereof, have a very real impact on the political climate in the United States, an impact that can be measured by the Overton Window. It's something I cover in the tag Bend Overton, something that should be understood by every single gosh-darned person in the world. Let's review how it works and compare how this relates to the strategies outlined by Powell and implemented by his many institutional adherents. (Most of the following analysis I took from my most in-depth post on Overton, The Whispers and the Early Screams.)
When it comes to public opinion, what other people think is more important than people are willing to admit. It doesn't matter what the topic is, people tend to align themselves -- and their opinions -- with those that they know and respect . . . and against those they hold in less esteem. The spectrum of ideas can usually therefore be catalogued and ordered thusly:
* Unthinkable
* Radical
* Acceptable
* Sensible
* Popular
* Policy
* Popular
* Sensible
* Acceptable
* Radical
* Unthinkable
Consider the ranges above and below "Policy" to be the range of ideas on any given topic more to either the political left or the right of the population at large, meaning more to the left and the right of the centrist individuals within that population. Where ideas are ordered should be considered a constantly-occuring process. Every time these ideas are discussed, people consider who takes what position -- with emphasis on what level of esteem those people are currently held -- as well as the relative merits of the ideas themselves. That's why Powell insisted that "attractive, articulate and well-informed speakers" represent the Chambers' views in his memorandum. That's also why you will find damned few pictures of Yours Truly in these LJ entries. ;-)
Let's emphasize that all the discussion on any issue counts. Therefore, the publications from the Chamber -- publications written by men and women like Brock, and bought and paid for by the "incentives" Scaife and others contributed -- start to artificially weigh the argument on policy, giving more voice and impact to the conservative position. I outlined how this is currently happening with the health care debate in "Whispers." Let's see how it might have played for other issues, like taxation.
As I mentioned in Part I, Confused, the top income tax bracket in the US used to be 90%. Let's role play for just a moment. Let's say you earn the princely sum of $10 million a year! At a 90% bracket, you would take home well over $1 million. (Exactly how much over would depend upon the exact tax tables and percentages of the time, something that would take quite a while to research, let alone calculate.) A good sum, but considerably less than your gross salary.
Now let's say you were approached by someone like Weyrich, someone who funded a Foundation dedicated to tasks like the Heritage Foundation and its like entities. Let's say you gave them, oh, I don't know, a hundred grand. They take that hundred grand and publish, promote, pressure -- all the tactics that Powell suggested and more he didn't foresee. With all this sustained pressure, the top tax rates fall from 90% to 80%! A few years after your generous gift, you will take home well over a million dollars extra a year! Furthermore, you can expect to take home more and more in the years that follow!
Why wouldn't you give to foundations like these?
Let's consider one example, that curmudgeon Richard Mellon Scaife. In 1974, the first year Brock notes Scaife giving money to institutes like Heritage, the top income tax bracket was 70%. By 1992, the last year Brock notes, it was down to 31%.
In this light, that $200 million Richard Scaife has given to various organizations over the decades seems less like the impulsive, wasteful spending of an unstable individual, and more like one of the best investments he may have ever made in his very, very rich life.
Though I personally feel everyone should be made aware of the Overton Window, the Heritage Foundation, and all the other influences directing our society as invisibly as they can, I started this post to note shifts in the very definition of specific words. That's why Part I talks about the definition of "capitalism" and to a lesser extent "communism." In this part, I'd like to raise how a historically significant word seems to be losing its original meaning almost entirely -- fascism.
I've noted this before. In that linked post I noted how a religion with very few historical links to actual fascism was conflated with it for political gain (and to avoid political loss). Ever since I saw it in the bookstore, though, I've suspected that this book might be the product of Brock's former employers:
Why is this so disturbing to me? Very simply, look at the definitions for both words in the title. In a dictionary. A "liberal," according to my desktop dictionary, is "open to new behavior or opinion and willing to discard traditional values." Every single person, foundation and institute I've cited above is dedicated to preserving, not "discarding," traditional values! Powell didn't get appointed by Nixon to the Supreme Court because he was "liberal" in any way! Weyrich dedicated his life to fighting for right-wing causes. Hell, he was one of the people who prompted Jerry Falwell to form the Moral Majority, hardly a pantheon of "liberal" thought!
In fact, if anything, the conservative right is closer to the fascist ideal than the left. I say that in all seriousness and without hyperbole. After all, Powell railed against "the broad, shotgun attack on the system itself" from those on the left, not the right. Read his memorandum in its entirety if this is still unclear. Read my description of original fascism as well. The Fascists in Europe originally formed to fight the growing influence of Marxist revolutionaries. Anyone who fights commies are, I venture to guess, guys Richard Mellon Scaife would find a-okay.
Be that as it may, "fascism" tests very well in just about every demographic focus group as a vilification. The left hate its association with actual fascists. The right hate its association with the fascists the Allies fought in WWII. Nope, nobody loves fascists today . . . or at least admits to loving fascists. For that reason, it was appropriated as a modifier in Rumsfeld's war against Al Qaida ala "Islamofascism."
And, I suspect, it was the reason Jonah Goldberg wrote his book, the one pictured above.
Let's remember what Powell wrote about "Books, Paperbacks and Pamphlets" in his memorandum:
The news stands -- at airports, drugstores, and elsewhere -- are filled with paperbacks and pamphlets advocating everything from revolution to erotic free love. One finds almost no attractive, well-written paperbacks or pamphlets on "our side." It will be difficult to compete . . . for reader attention, but unless the effort is made -- on a large enough scale and with appropriate imagination to assure some success -- this opportunity for educating the public will be irretrievably lost. (Emphasis mine.)
I emboldened that section because it so beautifully explains not just Goldberg's book, but about half the bound pages I see in the Political Science section of the bookstore. Really, how else can we explain why Ann Coulter's books are so damned common? Same goes for Glen Beck and Bill O'Reilly. These books are, I think, deliberate noise published to skew public opinion, not original and thought-provoking pieces by dedicated intellectuals.
There's some real precedent available to support that last sentence. David Brock wrote The Real Anita Hill, an admitted hit-piece targeting the woman for slander, something he admitted himself in Blinded and his article "Confessions of a Right-Wing Hit Man" (published in Esquire). He tried to pen a similar assault on Hillary Clinton, The Seduction of Hillary Clinton; but by then he, well, had grown a pair and failed to write the kind of sensational, fact-free assault -- like the Hill book -- that made him a rising star in conservative politics. In Blinded, he very specifically noted that his more popular and successful books were not meant as "scholarly pieces," but as hit pieces, designed to question the integrity of the targets in the titles. Like the books by Coulter, by Beck, by O'Reilly. These were written to shift the Overton Window and nothing else.
Goldberg's book smacks of just such associations. How, for example, can anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the English language accuse Pres. Obama of being a "fascist?" For the right-wing hit machine, the solution is simple: change the current definition of "fascist" to specify something created by the left . . . without robbing the word of its power to vilify.
The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cJonah Goldbergwww.thedailyshow.comDaily Show
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"Can we air any of this?" -- Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart had Goldberg dead to rights. Every single talking point Goldberg spews in this interview smacks of market research done by Luntz, from the slams on progressives to the laughably spurious association with Mussolini as a progressive. He is single-handedly trying to rewrite the history of fascism itself to fit the ideals of American conservatives, or at least to foist the word "fascist" on the enemies of fascism, lest people start to notice the fascist tendencies -- and history -- of the conservative right. I only wish Comedy Central had the entire interview available. I would be very interested to note which meanings of other words Goldberg was paid "induced" with "incentives" to change.
Which, under the Overton model, works. The more that people assert fascism is liberal, the more other people will think fascism is liberal. This part is important -- It doesn't matter that actual fascism proves about as un-liberal as any philosophy can be.
Sadly, if enough people say it is with enough conviction and with enough gravitas, some people will accept it.
Brock later recanted and apologized for his shenanigans. Only time will tell if Goldberg will adequately apologize for raping the English language . . . simply because he needed the money and craved the fame. After all, not everybody gets on The Daily Show . . . and even those who look like total asses get remembered.
The scene shook me deeply: Was the harassment of an unpopular speaker the legacy of the Berkeley-campus Free Speech Movement, when students demanded the right to canvass for any and all political causes on the campus's Sproul Plaza? Wasn't free speech a liberal value? How, I wondered, could this thought police call itself liberal?. . . . The few outspoken conservatives on the faculty, and the Reagan regents, raised their voices in support of Kirkpatrick's free speech rights. The liberals seemed to me to be defending censorship.
(David Brock, Blinded by the Right, Three Rivers Press, 2002, p. 4.)
This and other incidents burned in his mind, Brock turned from liberal and progressive issues and became a cheerleader for the Other Side. He rose in prominence, publishing his first piece in Policy Review, "a theoretical organ of the Heritage Foundation in Washington." He eventually landed a job writing for the conservative Washington Times in 1986, went on from there to a fellowship with the John M. Olin Foundation and wound up later writing pieces for The American Spectator. (One piece almost assuredly helped Clarence Thomas get his seat on the Supreme Court. In it, Brock attacked Anita Hill, coining the phrase "a bit nutty and a bit slutty" and thus impugning her testimony.)
During this whirlwind of a political activist career, Brock met the movers and shakers of the conservative movement . . . and learned their techniques first-hand. He was paid handsomely to spread conservative causes through written pieces by people that literally invested millions -- some hundreds of millions -- for just that purpose.
I've written before about one of these institutions, The Cato Institute. For the purpose of this post, I'll focus mostly on those institutions David Brock came to know well. Let's start with the Heritage Foundation.
In 1969, Paul Weyrich "attended a political strategy session run by liberal operatives." He learned from that encounter:
Weyrich acknowledged that from that moment on, his life was "changed": He spent the early part of the 1970s working "to get these people who really have the same morals, who have the same ideals, but who came to it from different traditions to work together."
To pursue that goal, Weyrich founded the Heritage Foundation (with start-up money from Joseph Coors and Richard Mellon Scaife) in 1973.
Next, the John M. Olin Foundation, given its present mandate in 1969. That mandate:
". . . to provide support for projects that reflect or are intended to strengthen the economic, political and cultural institutions upon which the American heritage of constitutional government and private enterprise is based. The Foundation also seeks to promote a general understanding of these institutions by encouraging the thoughtful study of the connections between economic and political freedoms, and the cultural heritage that sustains them."
Of Brock's observations, those he makes of Richard Mellon Scaiffe are especially interesting and entertaining. Brock describes him as the most prolific "sugar daddy" of conservative politics:
According to calculations made by the Washington Post, Scaife gave more than $200 million to conservative institutions between 1974 and 1992 in an attempt to influence governmet policy and train personnel. Though he operated in the shadows, Scaife was the most important single figure in building the modern conservative movement and spreading its ideas into the political realm.
(Brock, Blinded by the Right, Three Rivers Press, 2002, p. 87, emphasis mine.)
Oh, and what a colorful person this Scaife is! He is linked with more than one murder, noted as a "gutter drunk" (by his sister!), and when approached "by a reporter for the Columbian Journalism Review who tried to question him, Scaife railed, 'You fucking Communist cunt, get out of here.'"
I'm going to add one more bit of history to this list, a memorandum cited as influential in the conservative politics we see today. Lewis F. Powell, Jr. was a prominent Richmond, Virginia attorney. At the request of his neighbor and long-time friend Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Powell composed a letter to the National Chamber of Commerce referred to today simply as The Powell Memorandum. The date: August 23, 1971, two months before Mr. Powell was nominated to become a member justice of the Supreme Court of the United States by Pres. Nixon. Powell begins:
No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. . . .
There always have been some who opposed the American system, and preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism). Also, there always have been critics of the system, whose criticism has been wholesome and constructive so long as the objective was to improve rather than to subvert or destroy.
But what now concerns us is quite new in the history of America. We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.
Powell continues by outlining the source and flavor of these attacks: "Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic." Though the more extreme elements of this attack remain in the minority, they are receiving support from an unexpected source:
The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. . . .
Moreover, much of the media -- for varying motives and in varying degrees -- either voluntarily accords unique publicity to these "attackers," or at least allows them to exploit the media for their purposes. This is especially true of television, which now plays such a predominant role in shaping the thinking, attitudes and emotions of our people.
One of the bewildering paradoxes of our time is the extent to which the enterprise system tolerates, if not participates in, its own destruction. . . .
Most of the media, including the national TV systems, are owned and theoretically controlled by corporations which depend upon profits, and the enterprise system to survive.
Once identified, Powell outlines a broad and ambitious strategy for countering these anti-American forces. Since business as usual is under attack, he reasons that businessmen should recognize that they have traditionally " . . . shown little stomach for hard-nose contest with their critics, and little skill in effective intellectual and philosophical debate." It was time to reverse that tradition.
What specifically should be done? The first essential -- a prerequisite to any effective action -- is for businessmen to confront this problem as a primary responsibility of corporate management.
The overriding first need is for businessmen to recognize that the ultimate issue may be survival -- survival of what we call the free enterprise system, and all that this means for the strength and prosperity of America and the freedom of our people. . . .
Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.
Moreover, there is the quite understandable reluctance on the part of any one corporation to get too far out in front and to make itself too visible a target.
That last consideration requires that separate and new agencies take up the fight to defend businessmen everywhere. He suggests the National Chamber of Commerce form a more active arm of its organization, one that can implement a multi-part strategy designed to ultimately defend and promote the American Way of Doing Business from the left-leaning forces attacking it.
This promotion starts on The Campus, where "the Chamber should consider establishing a staff of highly qualified scholars in the social sciences who do believe in the system." Supplementing these scholars, the Chamber should establish "a staff of speakers of the highest competency" to spread the work of the scholars and "a Speaker's Bureau which should include the ablest and most effective advocates from the top echelons of American business." These people should "evaluate social science textbooks, especially in economics, political science and sociology" as part of a "continuing program." They should "insist upon equal time on the college speaking circuit" with emphasis on "(i) (having) attractive, articulate and well-informed speakers; and (ii) (exerting) whatever degree of pressure -- publicly and privately -- may be necessary to assure opportunities to speak." I emphasized that last one simply because it speaks to their real aim -- success at any cost.
Powell continues:
It is especially important for the Chamber's "faculty of scholars" to publish. One of the keys to the success of the liberal and leftist faculty members has been their passion for "publication" and "lecturing." A similar passion must exist among the Chamber's scholars.
Incentives might be devised to induce more "publishing" by independent scholars who do believe in the system.
To clarify that last sentence, those "independent" scholars should be well paid.
Powell outlines many areas of political interest that should be attended to by the enhanced Chamber he envisions -- legislation, the courts, advertising, shareholder influence on companies -- but I intend to focus here on media. With this in mind, I find his passively reactive position on television and radio curious, especially since he says early on how important those media are becoming. Look at his proposal for television:
The national television networks should be monitored in the same way that textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance. This applies not merely to so-called educational programs . . . , but to the daily "news analysis" which so often includes the most insidious type of criticism of the enterprise system. Whether this criticism results from hostility or economic ignorance, the result is the gradual erosion of confidence in "business" and free enterprise.
This monitoring, to be effective, would require constant examination of the texts of adequate samples of programs. Complaints -- to the media and to the Federal Communications Commission -- should be made promptly and strongly when programs are unfair or inaccurate.
As a future Supreme Court Justice, Powell undoubtedly felt more comfortable with the printed word and academia than he was with the Boob Tube. He may not have realized that television programs, like newspapers and magazines, are written and produced by people who get paid. Why demand "equal time . . . when appropriate?" Why would the Chamber insist "that the forum-type programs (the Today Show, Meet the Press, etc.) afford at least as much opportunity for supporters of the American system to participate as these programs do for those who attack it" . . . when they can just buy television stations and air whatever they feel like?
What Powell may have missed was not missed by everyone. The early 1970s were a time of enormous broadcast and later cable consolidation in the United States, a power grab that resulted in probably the most homogeneous programing ever seen within as vast a number of possible outlets. Some of the moguls control their holdings quietly, exerting a light touch on the editorial direction of the stations they oversee. Others have no problem whatsoever with exerting a very heavy hand indeed.
Rupert Murdoch:
"I like to win."
Powell, Weyrich, Olin, Scaife and others reacted against the excesses of the late 1960s and early 1970s exactly as Karl Marx reacted against the social and technological upheaval of Victorian Europe. These major institutions and foundations, these star Chambers and the funders thereof, have a very real impact on the political climate in the United States, an impact that can be measured by the Overton Window. It's something I cover in the tag Bend Overton, something that should be understood by every single gosh-darned person in the world. Let's review how it works and compare how this relates to the strategies outlined by Powell and implemented by his many institutional adherents. (Most of the following analysis I took from my most in-depth post on Overton, The Whispers and the Early Screams.)
When it comes to public opinion, what other people think is more important than people are willing to admit. It doesn't matter what the topic is, people tend to align themselves -- and their opinions -- with those that they know and respect . . . and against those they hold in less esteem. The spectrum of ideas can usually therefore be catalogued and ordered thusly:
* Unthinkable
* Radical
* Acceptable
* Sensible
* Popular
* Policy
* Popular
* Sensible
* Acceptable
* Radical
* Unthinkable
Consider the ranges above and below "Policy" to be the range of ideas on any given topic more to either the political left or the right of the population at large, meaning more to the left and the right of the centrist individuals within that population. Where ideas are ordered should be considered a constantly-occuring process. Every time these ideas are discussed, people consider who takes what position -- with emphasis on what level of esteem those people are currently held -- as well as the relative merits of the ideas themselves. That's why Powell insisted that "attractive, articulate and well-informed speakers" represent the Chambers' views in his memorandum. That's also why you will find damned few pictures of Yours Truly in these LJ entries. ;-)
Let's emphasize that all the discussion on any issue counts. Therefore, the publications from the Chamber -- publications written by men and women like Brock, and bought and paid for by the "incentives" Scaife and others contributed -- start to artificially weigh the argument on policy, giving more voice and impact to the conservative position. I outlined how this is currently happening with the health care debate in "Whispers." Let's see how it might have played for other issues, like taxation.
As I mentioned in Part I, Confused, the top income tax bracket in the US used to be 90%. Let's role play for just a moment. Let's say you earn the princely sum of $10 million a year! At a 90% bracket, you would take home well over $1 million. (Exactly how much over would depend upon the exact tax tables and percentages of the time, something that would take quite a while to research, let alone calculate.) A good sum, but considerably less than your gross salary.
Now let's say you were approached by someone like Weyrich, someone who funded a Foundation dedicated to tasks like the Heritage Foundation and its like entities. Let's say you gave them, oh, I don't know, a hundred grand. They take that hundred grand and publish, promote, pressure -- all the tactics that Powell suggested and more he didn't foresee. With all this sustained pressure, the top tax rates fall from 90% to 80%! A few years after your generous gift, you will take home well over a million dollars extra a year! Furthermore, you can expect to take home more and more in the years that follow!
Why wouldn't you give to foundations like these?
Let's consider one example, that curmudgeon Richard Mellon Scaife. In 1974, the first year Brock notes Scaife giving money to institutes like Heritage, the top income tax bracket was 70%. By 1992, the last year Brock notes, it was down to 31%.
In this light, that $200 million Richard Scaife has given to various organizations over the decades seems less like the impulsive, wasteful spending of an unstable individual, and more like one of the best investments he may have ever made in his very, very rich life.
Though I personally feel everyone should be made aware of the Overton Window, the Heritage Foundation, and all the other influences directing our society as invisibly as they can, I started this post to note shifts in the very definition of specific words. That's why Part I talks about the definition of "capitalism" and to a lesser extent "communism." In this part, I'd like to raise how a historically significant word seems to be losing its original meaning almost entirely -- fascism.
I've noted this before. In that linked post I noted how a religion with very few historical links to actual fascism was conflated with it for political gain (and to avoid political loss). Ever since I saw it in the bookstore, though, I've suspected that this book might be the product of Brock's former employers:
Why is this so disturbing to me? Very simply, look at the definitions for both words in the title. In a dictionary. A "liberal," according to my desktop dictionary, is "open to new behavior or opinion and willing to discard traditional values." Every single person, foundation and institute I've cited above is dedicated to preserving, not "discarding," traditional values! Powell didn't get appointed by Nixon to the Supreme Court because he was "liberal" in any way! Weyrich dedicated his life to fighting for right-wing causes. Hell, he was one of the people who prompted Jerry Falwell to form the Moral Majority, hardly a pantheon of "liberal" thought!
In fact, if anything, the conservative right is closer to the fascist ideal than the left. I say that in all seriousness and without hyperbole. After all, Powell railed against "the broad, shotgun attack on the system itself" from those on the left, not the right. Read his memorandum in its entirety if this is still unclear. Read my description of original fascism as well. The Fascists in Europe originally formed to fight the growing influence of Marxist revolutionaries. Anyone who fights commies are, I venture to guess, guys Richard Mellon Scaife would find a-okay.
Be that as it may, "fascism" tests very well in just about every demographic focus group as a vilification. The left hate its association with actual fascists. The right hate its association with the fascists the Allies fought in WWII. Nope, nobody loves fascists today . . . or at least admits to loving fascists. For that reason, it was appropriated as a modifier in Rumsfeld's war against Al Qaida ala "Islamofascism."
And, I suspect, it was the reason Jonah Goldberg wrote his book, the one pictured above.
Let's remember what Powell wrote about "Books, Paperbacks and Pamphlets" in his memorandum:
The news stands -- at airports, drugstores, and elsewhere -- are filled with paperbacks and pamphlets advocating everything from revolution to erotic free love. One finds almost no attractive, well-written paperbacks or pamphlets on "our side." It will be difficult to compete . . . for reader attention, but unless the effort is made -- on a large enough scale and with appropriate imagination to assure some success -- this opportunity for educating the public will be irretrievably lost. (Emphasis mine.)
I emboldened that section because it so beautifully explains not just Goldberg's book, but about half the bound pages I see in the Political Science section of the bookstore. Really, how else can we explain why Ann Coulter's books are so damned common? Same goes for Glen Beck and Bill O'Reilly. These books are, I think, deliberate noise published to skew public opinion, not original and thought-provoking pieces by dedicated intellectuals.
There's some real precedent available to support that last sentence. David Brock wrote The Real Anita Hill, an admitted hit-piece targeting the woman for slander, something he admitted himself in Blinded and his article "Confessions of a Right-Wing Hit Man" (published in Esquire). He tried to pen a similar assault on Hillary Clinton, The Seduction of Hillary Clinton; but by then he, well, had grown a pair and failed to write the kind of sensational, fact-free assault -- like the Hill book -- that made him a rising star in conservative politics. In Blinded, he very specifically noted that his more popular and successful books were not meant as "scholarly pieces," but as hit pieces, designed to question the integrity of the targets in the titles. Like the books by Coulter, by Beck, by O'Reilly. These were written to shift the Overton Window and nothing else.
Goldberg's book smacks of just such associations. How, for example, can anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the English language accuse Pres. Obama of being a "fascist?" For the right-wing hit machine, the solution is simple: change the current definition of "fascist" to specify something created by the left . . . without robbing the word of its power to vilify.
The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cJonah Goldbergwww.thedailyshow.comDaily Show
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"Can we air any of this?" -- Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart had Goldberg dead to rights. Every single talking point Goldberg spews in this interview smacks of market research done by Luntz, from the slams on progressives to the laughably spurious association with Mussolini as a progressive. He is single-handedly trying to rewrite the history of fascism itself to fit the ideals of American conservatives, or at least to foist the word "fascist" on the enemies of fascism, lest people start to notice the fascist tendencies -- and history -- of the conservative right. I only wish Comedy Central had the entire interview available. I would be very interested to note which meanings of other words Goldberg was paid "induced" with "incentives" to change.
Which, under the Overton model, works. The more that people assert fascism is liberal, the more other people will think fascism is liberal. This part is important -- It doesn't matter that actual fascism proves about as un-liberal as any philosophy can be.
Sadly, if enough people say it is with enough conviction and with enough gravitas, some people will accept it.
Brock later recanted and apologized for his shenanigans. Only time will tell if Goldberg will adequately apologize for raping the English language . . . simply because he needed the money and craved the fame. After all, not everybody gets on The Daily Show . . . and even those who look like total asses get remembered.