Actually there are no big men in the sense in which Big Men are sold to the people. There are men who are bigger than others and a few who are wiser and more courageous and farseeing than these. But it is possible with the necessary pageantry and stage tricks to sell a fairly bright fellow to a nation as an authentic BIG Man. Actually this is developing into an art, if not a science. It takes a lot of radio, movie, newspaper and magazine work to do it, but it can be done.
Ah, the issue to me is exactly what propaganda it does take to do it - or, conversely, to what effort might prevent its success. The problem we face is that we know that the schools are also propagandizing for the Big Man theory, and have done for no less than a generation.Even back in the 1950s when I was in high school there was some of it; I ran into a Civic teacher who asked as a homework question whether people have to do what society tells them to. I, naively, reasoned that since we have freedom the answer was "No." The teacher asserted in class the next day that that was wrong and that "society" meant government. Callow youth that I was, I did not argue with the teacher, but I was unconvinced. It was only when I was an adult arguing politics with my socialist-minded uncle (and was already a FReeper) that it occurred to me that that teacher was as socialist as my uncle.
Socialists persistently use euphemisms, and the euphemisms they use for "government" are "society" and "public." They will in such case say, for example, that "society should feed the children." Of course they are right - society should, and society does - but what they are actually asserting is that the government should feed the children. Which is a different matter, and one which we would all support in extremis only. If the army reaches an area in which the children are starving, it will feed the children, and the adults, as a matter of course. In the normal course of events the parents should, can, and do feed their own children - which is their natural right. And the government should not interfere in the process by giving the children candy bars, for example.
But back to the main point. You can no more convince someone who has swallowed the kool-aid that journalism isn't objective in an hour's time than you can convert a Democrat into a Republican in a brief conversation. But it isn't necessarily as difficult to make them uncomfortable with censorship of Rush Limbaugh. As long as you can keep them from completely buying the propaganda that Rush is "offensive."
BTTT!
I would disagree with your whole premise that a culture/society/nation doesn't have the right, in fact duty, to establish minimum standards of behavior for its members. Not only that, but a mechanism to enforce those standards. We could call it -- laws, maybe...
Just curious, but did you watch the video this thread was based on???