I guess I'm a liberal too. :-)a often capitalized : a movement in modern Protestantism emphasizing intellectual liberty and the spiritual and ethical content of Christianity b: a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard c: a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties
Sure - we all are. That's why "liberal" was such a useful label for socialists to adopt when "socialism" failed as a brand in America.Why were socialists able to adopt it? Because journalism's fundamental bias is that journalism - the frenetic reporting of all bad news - is important. And that implies that journalists - implicit or explicit critics of whoever has responsibility for getting things done - are important. The idea that the critic is more important than the doer is the fundamental tenent of socialism. That's why I consider
"It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena - Theodore Rooseveltto be a fine definition of American "conservatism" (actually, in a literal sense, liberalism). Consequently socialists are simpatico with journalists, and journalists assign socialists whatever label the socialists want. Likewise, journalists assign to actual liberals, whom they despise, a term which actually applies to no or very few Americans - "conservative."Actual liberals - American so-called "conservatives" - have nothing in common with socialism, hence nothing in common with Communism and nothing in common with Fascism. The Fascist Party was founded by Benito Mussolini, who broke with Communism - but not with socialism - and was a working journalist when he seized control of the Italian government.
You will note the strong antipathy in this post towards journalism, and you will ask my opinion of the First Amendment. I think it is a fine idea, and I think we should try it again. At the time of the framing of the Constitution, newspapers were independent of each other and highly opinionated (a la Rush Limbaugh). For example, Hamilton sponsored a newspaper in which to attack Jefferson's politics - and to defend himself and his policies from attack by the newspaper Jefferson sponsored! The very last thing which the First Amendment implies is that any newspaper is or even should be objective. Clearly the First Amendment forbids the federal government to require that newspapers be objective - and it makes no reference to any distinction between the body of a paper and any "editorial page."
How did we get from the free press as I describe the founding era to the markedly tendentious so-called "objective" journalism of today? The answer lies in the telegraph - the telegraph and the Associated Press. The Associated Press was/is an aggressive monopoly on journalism. In fact, it essentially created journalism as we know it; the independent and highly opinionated newspapers which existed before the AP do not even qualify for the name "journalism" as we use it now because they did not have independent sources of news not in principle available to readers independently of reading the newspaper. In reality, of course, they still don't - if you are willing and disciplined enough to wait until other sources of information catch up with journalism's reports. And the intrinsic bias of Associated Press journalism is against your being patient and waiting for events to ripen and be digested. Associated Press journalism is about always having something fresh to tell you which you did not know until they told you.
The advent of the Associated Press monopoly did not go unchallenged; it was natural to question the reasonableness of having a single nationwide news source feeding all our newspapers. When that question was raised, the AP's answer was that it included newspapers of all shades of opinion - the AP was objective. The fallacy in that argument, in addition to the fact that nobody can prove their own objectivity, is that AP journalism transformed the business model of its constituent newspapers from opinion to putative "fact." And it made the newspapers reliant upon each other for the reliability of what they were printing. Consequently all members of the AP had a business reason to claim that not just their own newspaper, but newspapers in general, were "objective." The famously combative newspapers which didn't agree about anything suddenly had a compelling reason to agree on a lot.
So now, if a CBS News files a report claiming that Bush skipped out on his Texas Air National Guard commitments based on patently fraudulent source documents, and if CBS News then proceeds to circle the wagons and conduct an "independent investigation" for no other reason than to "learn" that CBS had acted "in good faith without political animus," no other part of journalism calls "BS!" Certainly not in the full-throated, take-no-prisoners style which is business as usual for all of journalism when fraud in any other business, or in the military or the police departments, is detected.
Agree totally.American "conservatism" (actually, in a literal sense, liberalism).
The academia and main stream media has done their propagandizing very well. It is nearly impossible to have a serious political discussion with even 'educated' people. They have been programmed to see they world in stereotypes, not philosophy.
Ping to this thread, which discusses these matters.When you mention "philosophy" I am put in mind of the etymology of the word: "philo" means brotherly love, and "soph" means wisdom. Hence, "philosophy" is the love of wisdom. In contradistinction to "sophistry," which traces to the Sophists who claimed to be wise and thereby talked down to anyone who challenged their "logic." IMHO the claim of objectivity made by journalists is unsupported by anything other than the propaganda barrage which journalists put up to prevent anyone from questioning it. And by my lights there is nothing to distinguish a claim of objectivity from a claim of wisdom - so that when we argue with "liberals" what we actually face is a deprogramming task. They have made the assumption that journalism is objective, and all else follows from that.
I actually felt that I made some headway with my son-in-law last time we spoke; he accepted my point that journalism as we know it either is objective or it is illegitimate because of the monopoly which the AP constitutes. If I can get him to accept that the AP cannot be objective because it exists to promote the idea that the news is important, I'll have him. I'm actually of two minds about really convincing him; he's a scientist and therefore would be on the outs with his professional group if he became thoroughly convinced that "liberalism" is a fraud.