standing by conservative principles does not always guarantee success at the ballot box – it did for Ronald Reagan, but not for Barry Goldwater. But abandoning these principles doesn't ensure victory either. Circumstances often play the deciding role
The anxiety which this conservative feels is that we no longer operate in an "unfettered market of ideas" but rather we are being simply engulfed by " circumstances."
In a world of political correctness, which actually means in a world of cultural Marxism, we conservatives are being philosophically, culturally, and linguistically isolated. Liberals have not only distorted our vocabulary, they have stolen our language, our epistemology. We can no longer communicate with cultural symbols or with commonly accepted expressions of principle that our fellow citizens, who are not committed conservatives, easily hear and accept as familiar. Cultural Marxism has succeeded in isolating and marginalizing the world of conservative principles so that we can no longer express in a language that will be understood those principles which Fred Thompson says are timeless.
Let me illustrate: I grew up at the time of Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet. Despite the preoccupation by these sitcoms to undermine the role of the father, it was understood through the whole of the culture that the father was the ultimate head of the household who operated by and through collaboration with the mother. He was a figure of respect and authority. But then, in those days so was my pastor. The cultural Marxist concluded that a paternalistic society (just like a Christian society represented by the pastor) was a society prone to rejecting Marxism and equally prone to accepting fascism. So they undertook to destroy the positive image in the popular mind of both the father and the pastor and they succeeded brilliantly. What is the last time you saw any depiction of a Protestant cleric in a positive light?
In every election cycle and often in between we will see published in these threads some report about some psychiatrist or group of psychiatrists who have concluded after a study of Reagan, or Bush, and now McCain, that the current Republican leader is somehow psychologically deficient. This comes right out of their catechism which says that the paternal society is a society susceptible to fascism.
Today, a candidate, even those on the left, has to be very careful of his affiliations with any pastor. That is because symbols of our society which formally had been regarded to be positive have become radioactive. It is the left which now conditions our culture so that it reacts 180° different from the way a thinking conservative reacts to the same stimulus. The left controls our culture through the media and the Academy.
We all know how the media does it we see countless examples everyday. But the left lays the intellectual foundation for what the media does in the Academy. There the left has done away with rationality and substituted an epistemology based not on the scientific method but on Marxist "science." Thus we get the bizarro world of women's studies which has so departed from "rational" discourse to be a national disgrace. Yet the the most august academic institutions in the world, the Harvard's and the Yales, are utterly incapable themselves of addressing the cancer in their midst which is a reproach on their very reason for existence. Instead of cleaning house, Harvard fired Larry Summer for a gaffe involving a breach of Marxist etiquette and the abandonment of intellectual rationality was symbolically completed.
If Harvard cannot contrive, in Fred Thompson's words, a, "free [and] unfettered market of ideas", which is after all the very essence of their business, where can we find one? It is no good to respond that Harvard is peculiar, it is not, it is merely the head of a rotten fish.
What this means is that our academic community tells the world that you can form opinions and describe them in symbols and language which are irrational so long as they are politically correct. Conversely, the Academy tells us that we may not express opinions in language and symbols which are contrary to cultural Marxism even if they are rational. Is it not necessary to detail the application of this Orwellian doctrine to the candidacy of Barak Obama. Rush Limbaugh, for example, has brilliantly lampooned the taboos of criticism established by the media: his ears, his wife, his parents, his religion, his pastor, his voting record, and etc. etc. etc. On the other hand, this callow candidate, an empty vessel, has become a symbol into which the media pours all the positive imagery it can muster.
Name your issue, immigration? The debate has been cast by the left as a matter of racism and so the subject closes. Tax cuts? The debate has been cast by the left as a matter of class warfare. Gasoline prices? The debate has been cast by the left in anti-capitalist terms of profiteering. Homeland security? The debate has been cast as a matter of incipient fascism. Free-market values? The debate is cast as a matter of environmental crisis. The list could be extended almost indefinitely to reinforce the point that the left's response to every issue is to cast the issue in terms that are congruent with Marxism. In doing so it has the intellectual support of our universities and think tanks and the overwhelming cultural support of our media. They have succeeded so well that language and symbols no longer have recognizable meaning.
We have gone from Leave It to Beaver to Brokeback Mountain in a generation. It encapsulates a cultural revolution.
Small wonder that Fred Thompson concedes:standing by conservative principles does not always guarantee success at the ballot box
