Tired of Being Mocked?

Washington -- Last week, the Washington Times had an inspirational moment. On Thursday, the editors wrapped this venerable newspaper in a red-inked wrapper and presented readers with an evocative question. In the top half of the wrapper, they asked boldly:

Now, whom do you think the Times -- we call it the Good Times -- was alluding to? I think we all know. The question was directed at attendees at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as CPAC. Thousands of conservatives were pouring into the area, and the Good Times wanted to greet them in style.

We have all had the same experience every time we step out of the door of our residences. It can be from an Uber driver, from an impudent high school snot who just discovered global warming, from a card-carrying left-wing mesmerizer. All such know-it-alls have all the answers to any problem one might present to them. Doubtless, they already have the answer to the coronavirus crisis. His name is President Donald Trump.

The left-wingers regularly lecture us, mock us and, of course, lie to us. Their behavior, however, rarely ever stings, because long ago, we saw through their hysteria.

Another reason is that they never listen to us anyway. This has been true for many years, ever since liberalism died and progressivism replaced it. There was a day when leading liberals and leading conservatives got together to exchange views. Back in the 1960s, Bill Buckley, the leading conservative polemicist of his day and the editor-in-chief of National Review, would regularly sit down with such figures as the New York Times' executive editor Abe Rosenthal to discuss the drift of things in America. It is impossible to convene such social gatherings today.

I know. I tried to convene similar dinners in Washington. It was back in the 1980s. I succeeded for a couple of years on a couple of occasions. Then, the liberals simply failed to show up. We went on with our dinners -- they are called the Saturday Evening Club -- and I continued to invite liberals. The last Saturday Evening Club attended by a liberal was in 1994, and the liberal was Sen. Pat Moynihan. I had known him for years and often learned from him. After his death, it was hopeless.

Frankly, I think the problem was generational. Moynihan and I, though a generation apart, shared the same broad values: tolerance, trust, respect and curiosity. We also shared similar goals -- not always the same goals, but at least similar goals. Moynihan admired the mixed economy. I was for free markets. Either way, the country would survive. There are no such shared values extant between the likes of me and the socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, who claims he is introducing a revolution to our shores. He wants America not to survive but to be replaced, and he is the front-runner in the Democratic field!

Last Thursday, I shared my copy of the Washington Times with an attendee from the CPAC meeting, the distinguished political historian and professor Paul Kengor from Grove City College. He immediately grasped the meaning of the newspapers' red wrapper. He followed up with a story of an experience that he had just endured at lunch. He was eating sushi at a public restaurant. The seating was rather tight. The table next to him had two women, one from a diversity training program and the other from a corporation that had hired the first woman's services. Kengor said they could not have been more than a foot or two from him. He could hear every word they uttered, but they did not care.

The unanimous 1964 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision intimidates Republicans from attempting to sue for libel. To justify this Justice Brennan wrote that
". . . libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment”
But from an original intent POV, that is poppycock. To understand why, compare the First Amendment to the second.
The Second Amendment assured the 18th Century American public that the right to keep and bear arms, as it then already existed, was unchanged by the then-new Constitution. It would be laughable to assert that preserving that right somehow legitimated armed assault.
Likewise the First Amendment assured the 18th Century American public that the right to own and operate a printing press as it then already existed, was unchanged by the then-new Constitution. And until 1964 it was as obvious that the First Amendment had no more effect on laws against libel that the Second Amendment had on laws against undisciplined use of firearms. Because libel was already understood to constitute a deadly attack on anyone’s reputation.
The Sullivan decision is what enables and empowers “the media.” SCOTUS should hear a challenge to it and issue an injunction which would make “the media” as loathe to libel a Republican as it already is to libel a Democrat.
But how to define “the media,” as opposed to, say, a (conservative, there isn’t really any other kind) talk radio program? IMHO that is an open-and-shut case. The definitive marker is membership in, or subscription to, (or being) a wire service. Because the wire services are continuous virtual meetings of all major journalists, ongoing since (in the case of the AP) before the Civil War. Why does that matter? Adam Smith explains:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
“The media” consists of the cartel which is the inevitable result of virtual meetings of its members. The “conspiracy against the public” which results is the political homogenization of its members. With the result that while Democrats never get libeled, Republicans are libeled with merciless abandon.
The wire services exist to propagate the news while economizing on expensive telegraphy bandwidth. But now the expense of bandwidth is de minimus - and it would make no antitrust sense at all to allow wire services to assemble now, if they didn’t already exist.
Pull the plug on the licentious libeling of Republicans, and there will be a huge cultural shift. IMHO.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.