(Thanks for the ping -- however, even before I did a self-search, as soon as I saw the title of this thread I stopped in...)
The points are all good. And there's so much more that could be said.
Most people have no idea what goes on even in Journalism 101. Kids, aspiring newhounds, are taught that "objectivity" is impossible. Kids are taught that rather than _trying_ to be objective, the reasonable thing to do is to choose a point-of-view and deal with it. (I heard a journalist on talk radio just yesterday discussing this point.)
Also, there are serious political problems with journalism in the modern world.
The Constitution provides means for impeaching an elected politician. But our culture provides NO MECHANISM AT ALL for removing journalists who prove themselve to be scum.
(The media is controlled by businessmen and businesswomen -- (you know, the exact same way the libertarians what _ALL_ culture to be configured) and as far as the business folk are concerned, if a journalist is fulfilling _some_ purpose -- advocating an agenda, gathering info, implementing leverage -- then that journalist is going to stay around regardless of how many people hate him or her. Heck, in demographic talk, _hate_ is a _good thing_ because it translates into high "Q"...)
Remember, it was Frank Zappa who wrote the couplet: "Journalism's kind of scary/And of it we should be wary" Mark W.
Back in the day, Hamilton and Jeffereson sponsored newspapers in which to wage their political battles. Journalism was politics then. Journalism is politics now. Journalism always will be politics.The conceit that journalism is or might be objective is belied by the problem of "story selection." And that issue applies not only to the question of which new story is the lead and which other new stories are also included in the paper. There is a political tendency built into the assumption that what happened most recently is what is important. That is most obvious when the "news story" is a retrospective on the 33rd anniversary of Watergate.
Writing a paper on conservatism headsonpikes, thanks for the ping.In my introduction I am trying to come up with a succint definition of conservatism.
Rots of ruck. You will have to decide for yourself what the definition is. I will however make some suggestions:The Theme Is Freedom: Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition by M. Stanton Evans.That's a must-read for conservatives, IMHO - but you don't necessarily have time to read the whole thing in the midst of the time pressure of a deadline for a paper. That's why you count on me to summarize. The "theme" to which the book's title refers is the theme of American conservatism. As Evans notes, conservatism relates to the particular polity and society you are considering: if you were talking about German conservatism or Russian conservatism or Chinese conservatism you would not say that the theme of conservatism in those places is freedom.OK, that's Evans on American conservatism. What about American Beliefs by John McElroy?
McElroy notes that there were four main colonial powers in America, and each of them found different things and wanted to do different things:
The conclusion is that Americans respect any honest work. If you reflect on English costume drama, you will realize that we didn't get that attitude from England - where the emphasis was on who you were rather than what you did - but in the American melieu where people who were respected because they were useful, and were respected for the caluses on their hands.
- Spain found bronze-age civilization, and conquered them in a conventional manner as they would have liked to have done in Europe, especially England. Since they found a going concern their only interest was in dominating and exploiting it, rather than creating it. So the only people they sent to their colonies were soldiers and gentlemen to be in charge. No Spanish peons need apply.
- France found in Canada not a going bronze-age civilization but a stone age one. But like Spain, France's primary motivation was control - of navigation of the St. Lawrence River - and trade with the natives. So there was need of traders, but mostly of gentlemen and soldiers to control. Very few peons, even French ones and certainly none other, were neededD
- Portugal found stone age peoples in Brazil. In order to exploit Brazil they sent over workers - in the form of African slaves. Plus of course, gentlemen to control the operation.
- England (it wasn't Great Britain until later) found in the portion of North America which it was able to claim nothing but stone-age people and forests. The land was rich and had tremendous agricultural potential but wasn't farmland until it had been laboriously cleared of trees and vines. The English colonists found that gentlemen were pretty useless; what the situation cried out for was farmers. So England sent over poor people - some, including some of my ancestors, came from Lutheran Germany - and so the American polity was dominated by practical people (even if they often had religious motivations for wanting to come, still they learned that the situation required diligent work).
Now consider the Constitution of the United States of America. That obviously defines American conservatism. And what defines the Constitution (which, BTW, is considered to crowning achievement of the Enlightenment) is its preamble. There we find an echo of "the theme is freedom" in the mission statement "to preserve the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity"."
In the reference to "posterity" - which variously can mean "descendants" or, more generally, "those who live after us" - defines conservatism as preserving something for the future. That seems to make sense for a definition of conservatism except if you consider the object being preserved. Liberty, after all, is the possibility of doing things differently than your parents did them. Working in different occupations, inventing new ways of doing things. "Liberty" is about the strangest possible form of "conservatism."
In fact, American conservatives weren't always called "conservatives." Historically we were "liberals." Why then is "liberalism" a dreaded label to shun when you are running for political office? For the simple reason that the word was misappropriated and run into the ground by people who had the ability to manipulate the language - journalists and intellectuals - and who had an agenda other than "liberty." Their agenda was the overthrow of liberty, and they hit on a way of subverting it. They took the word for the public - the word "society" - and appropriated it into the coined word "socialism."
I put it to you that the word "social" has nothing inherently to do with leftism; there's nothing "social" about a business call from a policeman. If you are an American Conservative you probably have learned to check your wallet whenever you hear someone use the term "social" or "society," and you are right to do so. Because leftists adopted the form of usage of the term which inverts its natural meaning. When a leftist says "society" s/he means nothing other than "government."
That is the con. Because "liberty" is only what remains when you subtract "government" from "society." If there be no difference between "society" and "government," then "liberty" is logically excluded. And that is the leftist project.
Well, where was I? I was saying that "liberalism" is a word which once related to "liberty" and applied to the people who are now in America called "conservatives." The transformation of the meaning of "liberalism" occurred in America before it happened anywhere else. Indeed it still hasn't happened everywhere. If you hear or read a foreigner refering to "liberalism" you have to do a context check to determine whether they refer to leftism or to American "conservatism." The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek is a 1944 clasic which was reprinted many times, as recently as 1994. In a foreword to one of the printings, Hayek bewailed not only the fact that his use of the word "liberalism" was so easily misunderstood in America but the fact that that essentially "indispensible word" had been destroyed as far as Americans were concerned. IMHO that destruction had already been accomplished in America by the time of the advent of the FDR Administration. Because FDR used the deformed American version of "liberalism" entirely unselfconsciously.
I put it to you that the reason that America's leftists, and not the leftists of other nations, misappropriated the label "liberalism" lies in the fact that the term "socialism" - which I have noted is deceitful in its etymology - was a smashing success outside the US but a flop inside America. We already had a country which was governed by society; you couldn't promise us one in name which was actually "governmentism" (tyranny) in practice and con us into thinking you were offering nirvana. ("Socialism" in leftist speak actually means "governmentism" in plain talk, since as I noted earlier leftists always mean "government" when they say "social" or "society" - or, for that matter, "public").
I realize that you asked for a "succinct" definition of "conservatism." But I did warn you that it wouldn't be simple to be "succinct" and still be at all accurate. And your problem is compounded by the fact that your professor is almost certainly far too leftist to give much of anything I have said here a respectful hearing.
Indeed, the reason journalism is monolithic as it is, IMHO, is the simple go-along-and-get-along imperative. Negativity towards the actual doers - military, police, and bottom-line-oriented management ingovernment and industry - aggrandizes the importance of the critic, the journalist. The extreme of aggrandizement of the importance of the critic is the assumption that all actual management and all actual force is illegitimate and unnecessary. IOW, people who control things - who make decisions without waiting for complete information, when the decision would be too late to be effective - are always the target of second-guessing.The police, to use an example from Thomas Sowell, are always either guilty of overreacting or of letting things get out of hand; in the usual case where things go smoothly, the journalist does not deign to comment.
Perhaps FR/bloggosphere is just the political version of the general trend for the Internet to improve communication and cut the cost of knowledge. To the detriment of the centralized information oligopoly, which simply finds it impossible to adapt to the reduction in the difficulty of its customers to get to the truth without dependence on middlemen who are out for number one.
Byron York: Cindy Sheehan is her own worst enemy
The Hill ^ | 8/17/05 | Byron York
The Democratic Party is simply an adjunct to establishment journalism. Establishment journalism exists to attract attention to itself, and to promote the idea that it is the font of all wisdom (which onanistic fantasy I now interreupt with the obvious reality that, far from being objective, journalism is superficial and arrogant).Democratic politicians, taking we-the-people as being infinitely maleable by PR, arrogantly assume that PR is the only power. It is a POV which cannot accord respect to the armed citizen - not individually, not as a member of the police, and not as a member of the military.
How can he say such a thing? How? I think the hearts and minds of the people are made clear on election day. And, in a week or so, Iraq will have had three of them this year. And those hearts and minds are with a new, democratic Iraq — an Arab experiment, which the Americans are making possible. Iraqi voters dodge terrorists as they go to the polls. I'll never forget the image of a woman spitting on the corpse of a suicide bomber, as she walked around it, to cast her ballot.
How can he say such a thing? Simple. If you start from the premise that we-the-people are infinitely maleable via PR, you conclude that elections are not legitimate because they reflect, or should reflect, only what objective journalism tells the sheeple to believe. If the vote total does not reflect what objective journalism told the sheeple to believe, it is the vote total which is wrong.As a Democrat, Murtha would not say that "we've lost the hearts and minds of the people" - in fact he wouldn't say anything - that he didn't know that objective journalism would endorse. It's not that "objective journalism" is in the pocket of Murtha and the Democratic Party; Murtha and the Democratic Party are in the pocket of "objective journalism."
Note: "objective journalism" belongs in scare quotes throughout since, far from being objective, the "objective journalism" establisment is a demonstrably superficial and arrogant cabal. I omitted the scare quotes earlier because there I was discussing the Democratic (quite obviously, as I hope I have demostrated, undemocratic) mindset, and they would have distracted from my point.Impromptus: On Dean and Company
National Review Online ^ | 7 Dec 2005 | Jay Nordlinger
Thank God there are still serious grownups somewhere in the media.Absolutely. It's just a shame there aren't more of them and that they aren't more visible. Thank God, common sense still reigns somewhere.
It is thanks, primarily, to the FCC that the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is so much less prominent than The New York Times and The Washington Post.That is, broadcast journalism amplifies the perspective of the Times and the Post - and, for that matter, the news pages of The Wall Street Journal - and does not amplify that of the editorial page of the Journal.
It is easy - once you clear your mind of the hype - to understand why the Times and the Post might project the perspective that they do as a mere self-interested business decision. It is only necessary to ask whether it is easier to attract attention with headlines like "New House Built on Elm Street" or with headlines like "House on Elm Street Burns Down," and you have the answer to the question of why negativity is such a prominent feature of newspapers. Combine that negativity with the superficiality inherent in the need for new attention-getting stories which hype the importance of reading the newspaper, under deadline pressure, and the result inevitably is arrogance and cynicism toward the people/institutions which actually do things.
The sort of arrogance and cynicism which is the natural tendency of the newsman is precisely what motivates the "liberal" politician to bully the producers and the protectors of American society. There's not a dime's worth of difference between the reporter who inflates the importance of his craft by publicizing claims that an innocuous product like Alar is poisonous to children eating apples, and the liberal politician who seizes on such stories as a rationale for gaining political power. Nor between the reporter who insinuates that a police error which results in the death of a citizen is on a par with Saddam's torture chambers and Hillary Clinton announcing the guilt of police officers who six years ago were on trial for the death of a civilian. Officers who, BTW, were subsequently found not guilty by the jury.
So it is clear that journalism is a special interest which arrogantly proclaims its own virtuous objectivity but which has an inherent tendency to advocate for liberal politicians. Is this a brief for censorship of the press? Hardly. It is however a brief for clear understanding of the First Amendment, and a firm adherence to its principles.
Unlike the Second Amendment, which articulates a reason for its limitation (the right of the people . . . shall not be infringed) on government power, the First Amendment lists freedoms which the government is to respect as rights in and of themselves. Those rights are enumerated as follows:
The Ninth and Tenth Amendments make plain that these rights are to be read expansively. I argue, first, that although the Internet did not exist at the time of the ratification the people have a right to use the Internet on a nondiscriminatory basis once it exists. FR, DU, and all - what one would have thought, in the days before McCain-Feingold, was an entirely unexceptionable position.
- freedom from any government-imposeed religion
- freedom to exercise religion
- freedom of speech
- freedom of the press
- freedom of assembly
- freedom to petition the government
Second, I argue that "the press" includes newspapers which are uncensored. That means that what newspapers commonly call "editorials" may not only be published on the editorial pages, they may be positioned as "objective news" on the front page without legal recourse by people who may demand that they be restricted to the "editorial page."
Third, I point out the obvious fact that the government will arrest you if you broadcast without a license. To the applause of licensed broadcasters and of newspaper publishers. The First Amendment forbids the government from arresting you for publishing a newspaper without a license, or for speaking on a particular subject without a license, yet it is taken for granted that it may censor you from broadcasting. It is patent, therefore, that First Amendment freedoms have not been applied to broadcasting - and that the government is ultimately responsible for whatever is legally broadcast. Responsible, in what way? How is it appropriately to be held to account, and on what grounds?
I delineated all of the rights mentioned in the First Amendment so as to bring out the fact that there are similarities among the rights in the various sections. Freedom of assembly and of petition is scarcely to be distinguished from freedom of speech; if you have the right to talk about anything without restriction, you certainly have the right to talk about what the government is and is not doing, and what the government should and should not do. If you have the right to freedom of speech, you have the right talk about God - and hence to exercise your religion, at least verbally. And if the government may not require you to pay taxes for the support of a religion to which you do not subscribe, surely the government would be (is) wrong to benefit certain people for the purpose of promoting a political perspective to which you do not adhere.
It follows that tendentious programming of radio and TV is a responsibility for which the government generally and the FCC particularly should be held to account. There are in fact large matters in which tendentious programming has historically affected the nation. Those matters should be cause for legal action against the FCC and its offending licensees. It is a sticky situation but then, if the government is to presume to censor you it is responsible for the result.
One chronic example is the quadrennial broadcasting of the presidential election, which is a perfect example of the fact that not everything which interests the public is in the public interest. In the interests of the secret ballot, we accept laws against politicing at a polling place - yet we allow government licensees to discuss the results of elections in some states before the polls are closed in other states. And even to discuss the results of a state - eg, Florida - before all the polls are closed in that state. Discussion which, notoriously, resulted in a monthlong legal lash-up when turnout in 2000 part of Florida was suppressed during what was in fact an excruciatingly close election.
But although the FL 2000 example was uniquely egregious in its observable effects, the even more chronic effect of government censorship of broadcasting lies in the everyday amplification of the "liberal" perspective of the Times and the Post, to the near-exclusion of the conservative perspective. IMHO the proof of this effect is seen in the "TANG Memo" fraud. Patent forgeries were broadcast as fact in a blatant attempt to discredit the Republican presidential candidate during an election (which is exactly, be it noted, the sort of thing that McCain-Feingold presumes to prevent advertisers from doing). And not only did CBS perpetrate that fraud, and not only did it institute a kangaroo court to exonerate itself from tendentiousness in the case, but all other "objective" journalists went along with the gag.
Any journalist who had ever used a typewriter (as opposed to a word processing computer) had to know that CBS was perpetrating a fraud - yet no "objective" journalist - print or broadcast - stated that bald fact. Which only shows that all "objective" journalists are in cahoots to the extent that Objective JournalismTM is an establishment which will never break ranks over the issue of the objectivity of its members.
The promotion of the interest of the arrogant, superficial, negative establishment known as "objective journalism" is not in the public interest because - although its members have equal rights to all other private citizens/organizations - it is a cabal whose particular interest is not identical to the public interest. Broadcast journalism, and the FCC which enables all of broadcasting, should be sued into oblivion. Right along with the Federal Election Commission.
Thank You for Wiretapping (WSJ Editorial - Nails It) Opinion Journal ^
I respect your desire to think so. But the truth is that you are arguing for an "objective truth" which deifies history and cultural memory. The things you say we have painfully learned are still highly controversial in the Democratic Party in this country and just about universally worldwide. If we have learned anything it should be the rueful lesson that we do not easily all learn the same things from history.the invalidity of racismGeorge Washington also respected your desire to think so - enough to rebut it:
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.Washington goes on to assert,It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government.. . . and then to ask,Who that is a sincere friend to [free government] can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?Thomas Sowell points out that slavery (which we can agree is, from the POV of the slave, indisputably the antithesis of "free government") was an accepted institution worldwide and throughout history - until Christianity became hostile to the institution of slavery as such. That opposition only really congealed in the Nineteenth Century. And it was most effective through the English speaking peoples: the British Empire and the northern US.Obviously Southerners, although Christians, were not in the vanguard of that particular program - but nobody other than Christians - not pagans, not Confuscians, not Hindus, not Animists, not Muslims - was in the vanguard of that movement. Even the Republican Party did not become abolitionist until halfway thru the Civil War. And even that, ultimately, traces to the exaggerations and distortions in the South of Lincoln's and the Republican Party's actual intentions regarding the "peculiar institution" in the South. Exaggerations and distortions which tragically led the South to secede.
is a recent lesson. South or North, racism still exists some. That's smog from the past, but it carries over into attitudes which still affect behavior, and create cultural frictions, today. Even with the ugliness of our past, we have not descended into the sort of genocides here which, alas, are still a feature of the African landscape. But it does result in the traditional targets of that racism taking political attitudes which run counter to what you would consider the lessons of history.http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1732037/posts?page=113
And its institutions--the schools, universities, foundations, arts communities, and newsrooms of the world--are the most exclusive and divisive around. Conservatives and Christians need not apply.
"It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena - Theodore RooseveltIt is obvious that the newsroom is hostile to "conservatism," for the very logical reason that In proclaiming itself to be objective, journalism declares that the rules of journalism define the public good. Since the journalism rules that matter - "If it bleeds, it leads," "'Man Bites Dog,' not 'Dog Bites Man,'" and "Always make your deadline" - address the entertainment imperative which supports the business model of journalism, journalism thereby proclaims that what is good for journalism is good for the country. But what is journalism but criticism?The powerful leftist tendency of academia must likewise follow from the classic rules of teaching. "Them as can, does. Them as can't, teaches" points out that, like journalism, teaching is talk, and criticism of students' work, but it is not performance against a bottom line. Like journalism, teaching has a powerful tradition of putting its own interests at the top of its list of the nation's priorities.
Foundations are, perhaps, a lot like academia - strong on telling others what to do, but insulated from the risks which they recommend that others take.
The Real Long War
The American Thinker ^ | July 31, 2007 | Christopher Chantrill