-Caveat Lector-
The death of the liberal propaganda machine
By Bruce Walker
Enter Stage Right
August 20, 2001
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0801/0801machine.htm
The structure of liberal thought control is collapsing fast. Like a fat,
vain, chain-smoking, neurotic, alcoholic the "media" that conservative once
feared and loathed has self-inflicted maladies which combine to render
palliatives counter-productive or useless.
Liberalism itself, of course, has been dead for decades. The defining
election was not 1994 or even 1980, but 1966 when the American people
determined in the short span of two years that the Great Society was an
utter catastrophe, and that the noble, honest Barry Goldwater was vastly
superior in every meaningful way to the sleazy, incompetent LBJ.
CBS, Newsweek, NBC, and the other few outlets that massaged any national
message did not try very hard to defend liberalism. Instead, they
championed "heroes" who attacked it from the Left (it was simply not
liberal enough, you see) and changed the name of "liberals" to
"progressives" or "moderates."
The other side -- the huge and varied group of people who simple wanted to
live in peace, security, and freedom -- were lumped into Archie Bunkers or
other crude stereotypes worthy of the vile Jew-baiting Nazi Julius
Streicher, or unapologetic conservative political leaders invariably
acquired the new titles "arch-" or "ultra-" or "extreme."
This alone, of course, was not enough. Liberals also nurtured the poisons
of what they later would call "the politics of personal destruction."
Richard Nixon was not much of a conservative, nor for that matter was his
Vice President Spiro Agnew, but they were Republicans and the character
flaws and weaknesses which media of all persuasions ignored in FDR and JFK
suddenly became the new clarion call of liberal Democrats and their stooges
in the media. This brought down Nixon and Agnew (even as Ted Kennedy, who
was probably guilty of manslaughter, was the Majority Whip in the
Democrat's Senate).
This strategy did not last long, however, and as Bomber Harris said of the
Luftwaffe Blitz on London "They have sown the wind, and now they shall reap
the whirlwind." After Nixon left office, Republicans became choosing
leaders who were squeaky clean. Ideology aside, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan,
George H. Bush, Bob Dole, and George W. Bush are good and decent men.
Rage as they did against the tricky Republicans who chose men of integrity
for their leaders, the liberal Democrat media began to undertake the sordid
job of mafia lawyers for crooked Democrats like Tony Cohello, Jim Wright,
and Dan Rostenkowski. Mondale chose a running mate in 1984 whose spouse had
serious mob ties. The Democrat-run House Banking Scandal was, in sheer
number, the largest act of malfeasance in the history of Congress.
By 1992, Clinton understand the full measure of liberal addiction to power.
He could lie -- blatantly, mockingly, brutally -- and get a pass. He could
ruin lives in ways that Nixon's pals would never have dreamed of doing, and
CNN would always find his latest, vacuous platitude more newsworthy.
Stories of sexual harassment were spiked. Tales of goons terrorized
defenseless women were ignored.
Soon Slick Willie had won the limbo dance of low morals, hands down. These
stories, however, were news. They were important. And conservatives, who
had learned to be lean, mean, and tough, developed outlets to reach the
people with the facts much more quickly than the dinosaurs of the Democrat
liberal establishment. People stopped seeing these empty suits on network
programs as "reporters" and "journalists" and more as grotesque caricatures
of serious defenders of honest government.
Moreover, the champions of the new conservative armies did not care a fig
what professors, "serious" journalists, and other paternal figures thought
of them. Radio programs, Internet web sites, self-published books,
articles, and periodicals, think tanks that actually researched an
thought -- all these men and women had learned the hard way that liberals
are never honest, never serious, and never concerned with anything but
power.
Perhaps the defining moment was in Florida, when the son of a good man who
had been "robbed" of the Presidency (recall that the Democrat Senate
committee that had spent eight years of fruitless investigation of
President Bush announced his legal and ethical innocence the very day after
he lost the relatively close election of 1992 -- an act of crass arrogance
and abuse rarely seen in American political history) decided to fight and
fight and fight. And win.
Now, as the poor babies of the media swelter in Crawford, Texas while the
President does those things most of us in Flyover Country think quite
sensible and good, they look in vain for ways to bring him down. But
President Bush is also the first conservative Republican President to
understand a very crucial fact about the Clinton News Network and its
inc
