From: Damien Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Sat Mar 29 2003 - 19:29:41 MST
On Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 12:47:23PM -0800, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Why is it that liberals are for the most part unable to admit
> that the old major network coverage, ABC, NBC, and CBS, have
> a liberal bias? Why does some CBS insider like Bernard Goldberg
It's because they completely disagree that mainstream media has a liberal
bias. Coverage of Clinton and Gore, coverage (or lack) of the WTO and
globalization issues... they don't see liberal bias. They see corporate bias.
They don't watch TV and think "ah! these people are saying what I'm
thinking!"
Or that's my guess, extrapolating from complaints about the New York Times. I
don't get my news from TV.
> concerning something like this? I have two theories. One
> is that they so deeply question the legitimacy of conservative
> views that by fiat all such views are "right wing extremist"
> and hence negligible, no matter how often people like Reagan
> or the Bushes are elected to high office. This seems just
Do Reagan and the bushes acknowledge the legitimacy of liberal views? Bush
the Younger who seems to be on a personal crusade, or Bush the elder who said
atheists couldn't be good American citizens?
> My other theory is that the left has inherited a tradition,
> or aspects of a tradition, that goes all the way back to Lenin.
> In revolutionary Russia, Lenin and his followers labeled
> themselves the Bolsheviks, or "Majority". It was a conscious
Lenin is not part of the memetic history of most US liberals. Really, he's
not. This may be hard to accept if you're someone like Dehede who likes to
slather "socialist" all around, but it's true. There may be some common roots
between Lenis and social democracy, going back to the first people outraged at
the condition of the poor in the 19th century, but that's it. This
"Bolshevik" connection is a fantasy.
> Ever since, many on the left appear to believe that they possess
> a special dispensation from God or someone to have pre-eminence
> in political matters. The most glaring example is the advent
And the right doesn't have this? Everyone likes to think they're really in
the majority, not to mention really in the right. I'd say the religious right
does think it has a dispensation from God, pretty literally speaking. Ten
Commandments in the courthouse, anti-sodomy law in Texas...
I'm once again amazed at how allegedly libertarian Extropians band together
behind a secretive President who's been attacking civil liberties right and
left and is allied with evangelicals who look forward to the 2nd coming and
the end of the world.
> Vladimir Lenin! That they could embrace such a fantastical
> notion that their views were nearly by definition *correct*
> only bespeaks the degree to which this special dispensation
> is and was entertained by them.
That you think any such belief in correctness is primarily limited to the left
seems fantastical in itself. And from what I've seen of recent history,
American liberals have been almost hobbled by their own doubt, vs. the
coherent self-righteousness on the right.
Not that there aren't those full of conviction on the left. But I don't think
'liberal' and 'left' are wholly synonomous, just as 'conservative' and 'right'
aren't either... isolationist and small-government conservatives have little
to do with the neocons dreaming of Pax Americana.
> I have always been eager to find any examples of non-symmetry
> between opposing ideologies, because on most counts, e.g.,
> intelligence, morality, education, acquaintance with the facts,
> "common sense", etc., the sides are of course quite equally
> balanced.
There's the geographical non-symmetry. The left/liberals clusters along the
west and northeast coasts, with bastions in big cities and college towns all
around; the right/conservatives seem to cluster in the South and Great Plain,
and rural areas all around, except maybe New England, I don't know.
-xx- Damien X-)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Mar 29 2003 - 19:36:46 MST