] Having exchanged intellectual curiosity for ideological
] certainty, they had forfeited their powers of observation
] as well as their senses of humor; no longer courageous
] enough to concede the possibility of error or enjoy the
] play of the imagination, they took an interest only in
] those ideas that could be made to bear the weight of
] solemn doctrine, and they cried up the horrors of the
] culture war because their employers needed an alibi for
] the disappearances of the country's civil liberties and a
] screen behind which to hide the privatization (a.k.a. the
] theft) of its common property%u2014the broadcast spectrum
] as well as the timber, the water, and the air, the
] reserves of knowledge together with the mineral deposits
] and the laws. Sell the suckers on the notion that their
] "values" are at risk (abortionists escaping the nets of
] the Massachusetts state police, pornographers and
] cosmetic surgeons busily at work in Los Angeles, farm
] families everywhere in the Middle West becoming chattels
] of the welfare state) and maybe they won't notice that
] their pockets have been picked.

[ A good article. It's obviously from a left perspective, but removing the few potshots, there's a cogent analysis of the way in which the right has conciously, deliberately and effectively controlled the entire tone of american political and cultural debate for the past 30 years.

You wonder why the left seems to be on the defensive all the time... it's because it *is* on the defensive all the time. The intrinsic liberal philosophy of ideological tolerance and equanimity is the very weakness which demolishes cohesion and precludes the kind of lockstep certainty and consistency available to the right. Logic and truth have trouble keeping up with constant, disciplined distortion. -k]

The Republican Propaganda Mill, a Brief History | Harper's