The death of the liberal propaganda machine 

By Bruce Walker
web posted August 20, 2001

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 incestuous organs
of party propaganda: He does not need them at all. They need
news, and they are not getting much out of the Republicans in
Congress or in state governments or in the Executive Branch.
Dull, insulting diatribes by the Plurality Leader of the Senate only
carry so much interest.

The President and his supporters have myriad quick and
effective ways to communicate to the American people. His
conduct and his policies are consistent with what most of us
believe. During a recent visit to an East Coast city, President
Bush was introduced by some Democrat hack who saw the
chance to insult the Chief of our Nation with some comment like
"I didn't support you then, and I don't know." Our President's
response zoomed in with the precision of his father's cruise
missiles a decade ago, when he said: "Who cares what you
think?"

Do any of us conservatives who have been pilloried, mocked,
and ignored care? Do the befuddled feminists scrambling to
explain why Clinton, Gary Condit, and Jesse Jackson are good
for women (but men like President Bush are bad) really care,
except for power and perks? How about the new, improved
black leaders, who say "Yassar" to former Klansman Senator
Byrd, the new Democrat Chairman of the Appropriations
Committee, and to Dan Rather, who uses unapologetic racial
slurs, but are expected to march into battle against such nefarious
organizations as the Salvation Army and Boy Scouts really care?

No -- no one cares about what these liars think, and we are
wisely choosing to just ignore them. Once we begged for a token
conservative on a stacked panel with a slanted agenda, but now
we don't need them at all. They are sloths. They are boors. They
are spoiled. And they are slipping into the darkness.

Bruce Walker is a senior writer with Enter Stage Right. He is
also a frequent contributor to The Pragmatist and The Common
Conservative.

Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com