conservative infrastructure
The Powell Memo and the Teaching Machines of Right-Wing Extremists
Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, echoing the feelings of many progressives, recently wrote in The New York Times about how dismayed he was over the success right-wing ideologues have had not only in undercutting Obama's health care bill, but also in mobilizing enormous public support against almost any reform aimed at rolling back the economic, political, and social conditions that have created the economic recession and the legacy of enormous suffering and hardship for millions of Americans over the last 30 years.[1]
The American Political Marketplace: New Citizens, New Machines, New Strategies
American citizens today have a decreased sense of community spirit and less sense of civic responsibility, compared to the time of the nation's founding. They are motivated first and foremost to maximize their own personal interests. They have become passive consumers of American politics.
Lessons from the Right: Saving the Soul of the Environmental Movement
The environmental movement, alongside the larger progressive network, has failed to recognize the incredibly effective strategies that have allowed the Right to take over the political systems of the country. Jeni Krencicki and Dahvi Wilson identified ten lessons that environmentalists and progressives more broadly must master in order to elevate their cause to a position equal to that of the Right.
Read the report.
Responding to the Attack on Public Education and Teacher Unions
This ground-breaking Commonweal Institute report by David C. Johnson and Leonard M. Salle analyzes in depth the conservative movement’s multi-pronged attack as a long-term, strategic process aimed at privatizing education. The report provides a detailed plan for how public education advocates can work with their allies to form a network of organizations and individuals - an infrastructure - that will be able get their messages to the broad public and increase political support for public education.
How the Democrats Were Betamaxed
According to Robert McNamara in the "Fog of War," the first lesson of life is, "empathize with your enemy." In order to understand the conservative movement's ascendancy in American politics, progressives should take McNamara's advice and try to view the world through the business lens of conservatives.
Progressives Need Communication Infrastructure
It's becoming clearer every day that moderates and progressives need a more effective way to get their message out. The reason the Right has been so effective at getting their message out, and getting their politicians elected, and getting their policies enacted, is that they've established an extremely well-funded idea-development and communications infrastructure that has been called "The Mighty Wurlitzer." This infrastructure consists of think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute; radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh; TV pundits on Fox News; newspapers like the Washington Times and New York Post, publishing houses like Regnery; and a variety of other organizations.
All of this constitutes an "infrastructure" because it is already set up and in place, ready to amplify and disseminate any message that the conservative movement's ideological leaders feed into it. Moderates and progressives, meanwhile, don't have anything comparable in place. That has to change!
Don’t Let Yourself Get Foxed
You may already have your suspicions about the FOX News Channel. Perhaps you've watched a rigged debate between the telegenic, forceful conservative Sean Hannity and the hapless liberal Alan Colmes. Perhaps you've watched the far-right host of a Fox talk show one day substitute for the regular news anchor the next. Perhaps you've endured a Sunday morning roundtable whose "liberal" voices are those of the moderates Mara Liasson and Juan Williams.
