Vol. 3 No. 1 (May 2004)
The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org
"I more than
suspect already that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong - that he
feels the blood of this war....That originally having some strong motive....he
plunged into it and has swept on and on till, disappointed in his calculation
of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself he knows
not where."
-- Abraham Lincoln, on President James Polk and the Mexican-American war
Talking
Points:
Wit and Wisdom: Bangers and mash in
Check It Out: David Brock, webmaster
Featured Article: The Cato Institute goes
Democratic?
Quoted! Hermann Goering on how to sell a war
Happenings "Votergate," and more
Endorsements: Carolyn Doggett
Get Involved: Spread the word; become a
contributor
TALKING POINTS
In its April issue, the Uncommon Denominator lamented our society's
increasing dependence on images and the rise of domestic fundamentalism, and,
as a response to these anti-democratic trends, called for a renewed emphasis on
critical thinking in the public educational system: "The qualities of
thought we wish to promote should be promoted among younger students . . . such
that they enter their adult years already better equipped to make good
decisions for their lives, and to understand the forces and processes that
shape their world."
There's much more to say on this issue, and that last phrase, in particular,
deserves more attention. Americans too often are not oriented toward
the "forces and processes that shape their world," and this aspect of
our national character results not only from a broad decline in critical
thinking skills but from a pervasive cultural fascination with personality.
Not a fascination, precisely, but a habit of mind, an inclination to think in
terms of individuals -- their backgrounds, characters, doings, looks,
relationships, accomplishments, failings, and so forth -- rather than in terms
of a complex array of impersonal "forces and processes." This may be
a universal human inclination (most people would rather read fiction, after
all, than sociology), but American culture seems to have greatly accentuated
it.
Examples are legion. Most obvious are the supermarket tabloids, with their
addiction to "celebrity," their escapist appeal, and their implicit
message that the lives of "ordinary" people are somehow less
important than those of the famous. Witness also, however, the popularity of
full-length biographies; the success of "reality T.V." with the
"real" lives it purports to represent; the preeminence of
first-person journalism and fiction; the confessions and confrontations that
make up so much of our national media diet; the focus on political candidates'
personalities rather than their policies; the lust for scandal, which thrives
on conflicts among easily recognized characters; the near-obsession with
various categories of identity (race, sex, age, religion, etc.), which feeds
all manner of prejudice.
Clearly, much of this is driven by the mass media, which cater to our national
A.D.D. by trafficking in surfaces and episodes and bold-color feelings. But
there are deeper causes at work. Intellectual laziness -- one aspect, undoubtedly,
of a general cultural complacency -- must rank near the top of the list.
Include, next, the way in which political leaders tend to simplify reality (and
the people who inhabit it) by appealing to an "us-versus-them"
mentality. Perhaps even the Left's "identity politics" and its
commitment to demographic diversity have elevated personal above impersonal
considerations. Most profoundly, and poignantly, the interest in personality
might be seen as a reaction to the loss of intimacy endemic to a society where
an increase in economic and geographic mobility has frayed traditional social
bonds and heightened many people's sense of atomization and anonymity. Feeling
isolated? Watch "Oprah" or "The Real World," or even
someone's "private" on-line webcam.
Some of this is relatively innocuous, some not so innocuous. The
personalizing of reality becomes dangerous to the degree that it limits
understanding of how the world actually works.
Take the "war on terror" and the current war in
The same dynamic has informed the administration's handling of the Abu Ghraib
scandal. The emerging strategy is to maximize (with the help of Fox News) the
focus on low-level grunts such as Lynndie England and Jeremy Sivits, and to
minimize the institutional problems and laissez-faire climate that higher-ups
are necessarily responsible for -- indeed, that their job descriptions make
them responsible for. In this case, the dots that have to be connected are the
administration's long-standing denigration of international standards of
conduct and -- lo and behold -- the violation of international standards of
conduct at Abu Ghraib.
The point is that regarding people narrowly as pure autonomous agents, as
self-initiating moral actors, rather than as participants in larger social
systems and expressions of broader, impersonal forces, can blind us to the
elaborate patterns of cause-and-effect that have much more to do with our
collective destiny than do the lives of, say, Vladimir Putin or Britney Spears.
Whatever the particular scandal, conflict, or triumph may be, we need to
balance our human desire for "the good story" with more contemplative
analysis of its conditions, causes, and potential consequences. We need, in
other words, to be better critical thinkers.
Strangely enough, but tellingly, the impulse toward critical thinking in our
society seems to express itself most fiercely in the form of conspiracy
theories. Misguided though they usually are, such theories nonetheless
reflect a healthy desire to fathom the workings of society behind the
personalized façades that form our collective
If
we don't want to raise a generation of dupes or tools or conspiracy theorists,
our society must make certain educational commitments. We need to incorporate
critical thinking systematically into the curricula of our public school
systems. We need to teach students in the younger grades that the faces they
see, the words they hear, the personae they encounter, are only that -- faces,
words, personae -- and are not fundamentally responsible for how society
operates. Helping young minds penetrate the mist of personality to the
underlying "forces and process that shape their world" is a necessary
part of equipping them to shape their world as well.
WIT AND WISDOM
"Over the weekend British Prime Minister Tony Blair apologized for the
mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners. Apparently some of the prisoners were
accidentally given British food." -- Conan O'Brien
The break came in 2002, with the publication of Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. In March of this
year, Brock deepened the breach with The Republican Noise Machine:
Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. (Visit Salon
magazine to read an excerpt of the latter.)
His most recent project is a website, launched May 17, for his new organization
Media Matters for America,
which he bills as "a new Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research
and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and
correcting conservative misinformation in the
What that amounts to in practice is a running tabulation of erroneous or just
plain offensive statements made by a variety of conservative pundits, writers,
and radio personalities. Some of the recurring "targets" are Fox News
anchor Sean Hannity, radio host Michael Savage,
author and talking-head Ann Coulter, and less rabid conservatives such as Bill Kristol and George Will.
We read, for instance, that on the May 11 and May 12 broadcasts of his radio
program "Savage Nation," Michael Savage called Arabs
"non-humans" and "racist, fascist bigots"; and argued that
they "need to be forcibly converted to Christianity" in order to
"turn them into human beings."
In the category of factual transgression fall such assertions as that of Sean Hannity, who claimed on the May 12 broadcast of "Hannity & Colmes" that
John Kerry's tax plan "doesn't go to dividends, only income." and
that "Kerry says raise the taxes on the rich but not themselves." In
fact, the Media Matters website tells us, "Kerry's tax plan would
raise taxes on dividends for families that earn over $200,000."
Currently, such tidbits drawn from the daily news cycle predominate, along with
links to media analysis pieces and some self-referential non-stories such as
"Limbaugh Station Refuses Media Matters for America Ad That Uses
Limbaugh's Own Words." The Brock team does, however, plan to produce
longer, more analytical research reports as Media Matters for America
becomes more established. Those will be quite welcome.
In the meantime, the website is a good place to find evidence of hard-right
truth-twisting, and the sort of "I-can't-believe-they-said-that"
quotes that every progressive should have at his or her disposal.
Check it out.
FEATURED ARTICLE
The following is an excerpt from "A
Conservative Case for Voting Democratic," by Doug Bandow,
which appeared in the May 3, 2004, edition of Fortune magazine. Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a former
visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a former special assistant to
President Ronald Reagan. (The Commonweal Institute does not support any
specific political party or candidate; this article is offered for its
analytical value only.)
"Republicans have long claimed to be fiscal tightwads and railed against
deficit spending. But this year big-spending George W. Bush and the GOP
Congress turned a budget surplus into a $477 billion deficit. There are few
programs at which they have not thrown money: massive farm subsidies, an expensive
new Medicare drug benefit, thousands of pork-barrel projects, dubious
homeland-security grants, expansion of Bill Clinton's AmeriCorps,
even new foreign-aid programs. Brian Riedl of the
Heritage Foundation reports that in 2003 'government spending exceeded $20,000
per household for the first time since World War II.'
"Complaints about Republican profligacy have led the White House to
promise to mend its ways. But Bush's latest budget combines accounting flim-flam with unenforceable promises. So how do we put
Uncle Sam on a sounder fiscal basis?
"Vote Democratic."
Click
here to read the whole article.
QUOTED!
"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the
leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter
to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a
parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can
always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to
do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every
country." -- Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering, during the
(For a discussion of the quote's context, see www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm).
HAPPENINGS
Helping bring "Votergate" to the big
screen -- CI co-founder Katherine Forrest has been chosen as a producer for
a full-length exposé of the problems with electronic voting machines in the
Presentation -- On May 6, Dr. Forrest and CI Fellow Dave Johnson gave a
presentation to the Stanford Democrats on "The Attack on Liberal
Professors." Johnson's earlier commentary, "Who's Behind the Attack
on Liberal Professors?", appeared on the History
News Network website on February 10, 2003.
Outreach activities -- On May 22, Dr. Forrest will speak in
ENDORSEMENTS
"What you are proposing is critical to the well-being of our state and
nation. Thanks for taking on this incredible task." -- Carolyn Doggett,
Executive Director, California Teachers Association
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© 2004 The Commonweal Institute
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