During presidential election cycles in particular,
conservatives and republicans complain loudly about the biases, ability and
power of the mainstream media (MSM), academia and Hollywood to influence elections. Seldom do the complainers
(read whiners) suggest a course of action to offset the message and the volume of
these combined bullhorns. The bias, the
indoctrination techniques, the alliances to project the righteousness of the
liberal/progressive ideology, the use of factual omission and commission are
combined to sell their candidates to America.
The conservative grumblers seldom seem to understand or define the
issue coherently and almost never voice solutions. So let’s try to define the issue and suggest
a few methodologies to counter the power of this triad of liberal
trumpets. Any counter strategy will not
deliver an instantaneous result. Yet a
broad based strategy tested and then consistently implemented will bear fruit
over time.
The problem has been the inability of conservatives to affect the
popular culture and therefore the public’s beliefs in an impactful way for
decades. Conservatives have almost
completely ceded control of information to the liberals/progressives…to the
ideologues of the far left in education, news media, film and television. The consequence is that the message that
bombards the populace is anti-free market, anti-nuclear family, anti-self-reliant,
anti-privacy, anti-property and anti-conservative…and the message inevitably
gets through and takes hold in the consciousness of many Americans (often young).
If our country’s current economic and
cultural situation is Exhibit no. 1, the liberal/progressive approach and
message is clearly not working. A
majority of Americans still believe in individual responsibility,
accountability, self-initiative, privacy, property rights, hard work, risk-reward
and fairness but not redistribution. We
believe in life (in ever growing numbers), patriotism and American
exceptionalism. We are repelled by the
liberal/progressive blame or “hate” America meme. Exhibit no. 2 is Europe; where stagnation,
dependency, economic morass and cultural declines are occurring. The most serious manifestation of these
illnesses is seen in Greece, Spain and Italy; all due to the failed liberal/progressive/socialistic
policies that were enacted over the past fifty years.
A
majority of Americans self-describe themselves as
conservative or right of center while only 20% define themselves as
liberal. Therefore millions of Americans
are fertile ground for planting the seeds to support a transition from
liberal/progressive dominance in the MSM, Hollywood and academia to a balanced or
even a conservatively skewed makeup.
The
conservative goal should be to establish a meaningful foothold in each area
of the liberal/progressive triad within ten years and a majority position
within thirty years. The primary goal
should contain elements that define conservatism in understandable terms, how
the tenets of the right fit the views of a majority of Americans and how these
beliefs can be applied to life’s everyday problems. Concrete examples must be used and
repetitiously reinforced…hard fact must be provided wherever possible and every
conceivable delivery system (and technology) exploited to drive the conservative
message home. Further, liberals/progressives
are masters at creating dialogues where they control the content, slant of the
discussion, and can go on the offensive. Conservatives and republicans must
also be taught how to respond
to liberal attacks and avoid defensive responses by pivoting to an offensive
position…people read defensiveness as losing and thus tend to accept the liberal’s
argument. A myriad number of strategies
can be posited to offset the insidious constructs of liberals in the media,
academia and Hollywood; yet only a sampling will be presented here.
Strategies to expand conservative influence
in the mainstream media
Conservatives currently maintain a growing
toehold in the biased
media. This position is doing
yeoman’s work responding to the constant liberal cacophony. The toehold is composed of the likes of
NewsBusters, the Media Research Center, Fox News, American Thinker, the
internet, Commentary, The Weekly Standard and talk radio. This position provides a solid base for the construction
a more comprehensive position.
Nevertheless to build on this
foundation will require: (1) Finding more wealthy conservative champions like Rupert Murdoch to invest
in MSM vehicles or expand existing holdings.
For example, a determined conservative patron could purchase The New York Times, Washington Post, ABC or CBS and establish a conservative political
tone to both the news stories and societal narratives. (2) Already successful conservative concepts
could be repositioned to heighten visibility and reach (an Andrew Klavan idea)…Red
Eye with Greg Gutfeld aired at 11:00pm would directly compete with the late
night liberal comics. The program would
work both on Fox News and/or Fox entertainment.
(3) Develop and add more conservative shows with personalities like Ann
Coulter, Alfonso, Steven Crowder and Jodi Miller. In other words link an alternative cultural
narrative to humor and position the delivery vehicles to reach a large
audience. (4) Launch a campaign to “sell”
a broad group of conservative
foundations to jointly fund efforts to introduce more balance into the MSM. The initiative would require identifying the
benefits and the risks of a successful result that would accrue to the
philanthropic foundations.
Strategies to penetrate academia and offset
liberal indoctrination techniques
Academia has become overwhelmingly a bastion
of liberal/progressive thinking.
University level institutions exhibit extraordinary group
think and procreate the condition by using a “gatekeeper” system to screen
out and discourage conservative faculty and ideas. This environment must be changed since
education has evolved into a frightening tool of liberal indoctrination. The liberal
cultural and political message begins in kindergarten and seems to both intensify
and expand at each successive educational level.
Methods
must be employed to restrain the liberal endemic propaganda machine. (1) Conservatives/republicans must be
convinced that the quality and the election of candidates to school boards are
critical; maybe more important than the local mayoral or board of finance
elections. School boards set and monitor
compliance to standards and can halt political proselytizing by staff. (2) Encourage conservatives to actively
participate in the school’s PTO/PTA organizations. (2) Support conservative
foundations that fund professoriate chairs (e.g. journalism, political
science) and other university activities (with strings attached) to insure
educators with conservative political philosophies get the chairs. Both the Koch
Brothers and T.
Boone Pickens Foundations have made colleges/universities a focus of
numerous grants…more are needed. (3)
Parents and alumni should be made aware of faculty proclivities toward
liberalism…and how to both speak out and even financially sanction institutions
that blatantly allow its continuation.
More strategies are needed to offset the cultural damage that the
educational establishment has done.
Strategies
to mitigate Hollywood’s appreciable left lean
Conservatives
are beginning to win with increasing frequency in filmdom’s ultra-liberal
bastion. Movies that bash or blame America
are consistently failing at the box office while movies that are patriotic,
pro-America, about self-reliance and even faith are scoring at the box
office. The public reviewed films with
their pocketbooks and did not spend on Green
Zone, Redacted, In the Valley of Elah etc.; each movie messaged
liberal narratives that the war on terror was wrong and were somewhat
anti-American. The public did spend and
did so heavily on The Blind Side, The Incredibles, Gran Torino and more…each with a conservative message based on
widely held American ideals. The few
clearly conservative TV productions also did quite well …Blue Bloods and Justified. So what strategies can be employed to
heighten these successes? (1) Establish
internet sites that review and promote movies with appropriate conservative
messaging. (2) Hollywood loves
self-promotion; thus develop awards and award shows that reward movies that
feature conservative beliefs. (3) Insure that the words uttered by ultra-left
actors/actresses get wide spread coverage when they demean America and American
ideals. The movie going public has
withheld support for performers behaving in similar ways and will again.
Some final thoughts…it’s time to
establish awards that celebrate conservative excellence in science, economics,
medicine, the arts, and culture similar to the Nobel Prize program designed
to promote conservative philosophy and thought.
These awards might be labeled “The Reagan Prizes” and also carry a
significant financial stipend. In
addition awards rivaling the Pulitzer Prizes should
be considered by conservatives for conservatives. Both the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes are sadly almost
always awarded to people displaying liberal ideologies due to the bias of the committees
that make the selections.
Nevertheless, inroads are occurring in
the media, in academia and in Hollywood, but without a well thought out and
executed strategy the cultural damage wrought by liberals will not be easily
contained nor reversed. Simply
declaiming the problem isn’t a strategy…it’s nothing more than whining.
