> On 5/31/2011 3:53 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
>
> > NPR helps organize and lead the liberals
> > in their historic task of moving farther Right
>
> I think that's a deeply unhistorical statement. Liberalism, however
> defined, throughout its history, has moved either left or right
> depending on the circumstances.
"Historic task" was an attempt at drollery on my part. I had forgotten that we are among people some of whom no doubt believe that this phrase has some concrete meaning.
Of course you are right that sometimes they go one way, sometimes the other, but at the moment they're going Right, and NPR is shepping 'em right along.
> The existence of a thriving left pushes
> liberalism (or at least a very large splinter of it) to the left.
I suspect this formulation misses the mark. Liberals go "left", if you can call it that, when a rough consensus develops among the elites that some concessions to public discontent are called for. The liberals get to work out the details -- subrule 23(b)(c) of the Mole Victims Act, which limits liability to actual lawn-care expenses. They love that stuff, the centric with excentric scribbled o'er.
But liberals don't take their cues from the Left. They take their cues from highly institutionalized and bureaucratic propaganda mills like the New York Times and NPR.
Liberals hate the Left. Their whole schtick is about having it both ways -- they're kind-hearted and so on, but they're not filthy *extremists*, people who want to bring the system down.
They're hardly ever directly influenced by the Left -- or no, I take that back; they sometimes *are* directly influenced by the Left, and when that happens, they usually turn into outright carpet-chewing reactionaries. We saw a lot of that in the late 60s and the 70s.
-- --
Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://www.cars-suck.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com