Brian Lamb Shows Why Conservatives Are The Only Real Liberals
D.D. Guttenplan, frequent contributor to The Nation and biographer of radical journalist I.F. Stone
I flipped on C-Span 2 at seven this morning to see Nation writer D.D. Guttenplan promote his hagiography of the Soviet agent and Communist camp follower I.F. Stone, to a group of aging Vermont radicals with similar political fantasies. In the break, C-Span advertised its segment at 9 featuring Guttenplan’s boss, Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, which turned out to be a panel promoting socialism along with a Nation collection of diatribes against the Bush years and the free market economy. In between there was a conservative French economist, Gary Sorman talking about his new book. Every time I watch C-Span I am struck by its fairness and by the fact that only a conservative Republican and private corporations could have created it. C-Span of course is owned by the private cable companies and is the design of Brian Lamb, a Nixon White House operative who was dispatched by Nixon in the early years of PBS to attempt to get its directors to obey the law that created it and make it “fair, objective and balanced” — to use the words of its authorization act. Of course, Lamb failed because liberals are closet totalitarians who can’t stand to have a conservative in the room. Witness the thirty year purge of conservatives from university faculties to just take one example.
There is not a single leftwing channel, network or institution — to call them liberal is an offense to language — whether it is MSNBC, CNN, or PBS, Air America, NPR, or Harvard that is capable of fairness or intellectual diversity or has the slightest interest in promoting it. There is hardly a leftwing intellectual who will support the practice of intellectual diversity. As an earnest of my own fairness, I will name three: Alan Dershowitz, Stanley Fish and Gerald Graff. Contemporary liberals are socialists and their instincts are totalitarian — which is expressed in their causes like single payer health care, and their sabotage of the war against Islamic fascists.
The one good revelation that I observe in your article is that they have taken their message to the fringe areas where objectivety is not encountered.
You Leftists have are getting boring with your one-dimensional critiques.
Is Nazi Joe’s last big mistake still dead?…then score one for OUR side.
I wonder if after all the time and energy David has devoted to the effort to bring real diversity to the campuses what schools he believes have made progress. Or where would he want his loved one to attend? Which university would you reccomend for one of his family?
I have told many that the passions of dissent shown at Townhall meetings is nothing compared toward the anger and vitriol thrown at Conservatives that try to speak on College campuses.
Thank you, David, for your article on Brian Lamb and C-Span.
I’d like to second David’s comment about the problem being individual departments not specific schools. I work for UC Berkeley, and despite it’s reputation, not all professors indulge in political indoctrination. Students are most likely to find it in political science courses, history courses, and anything ending in “studies” (as others have pointed out before).
If you have young family members who are entering college, have a talk with them about indoctrination, propaganda, and objectivity. Warn them about the pressure to conform that they will face. It takes courage and strength to listen to the nonsense day after day and remain independent. Courage and strength are noble, submission is not.
Every time I have to listen to a colleague’s leftist nonsense, I go online and donate to a conservative cause (YAF, The Freedom Center, Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute, etc.). Brainstorm creative ways for your young undergrad to counteract the propaganda by doing something constructive and working for freedom. Unless your ungrad wants to be in the political maelstrom, there are many ways to avoid it.
For a classic, Liberal Arts degree to be proud of, look into the celebrated Hillsdale College in Michigan
Jack,
Thoughtful questions that I’ll offer some thoughts on. The Academic Freedom campaign is one of my issues of specialization.
Some examples of schools who have responded positively to Horowitz’s campaign include:
DuPage
http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/letters/2696/historic-victory-for-academic-freedom-at-college-of-dupage
Temple University
http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=3286
Further, the way to look at the problem is not so much as whole schools being wretched but rather specific departments, subjects, and professors. Horowitz has always stated that at least 90% of professors are responsible, professional scholars and only perhaps 10% are indoctrinators who use their classrooms to promote their political ideologies. So concerning your family members it’s not a matter of avoiding schools so much as being cautious of certain departments and programs within schools.
The only example that I can think of a specific school that’s by and large pretty out there is UC Santa Cruz:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=28053
But even then if your family member was doing something in the hard sciences they’d probably fine. It’s mainly the liberal arts that they’d want to be cautious in.
For more on this read Horowitz and Jacob Laksin’s new book “One-Party Classroom.” It’s Horowitz’s best book on the subject.
Buy it here:
http://www.amazon.com/One-Party-Classroom-Professors-Indoctrinate-Undermine/dp/0307452557/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251646679&sr=8-1
And see my review here:
http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=34554
And my response to a leftist challenge of my review here:
http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=34791
Well put, sir and thanks for taking the time to enlighten us.
In my son’s early years I discussed ‘peer pressure’ with my son using the example, “If you accompanied two boys walking in the neighborhood and one throws a rock breaking a window, he is sure to tell his parents you did it.”
Here, here. To add onto Emanuelle’s advice for students… I think it’s important for students to take responsibility for the classes they take. Don’t just blindly sign up for stuff. Research a little bit to find out who the good profs are and who the lousy ones are.
Because I ultimately have little sympathy for students who blindly enter classes that are obviously political recruitment programs. It’s like eating a habanero pepper and then complaining when it’s too hot. Personal responsibility is a conservative value.