Newsweek desperate for readers

So, I'll do my small part to help them get attention. Tina Brown knows her marketing -- that's why she has chosen such a revoltingly weird duck as Sullivan to write a piece of propaganda that would make Stalin defenders blush -- it's controversial. I would like to make it clear that I'm not comparing Obama with Stalin. Some people have problems whenever you mention two people in one sentence -- they think you're making a direct comparison between the two. There are many differences between Stalin and Obama -- for one, unlike Obama and Sullivan, Stalin was mostly honest within his party and among his loyal supporters about his propaganda campaigns. Newsweek is not concerned with accuracy, facts and truth, which are so boring and unhelpful at times -- they need readers, dammit. Come on people, pay attention.

Sullivan loves Obama, and this is understandable. When you love someone you're blind, as they say -- you can't see the flaws, like the ones listed here by Conor Friedersdorf -- http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/dear-andrew-sullivan-why-focus-on-obamas-dumbest-critics/251528/.

We've all been in love, so Sullivan can be forgiven. Tina Brown can be forgiven, because her Newsweek rag is in trouble. No one is reading it. What is a person to do when their enterprise is flopping like a flounder out of water? You throw it in water to save it. Tina Brown is saving her flounder -- she's throwing her flounder in a sea of lies...oh, nevermind. Although it smells fishy, it's understandable. Modern liberalism is dying, so, Tina shouldn't feel so bad. It's not just her inferior magazine -- it's the whole philosophy, if it can be called a philosophy. Sullivan's painful love for Obama, enduring The One's painful betrayals, can be compared to modern liberals who once thought the Democrat Party would bring about an enlightened age of technocratic proficiency. Little did they know that modern liberalism itself, steeped in statism, is doomed to failure. Sullivan's love for Obama is doomed to failure, unless Sullivan has accepted the contradictions and now embraces the pain of betrayal as the price love extracts when the heart's muffin is a ruthless statist with no respect for constitutional limits, and you, the faithful lover, are a professed defender of liberty. When love succeeds under these conditions, that love is kicking. The heart has reasons the head will never understand, so go figure.

Statism is the right frame

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/08/why-statism-is-the-wrong-frame.html

I agree with a lot of what Conor Friedersdorf says about liberals, and it's why I have called for liberals to reassess their direction and realize that they have supported statism to the detriment of their goals.

Liberals, for the most part, have become utilitarians, relying on the State to force their agenda when necessary, then resisting the State when it interferes with their pet causes. Liberals have failed to realize that pragmatism has failed, and their inconsistent resistance to State power has allowed the State to take control of the economy in ways that touch every area of our lives.

This is statism, and liberals have enabled the State to gain enough power that they will unlikely be able to pick and choose how the power is used. I don't believe most liberals support statism because they think the State is a benevolent agent of freedom, but they have supported State intervention for their most cherished causes, and now they have to live with what they've created, or work with libertarians to limit government power. I believe most liberals trust progressives in government positions to use the power wisely, and this is where they've been blind. Principles matter, and when principles are put to the side for pragmatic accomplishment of social goals, the boundaries are erased and those in powerful positions begin making decisions for everyone, including the trusting liberals.

There are better ways, in the private sector, to handle social concerns, and if liberals are serious about not being framed as statists, they'll begin putting their energy and intelligence into finding alternatives to State intervention and coercion. It boggles my mind that Conor can't see that legislation regarding carbon or healthcare extends to licensing, and other areas the liberals would rather not be controlled -- once the State begins controlling the big social concerns, it naturally includes the connected areas -- control has to be complete for the State to accomplish its goals and address unintended consequences.

This is why government was limited by the founders -- they had lived through the growing tenacles of the State when it's not limited.

Libertarian or not? Ground Zero Mosque and conservatives

Alan Jacobs and Conor Friedersdorf at the American Scene have presented a picture of conservatives doing the very unlibertarian thing of calling on the State apparatus to limit religious expression regarding the mosque being built at Ground Zero.

However, the conservative position at National Review is very libertarian regarding how to handle this issue.

 I don't follow Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin closely enough to know everything they've said on the issue, but what I could find didn't sound like an attempt to use the State apparatus to limit religious expression. Gingrich appeared to be making rhetorical points about a double standard, but made it clear he wasn't trying to limit mosques or expression of Islam. Palin called on moderate Islamists to reject the mosque. If Gingrich does want the State, or local government to intervene, then he is dead wrong, but I didn't read where he called for that. It does seem like moderate Islamists would understand the sensitivity involved.

The Editors at National Review are calling for non-State-coercive actions to protest the mosque being built at a site associated with Islamist terrorists and the deaths of innocent civilians. The protesters have every right to protest the construction.

I fnd it puzzling that Friedersdorf and Jacobs didn't give the whole context, unless they know something I couldn't find. The founders would have approved of public protest on any issue as long as State-coercion isn't proposed. The issue is not freedom of religious expression -- it's one group believing another is disrespecting a site where a tragedy took place. Making this a "conservative" issue, accusing conservatives of religious intolerance and hypocrisy appears to be politically motivated, and the way Jacobs and Friedersdorf presented it is skewed as far as I can tell. No wonder they blocked comments.

Update on Wednesday, August 4, 2010 at 08:50AM by M. Farmer

I also find it strange that Friedersdorf said he was thinking of backing Gingrich for president before this incident. I wonder what that's all about?

I'd also like to make the point that civil libertarians who are using the property rights arguments are correct -- I just wish they would use this argument consistently regarding all property rights issues, including a call for the repeal of the 16th Amendment. Most civil libertarians are high on certain rights regarding religion, sexual orientation and privacy, but are weak on rights of property, which is the foundation of all other rights.

My last post on The Eclectic Gang

In an earlier post, I said I was going to focus on drilling down to more serious issues regarding the principles of limited government, individual rights and a free market, but I want to address this argument made by The Eclectic Gang, of which Conor Friedersdorf and David Frum are members.

The reason this is my last post on this nonsense is that it does no good to refute their arguments, but I want to try to be clear one last time. The Mainstream Media (MSM) are not "mainstream" because the literate public accepts their reporting as objective and in line with mainstream political thought and values, they are "mainstream" within the world of the media -- the most established. This is changing with the advent of the new media, and many literate readers are leaving MSM sources in droves, regardless of what "ideal" the MSM dreams of at night. The MSM are facing financial problems because they no longer appeal to enough literate consumers of news. The reason the don't appeal to literate readers is their liberal bias in the Information Age, which offers options to the modern liberal narrative.

The MSM bias has become so obvious and subjective that free-thinking individals no longer see them as viable sources of news. John Hawkins has hit a nerve with the Eclectic Gang when he makes the claims that writers like Frum cannot compete in the new media, as it relates to the right, so Frum has to find a niche as a conservative critic in order to get gigs. When Bush was in power, Frum didn't mind writing speeches in the service of the type of conservativsim he now bashes, but when power switched hands and he was thrown the free market of ideas, he was dwarfed by those now fighting liberalism and progressivism, so the only way to survive was find protection again, on the other side now in power. I don't know if this is true, but it's a believeable explanation of why a person would switch allegiances so quickly -- and it would explain Frum's weak resistance to progressivism and stubborn attacks on conservatives -- it makes him acceptable to the MSM.

Our present problems have to do with the direction of statism, not with conservative talk show hosts who are fighting against statism. Friedersdorf explains why the Eclectic Gang are sought after by liberal-biased news outlets as a reasonable choice given the heated rhetoric of Mark Levin and Ann Coulter -- the MSM couldn't possibly give gigs to those with such passionate views and with such twisted ideas of humor. Yet, Friedersdorf defended another member of the Eclectic Gang, Dave Weigel, and said he should be allowed his passion and twisted humor as long as his reporting is solid. It just all seems hypocritical, and I've had enough -- I'm sick of the lack of integrity and intellectual honesty. I'm washing my hands of The Eclectic Gang until they can get over this petty campaign of search and destroy which ignores our most pressing concerns. If they want to be politically eclectic, fine, but eclecticism appears to be an excuse to avoid taking a stand on anything important, and, instead, fighting a petty battle against those who have successfully built an offense against statism. If The Eclectic Gang believes statism is the way to go, then join the Democrat Party, or the pogressive Republicans, and have some integrity -- if not, contribute something positive to the battle against progressivism. This all seems like some never-ending social squabble between college groups vying for popularity than serious writers writing about serious problems. 

Eclectic Gang upset at own medicine

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/25/the-overlooked-story-from-the-weigel-kerfuffle/

Karl, at Hot Air, brings up a different angle to the David Weigel affair -- Weigel was hired by WaPo to report on conservatives, ostensibly as a conservative, or a new libertarian type of conservative, or something like that -- I don't really care about this part of it -- then he was fired because emails from a private site of moderate-to-liberal journalists were leaked by one of the members. The emails revealed Weigel exoriating conservatives and discussing strategy for the Democrat Party to overcome the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts.

It appears WaPo fired Weigel because of the inappropiateness of the content of the emails. It also appears that a group of writers, Conor Friedersdorf, Andrew Sullivan and Julian Sanchez, to name few identified by Karl in the above link, have come to the defense of Weigel.

I have named this group of writers The Eclectic Gang because they're all over the place politically, but mostly in the center and left of center, although some claim kinship to a type of conservative thought -- the good, intelligent conservative thought, not the wacky rightwing extremist thought.

I hope the Eclectic Gang learned a lesson and follow their own advice. Too often, they've taken opinionated comments from Limbaugh, Palin, Beck and others to make mountains out of molehills. The Eclectic Gang will likely claim there's a difference between private email groups and public commentary, but their big opposition to the firing is that journalists ought to have opinons and passionately express these opinions unless all journalists become overly-cautious, homogenized, boring drones. So the heated rhetoric argument is now used against one of the Eclectic Gang members and they don't like the suppresion -- good for them -- I just hope they remember that when Beck gets carried away with passion.