What is the liberal response to this decline of morality? To welcome it, in the name of freedom. That was Nietzsche’s response as well. Liberals, like Nietzsche, speak about creating “new values.” Some liberals even dream about creating a “new man” free from the traditional impediments of human nature. The liberal commune, based on shared possessions and free love, is one such social experiment. The Nazis and the Communists also tried to create new men and new values, with less benign results.
Conservatives recognize that efforts to change human nature and invent new values are both foolish and dangerous. Conservatives accept human nature for what it is, and are cautious about schemes to alter it. Moreover, conservatives prefer to stand by old values while recognizing that they need to be adapted to new circumstances. Our challenge, different from that of conservatives in the past, is to articulate reasons for those values to a society that has lost its moral consensus.
14
Why Professors Are So Left-Wing
Dear Chris,
The postmodernists may be an especially loony bunch, but their prominence in the academy raises the question: Why are professors so left-wing? Each year the Chronicle of Higher Education publishes a survey of the attitudes of professors, including their political identification. Liberals outnumber conservatives by more than two-to-one, and the ratios are even greater in the humanities and social sciences. Moreover, this ratio becomes more lopsided as one moves to more selective and elite universities. What’s going on here? Writer Michael Kinsley has an explanation: Professors are simply more intelligent than the rest of the population. If this is true, it poses a problem for conservatives. Do education and intelligence lead one to adopt the liberal viewpoint?
Hardly. There are many intelligent conservatives, but they tend to be in business. Conservatives tend to go into business because they care more about money; liberals tend to go into the academy because they care more about power. One reason for this divergence of interests is that conservatives in general are practical people—they emphasize what works—while liberals are theoretical people—they emphasize what ought to work. “Why do people have to work for gain? Why can’t they work out of solidarity with the community?” When you hear someone talk like this, you know you are listening to a liberal.
This is not to say that conservatives have no interest in becoming professors. Some do, but they are usually concentrated in economics or the hard sciences. Once again, the reason has to do with the conservative bent toward practicality: equations that add up, theories that can be tested, and so on. By contrast, liberals prefer such fields as sociology and literary criticism because in these areas their theoretical perspective never has to meet the test of reality.
I am probably not typical of conservatives in that I once seriously considered becoming a professor of history, literature, or American studies. But, as I realized soon after graduating from Dartmouth, a grim future awaited me in the field of American studies. The place is a mecca for radicals. “Truth in advertising” demands that it be called un-American studies. The point is that once liberal ideologues dominate a field or a department, they frequently conspire to keep conservatives out.
Consider Harvard’s black studies program. Its spectrum of opinions ranges from liberal to radical-left. There are no conservatives in the department. Is this because there are no conservative academics good enough for Harvard? Not at all. Thomas Sowell at the Hoover Institution has arguably produced more original work than half of Harvard’s black studies department. Some of the liberals at Harvard are utterly mediocre figures who would be teaching at community colleges if they weren’t liberal and they weren’t black. Sowell, too, is an African American, but he is the wrong kind of African American. Despite his prodigious scholarship, he falls outside the range of acceptable opinion in those quarters.
So part of the reason for the liberal bias in academia—especially in the humanities and social sciences—is that the academy reflects a temperamental and ideological self-selection at work. But there is a second reason why professors, as a group, tend to be liberal. They have a visceral hostility to capitalism, one of the reasons why so many once found themselves attracted to Marxism (and some are still). Not that they find Marx’s theories about surplus value or his predictions about the future to be particularly convincing. They turn to Marxism as a vehicle for expressing their animus toward capitalism.
Why, then, do professors dislike capitalism? Because they are firmly convinced that capitalist societies are unjust. Many professors believe that, in a just society, the largest share of wealth and influence should be held by the most intelligent people, that is to say, themselves. In a capitalist society, by contrast, the ones who have the most influence and make the most money are entrepreneurs. The typical Ivy League professor may earn $100,000 annually, but he is outraged to see a fat Rotarian with a gold chain dangling on his chest pulling in $1.5 million a year selling laundry detergent. He concludes that something has to be wrong with a world that produces results like these.
That’s when he becomes a registered member of the Democratic Party.
15
All the News That Fits
Dear Chris,
If there is one institution that is even more left-wing than the typical American university, it is the media. Most reporters, I realize, deny this obvious fact. They cannot deny that journalists overwhelmingly vote for Democratic candidates and support liberal causes because several surveys have documented this. What they do deny, therefore, is that their personal convictions have anything to do with their reporting.
But is it possible to stand in isolation from one’s deeply held views when one is covering stories that have political significance? Some reporters don’t even bother. These fierce ideologues are few, but they are sometimes found in influential places. A few years ago, Fox Butterfield wrote an article about conservatism in the New York Times in which he quoted me as saying, “The question is not whether women should be educated at Dartmouth. The question is whether women should be educated at all.”
I called up Butterfield and informed him that while that line had appeared in the Dartmouth Review, its author was another student, Keeney Jones. I said that I would appreciate Butterfield’s publishing a correction. Butterfield became defensive. He pointed out that I had quoted the line in question in one of my Policy Review articles. “So you did say it,” Butterfield insisted. I was dumbfounded. I told Butterfield that, by his logic, he could now be held accountable for the line since he, too, had quoted it in his article. The man still didn’t get the point, and he refused to correct his error. Now, we are not talking about some dimwit but about a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at a leading newspaper.
I cannot believe that this kind of extreme bias is typical. Probably most journalists aspire to objectivity. Some even recognize that they hold liberal convictions and work hard in their stories to include alternative points of view. Usually, however, journalists allow their ideological compasses to shape their work without even realizing it. During the 1980s, many reporters couldn’t bring themselves to call the Sandinistas “Marxists” even though that’s what the Sandinistas called themselves. Instead, they called the Sandinistas “left-leaning,” as if they were the Latin American equivalents of Tom Daschle. Today, journalists routinely call John Ashcroft “ultraconservative,” but they don’t call Ted Kennedy “ultraliberal.” From their point of view, Ted Kennedy is basically a centrist because he occupies the same position on the political spectrum that they do.
Media bias is a big problem because many Americans open the newspaper or turn on the television set and they think they are witnessing “the news,” that is, what just happened. They don’t seem to realize that countless things have occurred, and that a crucial process of selection determines what they read and see. What gets into the newspaper, what goes on page 1, what the headline says, which picture is chosen to illustrate the article, which premises shape the way the article is written—these are all subjec
tive decisions made by editors and writers. And they are highly susceptible to ideological manipulation.
Most Americans don’t realize that behind the news stories they read are what may be termed “meta stories.” The meta story is the hidden general premise that controls the specific news story. During the 1980s, the “meta story” shaping news coverage was that Reagan’s economic policies were having disastrous social effects. One such effect, according to the media, was homelessness. That’s why we saw countless articles and television features on “the homeless.” Homelessness was identified as a major problem. Millions of people were said to be homeless. Then, suddenly, homelessness ceased to be a social problem. This change corresponded with the election of President Clinton. During the Clinton era there were hardly any stories on the subject. Had all those people found homes? Of course not. But most journalists did not identify Clinton’s policies with hurting the poor. They lost interest in the homeless because the homeless had ceased to illustrate the follies of Reaganism.
What are some of the other “meta stories”? One is “Another Vietnam.” Every time the United States intervenes abroad—whether in Grenada or Bosnia or Afghanistan—a chorus of voices in the media warns that it’s Vietnam all over again. Terms such as “bogged down” and “quagmire” start surfacing in Newsweek and the Boston Globe. Dan Rather’s expression becomes even more constipated than usual. Never mind how often the Vietnam analogy is proved wrong: It is embedded in the psyche of a media generation that came of age during the Vietnam era. Another “meta story” is Women and Minorities Hardest Hit. You’ve probably seen the headline: “The Bush Economic Program: Women and Minorities Hardest Hit.” Columnist Joseph Sobran notes that, if nuclear war erupts, the headline in the New York Times will read, “Nuclear War Breaks Out: Women and Minorities Hardest Hit.”
These “meta stories” are generally immune to refutation. As an illustration I submit a series of articles that appeared recently in the New York Times. The premise of these articles was that it was highly ironic and troubling that more Americans were in prison than ever before at a time when violent crime rates were shrinking. It never seemed to occur to the editors that maybe violent crime rates were shrinking because many of the criminals were locked up!
Unlike many conservatives, who are incensed by media bias, I take a wry view of it because I think that it is becoming less of problem. First, more and more Americans realize that Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw don’t just report the news; they are instrumental in deciding what is news. The New York Times doesn’t present “all the news that’s fit to print” but “all the news that fits.” This is not to say that the Times isn’t worth reading. It is a valuable expression of the Manhattan liberal Jewish perspective. Once people figure out the ideological compass that is directing their news they become more critical viewers and readers.
A second reason for optimism is that the liberal monopoly on the way the news is reported has been effectively shattered. Time magazine, the New York Times, and the major television networks once had a shaping influence on virtually all the major news stories, from Watergate to the Iran-contra hearings. Those days, thank God, are over. Now lots of people get their information from talk radio and from the Internet and from cable news channels such as Fox News. Suddenly there is real diversity in what Americans see and hear. The liberal pundits fret about the decline of American journalism—Americans prefer the Fox News Channel to PBS! People would rather listen to Rush Limbaugh than to Bill Moyers!
But journalism isn’t in decline, only liberalism. Americans prefer Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and the fiery faces on the Fox News Channel because they are in the Dartmouth Review mold: jocular, outrageous, and unafraid to slaughter sacred cows. Not only are these right-wing figures more interesting, they are also more insightful than liberal drones such as Moyers. Not only are the liberal drones consistently wrong, they are sanctimoniously convinced that they are right and that they are better than everyone else. They have been done in by that little device called the remote control because now Americans have alternatives. It’s great, and there’s nothing that the liberals can do about it.
16
A Living Constitution?
Dear Chris,
Having said what I think about liberal professors and about liberal journalists, I will now tell you my view of liberal judges. This group is probably the most corrupt of all, corrupt not in the sense of taking bribes, but in the sense of betraying the basic function of a judge. Yes, the very concept of the “liberal judge” is an oxymoron, and the presence of so many liberal judges in our courts has had the most deleterious consequences for our society and for our system of government.
We have witnessed nothing less than a social revolution in America in the past half century. This social revolution was not produced by the American people. It was produced by the Supreme Court, and then imposed on the American people. “But we are not undermining the democratic process,” the liberal advocates of these changes insist. “The judges are merely interpreting the Constitution.”
Well. The Constitution is indeed our supreme law, and it is the function of the Supreme Court to interpret the law. But liberal judges have gone beyond interpretation in making rulings that fundamentally revise the Constitution. The liberals have effectively rewritten the Constitution in a manner that those who wrote that document would not recognize. Moreover, liberal scholars such as Laurence Tribe and Bruce Ackerman have produced a theory of jurisprudence that says the Constitution is a living document and that judges should feel free to adapt it as they see fit to current circumstances.
Let’s begin by looking at what the Supreme Court has done. Without any constitutional authority, it has invalidated numerous state laws on such matters as school prayer and the regulation of obscenity. But, the liberal will say, what about the specific constitutional provision of “separation of church and state”? What about the First Amendment? Actually, there is no specific constitutional provision for the separation of church and state. Moreover, the First Amendment clearly specifies, “Congress shall make no law . . .” It is a restriction on federal, not state, power.
Liberal judges Earl Warren, William Brennan, and Thurgood Marshall devoted their careers to trying to take things that they don’t like out of the Constitution, such as gun rights and the death penalty, while putting in things that conform to their liberal ideology, such as constitutional protections for abortion, homosexual rights, and obscenity. Today this addition and subtraction process continues with judges Ruth Bader Gins-burg, Stephen Breyer, and David Souter. In a sense, these people are policymakers masquerading as judges.
If that seems an unduly harsh way of putting it, let me try to show why it is duly harsh. Consider the “right to privacy” that the Supreme Court invoked in striking down all state laws that restricted abortion. Where is this right to be found in the Constitution? The document contains specific privacy protections, such as the right against “unreasonable search and seizure.” But there is no general right to privacy. Examine the text, hold it up to the light, read it backwards in the mirror—it just isn’t there. Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision declaring abortion a constitutional right and invalidating numerous state laws regulating abortion, represented a grotesque abuse of judicial authority. Yet even today the Supreme Court continues to uphold, and even expand, this “right.”
Let me be clear: I am not here debating the policy merits of the Supreme Court’s decisions about school prayer, obscenity, and abortion. Possibly the liberals are right that public prayer is dangerous and that perusing obscene materials and killing the unborn have great social merit. Personally, I would question such priorities, but I am not interested in doing so here. Here I am simply raising the question of whether these are policy issues that it is the role of the Supreme Court to decide. Does the Constitution confer legitimate warrant for the Court to settle such questions?
In a famous speech a few years ago, Justice William Brennan answered yes: “For the genius of the
Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.” This sounds reasonable, but it should take only a moment’s reflection to see why it is utterly bogus. Sure, the Constitution needs to adapt and change, but the framers anticipated this. There is a procedure specified in the Constitution—the amendment process—by which the document can be changed. And several times during the course of American history the Constitution has been amended. But it takes an overwhelming majority in the Congress and in the state legislatures—a virtual consensus of the society—to do this. The framers wisely made it hard to change the Constitution so that it would remain an expression of the enduring will of the people and not become the property of any particular interest group.
By exploiting the discretion that is inherent in the process of interpretation, the liberals have succeeded in hijacking the Constitution for their own political ends. In essence, liberals frequently seek to use the courts to bring about political and social changes that they cannot achieve by amending the Constitution or by going through the democratic process. One target of contemporary liberal judicial activism is the death penalty. The Constitution specifically provides for the death penalty. A sizeable majority of Americans support it. It is unlikely bordering on impossible for liberals to amend the Constitution to impose a comprehensive ban on the death penalty. But liberal judges are seeking to use the “equal protection” and “cruel and unusual punishment” clauses of the Constitution to strike down the death penalty.
Once again, I am not here debating the merits of the death penalty. There is a legitimate argument over whether the death penalty effectively deters violent crime, although my personal observation is that not one of the criminals who have been executed over the years has ever killed again. However this may be, the issue here is whether judges should have the power to make a ruling that specifically contravenes the Constitution and also goes against the wishes of the American people. Here the liberals generally say yes, and the conservatives generally say no.
Letters to a Young Conservative Page 9