A lot has been written (blogs, news, technorati) and said over the past few days about the passing of conservative icon William F. Buckley. I personally like this one from Jane Hamsher over at firedoglake where she argues that Buckley was far preferable to today's Straussian Republicans who will say anything to achieve their aims, whereby Buckley was very upfront, i.e. he argued honestly, about his sometimes repugnant (and factually wrong) views.
It is an ironic fact that the career of the uber-capitalist free-marketeer was in large part underwritten by monies from conservative philanthropies and the American people, and that this subsidy has gone unreported in all the eulogies. His Corporation for Maintaining Editorial Diversity in America, the publisher of National Review magazine, was funded by the conservative philanthropies with at least $700,000. The tab for production of his public TV show Firing Line was funded with at least $2.3 million from the conservative philanthropies. The rest was picked up by the American taxpayer as part of the bill for that bastion of liberal media PBS.
Showing posts with label conservative philanthropy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conservative philanthropy. Show all posts
Friday, February 29, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The know-nothing conservative philanthropy religionists
The conservative philanthropy the John Templeton Foundation is giving $4 million to Oxford University in England to study "...whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankind's makeup."
I hate to get all existential here, but I thought we had already answered this question. Writers such as Otto Rank and Ernest Becker, and thousands of other scholars already know that even if there was no God, humans would inevitably invent one. Why? Man is the only creature who is unfortunate enough to understand the inevitability of his own demise.
The specter of death is the motivation for all human history, culture and achievement, not to mention the worst things men have done to other men (Thousand year Reich, anyone?). "Necessary Lies," as Rank called them, such as the promise of immortality by religion are a fundamental part of any human culture. Modern man has difficulty believing contemporary religion's 2,000 year old fairy tales, which is why we cling to life using extreme modern medicine, and build piles of money as symbolic power against death. To make a bad analogue, any port will do in a crisis of immortality storm. The harder it is to believe in religion the more people and elites try to convince themselves of its importance.
So - the geniuses who run the Templeton Foundation either don't know this, don't want to know this, have another agenda, or perhaps some combination of the above. Either way the fact they have snookered Oxford University into sanctioning their know-nothing approach to knowledge is indicative of what conservative philanthropy has done, and is attempting to do by funding so-called research at elite institutions. For years conservative philanthropy has pushed religion on the United States and the world, promoting a retrograde mentality and morality that is used by Republican (and some Democratic) politicians to preserve the prerogatives of the rich and the corporate. Just google something like "Religion in the public square," or "Faith-based" and you'll see what I mean.
Think about it: What is Faith, anyways? It's belief in the absence of evidence and reason - actually the exact opposite of our modern way of knowing things. So why would you have have an arm of the government run on "faith"? It's literally crazy, but there it is - our federal government now gives out like $20 billion a year to so-called faith-based organizations, most of it without any accountability measures.
The craze for religion is so great, as a recent poll showed, no Democratic nor Republican politician would succeed at running for president as an atheist. This deep prejudice among the electorate against the faithless is precisely the goal of conservative philanthropies like the Templeton Foundation, and its many allies in the tax-exempt community. At some point I begin to wonder how far this head-in-the-sand mentality can, or will, go; but when you see, for example, the number of people who don't believe in evolution in this country you know it's already gone too far.
I hate to get all existential here, but I thought we had already answered this question. Writers such as Otto Rank and Ernest Becker, and thousands of other scholars already know that even if there was no God, humans would inevitably invent one. Why? Man is the only creature who is unfortunate enough to understand the inevitability of his own demise.
The specter of death is the motivation for all human history, culture and achievement, not to mention the worst things men have done to other men (Thousand year Reich, anyone?). "Necessary Lies," as Rank called them, such as the promise of immortality by religion are a fundamental part of any human culture. Modern man has difficulty believing contemporary religion's 2,000 year old fairy tales, which is why we cling to life using extreme modern medicine, and build piles of money as symbolic power against death. To make a bad analogue, any port will do in a crisis of immortality storm. The harder it is to believe in religion the more people and elites try to convince themselves of its importance.
So - the geniuses who run the Templeton Foundation either don't know this, don't want to know this, have another agenda, or perhaps some combination of the above. Either way the fact they have snookered Oxford University into sanctioning their know-nothing approach to knowledge is indicative of what conservative philanthropy has done, and is attempting to do by funding so-called research at elite institutions. For years conservative philanthropy has pushed religion on the United States and the world, promoting a retrograde mentality and morality that is used by Republican (and some Democratic) politicians to preserve the prerogatives of the rich and the corporate. Just google something like "Religion in the public square," or "Faith-based" and you'll see what I mean.
Think about it: What is Faith, anyways? It's belief in the absence of evidence and reason - actually the exact opposite of our modern way of knowing things. So why would you have have an arm of the government run on "faith"? It's literally crazy, but there it is - our federal government now gives out like $20 billion a year to so-called faith-based organizations, most of it without any accountability measures.
The craze for religion is so great, as a recent poll showed, no Democratic nor Republican politician would succeed at running for president as an atheist. This deep prejudice among the electorate against the faithless is precisely the goal of conservative philanthropies like the Templeton Foundation, and its many allies in the tax-exempt community. At some point I begin to wonder how far this head-in-the-sand mentality can, or will, go; but when you see, for example, the number of people who don't believe in evolution in this country you know it's already gone too far.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Obama and Reagan: Naive or cynical?
There's been a lot of justifiable hoo-ha over the past few days over Barack Obama's comments seeming to laud Ronald Reagan. Obama's comments, which miss the mark by a wide margin, omit the fact that Reagan didn't invent the movement that swept him to power, nor did he create that same movement which occupied and guided his government. Reagan was but a figurehead for a power coalition led by conservative philanthropists like the Coors, Scaife, the Koch brothers of Kansas, the Smith Richardsons, and the racist Bradley brothers of Milwaukee.
What an insult to hear Obama say that the Republican party has been the party of ideas over the past few decades! Yes - the ideas of scientific racism of Charles Murray were current, but they weren't new. It is just not true that Republicans had the "new ideas" - they may have had ideas, but they were the same old discredited Republican ideas of the past - deregulate corporations, cut taxes on the wealthy, etc. What was different was that people who controlled the party from without - an apparat - had seized control of the American discourse, and shoved the whole thing to the right. People may have thought the Republicans were turning into the party of the little guy, and of freedom, but that was an intentional ruse perpetrated on low-information voters to bamboozle them into voting against their own interests, and it worked. Now Barack Obama is spouting similar sounding nonsense.
Is Obama being intentionally naive here, or is this entreaty to low-information voters a cynical ploy? Does Obama really think the problem in Washington is that there hasn't been a politician who just says "Can't we all get along?" The simple answer to that question is, no we can't get along; progressives have been getting their noses shoved in by Republican bullies for three decades. That's not going to change just because a politician shows up asking them to play nice. Does Obama really think that he's going to sit down with the Republicans, the drug companies, the insurance companies, the manufacturers, etc., and get them to willingly give up some money and power? That's not only not likely, it's an idiotic strategy that plays right into the Republicans' hands, and is destined to failure.
UPDATE: I might add that the Republicans have a had a campaign to practically immortalize Reagan by having memorials to him built in all 50 states, and name buildings and whatnot after him, like he was some kind of saint. Obama's comments play right into this narrative. Just because Reagan was able to peel away some Democratic votes does not mean he was a benign uniter; he was a destroyer of progressive values who rode a movement to power and then employed that same movement to use the government to achieve their goals.
UPDATE II: Scarecrow at FDL is skeptical of Obama as well, but noted this after one of his speeches yesterday:
What an insult to hear Obama say that the Republican party has been the party of ideas over the past few decades! Yes - the ideas of scientific racism of Charles Murray were current, but they weren't new. It is just not true that Republicans had the "new ideas" - they may have had ideas, but they were the same old discredited Republican ideas of the past - deregulate corporations, cut taxes on the wealthy, etc. What was different was that people who controlled the party from without - an apparat - had seized control of the American discourse, and shoved the whole thing to the right. People may have thought the Republicans were turning into the party of the little guy, and of freedom, but that was an intentional ruse perpetrated on low-information voters to bamboozle them into voting against their own interests, and it worked. Now Barack Obama is spouting similar sounding nonsense.
Is Obama being intentionally naive here, or is this entreaty to low-information voters a cynical ploy? Does Obama really think the problem in Washington is that there hasn't been a politician who just says "Can't we all get along?" The simple answer to that question is, no we can't get along; progressives have been getting their noses shoved in by Republican bullies for three decades. That's not going to change just because a politician shows up asking them to play nice. Does Obama really think that he's going to sit down with the Republicans, the drug companies, the insurance companies, the manufacturers, etc., and get them to willingly give up some money and power? That's not only not likely, it's an idiotic strategy that plays right into the Republicans' hands, and is destined to failure.
UPDATE: I might add that the Republicans have a had a campaign to practically immortalize Reagan by having memorials to him built in all 50 states, and name buildings and whatnot after him, like he was some kind of saint. Obama's comments play right into this narrative. Just because Reagan was able to peel away some Democratic votes does not mean he was a benign uniter; he was a destroyer of progressive values who rode a movement to power and then employed that same movement to use the government to achieve their goals.
UPDATE II: Scarecrow at FDL is skeptical of Obama as well, but noted this after one of his speeches yesterday:
The unity Obama is calling for does not sound like DLC centrism; it's more like a precursor to struggle, not only against our own weaker instincts but against powerful beliefs, institutions and interests. You can read it as class struggle, even ideological struggle.Meanwhile, Paul Krugman debunks the "Reagan myth:"
Does he mean it? Can he deliver? Of course, those have been the real questions about Obama all along: is he real, or are we so hungry for leadership we're willing to read whatever we want into his rhetoric?
...I’d say that the great failure of the Clinton administration ... was the fact that it didn’t change the narrative, a fact demonstrated by the way Republicans are still claiming to be the next Ronald Reagan.
Now progressives have been granted a second chance to argue that Reaganism is fundamentally wrong: once again, the vast majority of Americans think that the country is on the wrong track. But they won’t be able to make that argument if their political leaders, whatever they meant to convey, seem to be saying that Reagan had it right.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Powerlineblog and conservative philanthropy
Every now and then you get a glimpse of where the true power is over at Powerlineblog. Today Scott Johnson has a post up titled "Coming attractions," that publicizes two upcoming conservative movement events.
The first is the "Winston Churchill Dinner" being held by the Claremont Institute in California next month. Johnson and his partner in publishing John Hinderaker, are both "fellows" there. The Institute itself is partially funded by conservative philanthropy, receiving at least $9 million since 1985. The keynote speaker, and recipient of the Institute's "2007 Statesmanship Award," will be Donald Rumsfeld, who has numerous ties to conservative philanthropy, including a new appointment as a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, one of the top policy shops receiving conservative philanthropy. Doing the presenting will be none other than the Bookie of Virtue Bill Bennett, who is also a Claremont Institute Fellow, and is as central to conservative philanthropy as you can get. Johnson calls Bennett a "Powerline friend" in his post.
The second event is the "fall briefing" for a local Twin Cities "think tank" the Center of the American Experiment (CAE). When last we heard from CAE its future seemed to be in doubt due to internal divisions that resulted in the departure of senior staff and the return of the institution's founder Mitch Pearlstein. The Center has gotten a fair amount from conservative philanthropy, and if you look at its roster and events you can tell it is deeply intertwined in both the national conservative movement and Republican politics. Unsurprisingly Johnson is also a board member there, and Hinderaker was in the past.
The speaker at the CAE event will be none other than Bill Kristol, who's going to talk about "The New World," which I guess is code for the predicament Republicans now find themselves in. Kristol, son of one of the movement's founders, sits at the nexus of conservative philanthropy, media and politics. His organization, the Project for The New American Century, laid the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq, the most foolish war in 2,000 years (according to Martin Van Creveld).
A look at the CAE's quarterly publication reveals authors from across the conservative movement, including Johnson and Hinderaker, Chester Finn, Vin Weber, Sally Pipes, Abigail Thernstrom, Jean Bethke Elshtain, David Frum, David Blankenhorn, Wade Horn, Maggie Gallagher, and many more. Two writers for the CAE quarterly are now in positions of power at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. One is Doug Tice, who was a conservative editorial writer at the St. Paul Pioneer Press who is now the political editor at the Star Tribune (not kidding). The second is Katherine Kersten, who was in on the founding of the CAE, has held numerous positions there (including paid ones), and was an op-ed writer at the Trib. After Kersten was removed from the op-ed page at the paper she got a job there as a news columnist, a job she holds to this very day. Kersten is so political, in fact, that she was on a small, select committee that picked people for top jobs in Republican Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty's administration.
As I have argued in numerous venues, the CAE is a "think tank" in name only; it is really an extension of the Republican party, and a cog in the larger conservative movement. The fact that a good friend of theirs is the political editor at the Trib, and one of its founders is a news columnist are indicators of a strong influence on the definition of news in the Twin Cities. Kersten herself often works in tandem with Powerlineblog; frequently you'll see a particular topic covered by Johnson or Hinderaker, only to have the story appear in Kersten's column shortly thereafter. It works the other way, too. In another post just above the one referenced in this post Johnson links to three recent Kersten columns warning of the anarchy awaiting the country for tolerating Critical Mass bike rides.
When Kersten was appointed as a news columnist I complained to the paper's Reader's Rep (who has since been reassigned) that I knew of no news columnists who hadn't come up through the ranks of reporting. She tried to convince me, unsuccessfully, that Kersten had previous journalistic experience, but the truth is that she hadn't any. In actuality Kersten was and is a career movement conservative, working not just at CAE but also as a board member at the odious Institute on Religion and Democracy.
In their own way the conservatives have setup an institutional supply-side structure for getting their message out. First they create and subsidize hundreds of institutions like Claremont and CAE; next they find reliable Republicans to staff them. These institutions then create content for media dissemination, which is taken care of by blogs like Powerline and columnists like Kersten. Paul Krugman recently wrote that Americans don't like conservative and Republican policies on most major issues, and haven't for some time. Yet, Republicans keeps racking up political success stories. Krugman argues the reason for this dichotomy resides in the power of the conservative movement. He's on to something.
The first is the "Winston Churchill Dinner" being held by the Claremont Institute in California next month. Johnson and his partner in publishing John Hinderaker, are both "fellows" there. The Institute itself is partially funded by conservative philanthropy, receiving at least $9 million since 1985. The keynote speaker, and recipient of the Institute's "2007 Statesmanship Award," will be Donald Rumsfeld, who has numerous ties to conservative philanthropy, including a new appointment as a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, one of the top policy shops receiving conservative philanthropy. Doing the presenting will be none other than the Bookie of Virtue Bill Bennett, who is also a Claremont Institute Fellow, and is as central to conservative philanthropy as you can get. Johnson calls Bennett a "Powerline friend" in his post.
The second event is the "fall briefing" for a local Twin Cities "think tank" the Center of the American Experiment (CAE). When last we heard from CAE its future seemed to be in doubt due to internal divisions that resulted in the departure of senior staff and the return of the institution's founder Mitch Pearlstein. The Center has gotten a fair amount from conservative philanthropy, and if you look at its roster and events you can tell it is deeply intertwined in both the national conservative movement and Republican politics. Unsurprisingly Johnson is also a board member there, and Hinderaker was in the past.
The speaker at the CAE event will be none other than Bill Kristol, who's going to talk about "The New World," which I guess is code for the predicament Republicans now find themselves in. Kristol, son of one of the movement's founders, sits at the nexus of conservative philanthropy, media and politics. His organization, the Project for The New American Century, laid the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq, the most foolish war in 2,000 years (according to Martin Van Creveld).
A look at the CAE's quarterly publication reveals authors from across the conservative movement, including Johnson and Hinderaker, Chester Finn, Vin Weber, Sally Pipes, Abigail Thernstrom, Jean Bethke Elshtain, David Frum, David Blankenhorn, Wade Horn, Maggie Gallagher, and many more. Two writers for the CAE quarterly are now in positions of power at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. One is Doug Tice, who was a conservative editorial writer at the St. Paul Pioneer Press who is now the political editor at the Star Tribune (not kidding). The second is Katherine Kersten, who was in on the founding of the CAE, has held numerous positions there (including paid ones), and was an op-ed writer at the Trib. After Kersten was removed from the op-ed page at the paper she got a job there as a news columnist, a job she holds to this very day. Kersten is so political, in fact, that she was on a small, select committee that picked people for top jobs in Republican Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty's administration.
As I have argued in numerous venues, the CAE is a "think tank" in name only; it is really an extension of the Republican party, and a cog in the larger conservative movement. The fact that a good friend of theirs is the political editor at the Trib, and one of its founders is a news columnist are indicators of a strong influence on the definition of news in the Twin Cities. Kersten herself often works in tandem with Powerlineblog; frequently you'll see a particular topic covered by Johnson or Hinderaker, only to have the story appear in Kersten's column shortly thereafter. It works the other way, too. In another post just above the one referenced in this post Johnson links to three recent Kersten columns warning of the anarchy awaiting the country for tolerating Critical Mass bike rides.
When Kersten was appointed as a news columnist I complained to the paper's Reader's Rep (who has since been reassigned) that I knew of no news columnists who hadn't come up through the ranks of reporting. She tried to convince me, unsuccessfully, that Kersten had previous journalistic experience, but the truth is that she hadn't any. In actuality Kersten was and is a career movement conservative, working not just at CAE but also as a board member at the odious Institute on Religion and Democracy.
In their own way the conservatives have setup an institutional supply-side structure for getting their message out. First they create and subsidize hundreds of institutions like Claremont and CAE; next they find reliable Republicans to staff them. These institutions then create content for media dissemination, which is taken care of by blogs like Powerline and columnists like Kersten. Paul Krugman recently wrote that Americans don't like conservative and Republican policies on most major issues, and haven't for some time. Yet, Republicans keeps racking up political success stories. Krugman argues the reason for this dichotomy resides in the power of the conservative movement. He's on to something.
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