Wheels within Wheels

House of Eratosthenes (The Blog That Nobody Reads) is one of my favorite sites. Morgan Freeberg has a way of looking at things (and of expressing himself) that I really enjoy. This, from one of his recent posts, really tickled me:

I have a really thin paperback on my bookshelf. It’s called “Government plans to meddle in the economy, that worked.” It’s up there, sandwiched among “Republicans who survived scandals,” “democrats who didn’t” and “Movies made from video games that don’t suck.”

“History doesn’t repeat itself – at best, it sometimes rhymes.”

I’m not certain what Mark Twain was thinking of when he wrote those words, but I’ve found something that reminds me of that quote. It’s the editorial by John Campbell in the November 1964 issue of Analog.

The editorial is titled, “The Extremist,” and there are a number of places where it seems almost as though Mr. Campbell was writing about the current political situation. The overall point is how little a two-party system does for you if you don’t have a two-philosophy system.

And we don’t, anymore, not really. Most Republicans in office today have positions to the left of many of the Democrats who were in office when I was younger. The default philosophy these days has become “statist” rather than “individualist.” There are still differences between the parties – social issues in many cases, but Democrats don’t trust capitalism much (they tend to sabotage it and then claim the failure as inherent in the system, rather than caused by their actions), and there’s more acrimony and polarization on these issues than what I remember growing up, but, by and large, both parties are proponents of growing and centralizing the influence of government.

The mass media is an accomplice in this because they are left-leaning almost to the point of exclusivity, making them effectively a one-philosophy environment when compared to the American public at large.

Anyway, prefatory remarks dispensed with, the editorial is after the fold. I found that it resonates with the situation in this election, and many other things I’ve read and seen in the past several years, besides. I made mention of some political behavior and the monoculture of the media a couple paragraphs back. Keep that in mind while you read what Mr. Campbell wrote over forty years ago.

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I first saw this article at Verum Serum this past weekend, when I came across the link at Brutally Honest. I didn’t have anything to say other than, “See! Another example, and really blatant this time.” until I read what Morgan Freeberg had to say about it.

As he says,

That media bias exists and that it slants to the left, seems to be something that can’t be doubted by anyone except the insane. But that’s just the way I see it. I can’t speak for others.

I don’t know where Morgan lives, but the area I live in is so far to the left that the Republican candidate for Congress drew about 1% of the vote in the last election. The rest was split about 3-to-1 between the incumbent Democrat and the Green Party candidate. I have no trouble finding people who believe that the media is either balanced (except for Fox) or tilted to the right.

Like media bias, whether you believe that a candidate is a moderate who works well with others is a function of your point of view (and whether you have a historical perspective on the matter).

Snopes says that Hillary’s quotes (“We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good”) aren’t really Marxist. I couldn’t find anything there about her Christmas video. However, Snopes has its own problems with bias.

I don’t like John McCain. I respect the man for his military service, but it’s going to be hard for me to vote for him in November. I’m not a Republican, so appeals to party unity have no standing with me. I took an online quiz not that long ago that said he was the best match to my positions, but the quiz seemed to be looking for simple answers to hard questions, and McCain lands on the wrong side some issues I consider very important.

I do feel that Obama and Clinton are unacceptable choices – given that the liberal-conservative split in this country is roughly even, with slightly more identifying as conservative, I don’t see how they even have a chance without the active support of the media. Then again, I’ve seen McCain described as the third Democrat in the race.

It’s depressing to think about – radical left-winger, socialist-in-all-but-name, or Republican-in-name-only. Harsh characterizations, perhaps, but contrast them with the media portrayals as the election approaches.