I’ll catch it on Netflix. 

How are those, what is it now, dozen or so anti Iraq war movies doing in the box office? 

How is your ignorance of what “free market” means treating you? The conflation of “progressive” corporatism with free market liberalism would crack me up if it weren’t so sad.    

RSM, this is a great post, with several thought-provoking insights. I learn more at this site than I do most other media and/or blog sites.

Between what you and Da Tech Guy wrote about the Tina Brown/Soros phenomena, you’re both really helping to put those trends in context.

Conservatives/libertarians should be having some heavy discussions about this topic, but that raises the old dilemma: given the short-term stakes (Obamanation), political expediency would suggest that we get cooking immediately on this front, assuming that such efforts were actually supported (possibly, a big if, as you have astutely illustrated on many occasions).

On the other hand, what we pursue out of immediate strategic necessity might have negative unintended consequences down the road - i.e., what are the implications of the right (more successfully) employing some of these media tactics?

p.s., What are the tip jar policies? 

The “Western initiative” regarding “free market economy” is a hoax based on a Ponzi scheme, presuming that resources are infinite. They are not, and hence some form of planning & overview is required by a govt. With the power to prohibit, stimulate and fund. Corporate capitalism nears its ultimate goal: the planet’s resources have been transformed into money that no longer can buy anything worthwhile. As a figure of speech, the planet is being plundered completely and as a result, is dying: sixth extinction underway.

We are familiar with Ponzi schemes on the level of a particular operation, one particularly large and nasty one having sunk the re-entry of Albania into civil Western European society. To see the whole “free market economy” structure as a Ponzi scheme is liberating. It IS based on theoretically unlimited resources (infinite expansion) and seeing the ACTUAL limits approaching is now CASHING OUT, as smart Ponzi operators do.

Ponzi schemes require so called “interest on loans”. The interest can be high enough to allow for leisure, IOW alienated from the basic requirements for other creatures: work to get food, drink and shelter (so get essential feedback from the environment and behave accordingly).

Interestingly, Islam forbids such “getting paid without work (for society),” if i remember correctly, the Old Testament mentions that debts should be quitted every 7 years. The difference with theory and practice is rather large, so called “Islamic banks” have found a way around the interest while getting it nevertheless and how the Jewish state continues to cash in from the Holocaust needs no further comment. Whereas former currencies were referenced to measurable things (gold, silver – long ago, even salt), the US $ now is referenced to “stuff between the ears”

The alternative to “free market economy” would have been “fair trade”, taking into account that for instance due to climatic differences, agricultural products should be grown in the best suitable climate. Growing them in Northern countries with the aid of (indirect) subsidies, artificial light and fertilizer solution (no soil) is about as environmentally unsound as possible.

In 2006, Ken Lay’s move (death) to protect his assets may have been a smart one. His Enron co-conspirator Jeffrey Skilling got a stiff 24-year sentence and his wealth thereby liable to at least partial impoundment. By escaping via death, Lay has ensured that his heirs will have a better chance to hang on to the booty.

Doesn’t this show, the law was made by plutocrats for plutocrats? Only a revolution might change the situation. 

How is the free market working out for ya conservatives?

 
In fact, Anamika, you have accidentally laid your finger on the crux of the problem: People on the Right will (a) donate enormous amounts for campaign politics, and yet (b) expect political news operations to be self-funding in the free market.

Republican politicans are treated like charity cases, while conservative journalists are supposed to be rugged individuals and yet — this is what really galls me — GOP politicians look down their noses at journalists!

All of which is to say that I believe the Right is viewing the problem through a warped lens. The success of conservative talk radio and Fox News alternative media ventures have further confused the Right as to the nature of the larger problem.

Oui deux!   A 501(C)Thru charitable organization are thèse fashionable propagation efforts.

Quoted from and Linked to at:
The Stupid Parties

They don’t understand because they don’t want to.  They want to be part of the Establishment, and the Establishment is left-wing. 

You’ve hit the nail on the head, RSM:  Conservatives’ biggest Achilles heel is publicity.  Our ideas resonate with the people, but for some reason, even our most sophisticated bonafide conservative leaders don’t “get” the publicity thing.

Maybe you should make this your mission?

Stacy, James Burnham addressed much of this in his work The Managerial Revolution more than a half century ago.  The traditional right, with its power origins in the bourgeois small businessmen, community leaders, and other traditional keepers of the traditional American Constitutional order, was badly outflanked by the new power base of the internationalist managerial overclass. Much of the failure of modern conservatism can be traced to the fact that it misunderstood traditionalists power relations to this managerial overclass.  It saw itself, incorrectly, as conserving an old order rather than understanding that it must actually overthrow a new order run by the managerialists that had taken over society.  It made the mistake of being “conservative” where as what was required was a reactionary revolution.

I share your frustration at the intellectual provincialism of many conservative funders.  I am very fortunate right now to be able to ply my trade at just about the top of the heap as far as conservative policy/intellectual organizations go– yet honestly my own position is far more precarious and marginal than your average tenured professor plugging away at a mediocre university.   The right’s funders unfortunately see politicians as the cause of political action whereas they are really the consequence of broad-based political activity that comes from the left’s stranglehold over journalism, academia, etc.

Even when they attempt to found organizations, conservative funders usually expect a level of control over message and output that is not consistent with attracting really top-drawer talent and keeping it there. That is part of why, I suspect, you left the Washignton Times, and it is certainly why I have chosen to ply my trade at a prestigious, if non-tenuring organization that allows me a good degree of profesional freedom, rather than accept a greater amount of security at a conservative organization at the cost of my fundamental intellectual integrity.

Did anyone ever tell you that you have a very sexy neck.  My name is George too.  Perhaps we can get together for drinks some time?  Here’s my photograph.   http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/images/stories/large/2008/07/22/71305304George.jpg

People like Rush Limbaugh, and too a lesser extent you, in a way, contribute to the problem.  Righties can point to Rush, and then say to all of us artists and journalists and novelists (moi) and tabletop game designers(moi again), and say ‘Why aren’t you like Rush or Peter?’

There is so much that could be done for truly massive effect, and at such a modest cost in the Arts and Journalism.  Its just sad.

A decent novel reaches people that can’t be reached by adds, and convinces them much more.  It gives them a story to explain their viewpoint , and it allows them to identify kindred hearts.

Ayn Rand’s books do this for many.  The phrase ‘Who is John Galt?’ is the hyperlink in a mind leading to a story/arguement, and it ID’s Conservatives/Hardcore Bizness Types to each other.

Now imagine a half-dozen books with similar influence, and one or two more popping up every year.  Some would only have influence for a year or two, and others would be quoted decades hence.

If you could say ‘Who is Jan Jones?’ and everyone in th e know, and a lot of others instantly thought of a female heroine tortured unjustly by the Left Media…..just as Palin, Bachmann, and other Right Wing Females Stars have been tortured….that is useful.

Do the same thing with Taxes.  Write  a tale of a gentle and noble rancher facing hordes of immigrants on a border….perhaps a fantasy novel.  And then when any Immigration Debate comes  up, our  side has a readdy made weapon.

The Left used the Handmaid’s Tale for this.