Written : Nov. 10, 2009
Generally speaking, people on the right prefer less government intrusion into people’s personal lives and folks on the left want government to do more for the people, especially the federal government. A contradiction caught my eye while watching CNN’s GPS program, also known as “The Global Public Square”, hosted by Fareed Zacharia. This show is set up to showcase Zacharia’s, CNN’s, the mainstream media’s, and his mostly liberal guests’ view that happily, America’s power is waning in the world. It’s just another country. He and his guests don’t always tear America down, they also build up every country - other than the U.S. - to have you believe America is not special; all the other countries are. We’re living in “a post-American world”, Zacharia is fond of saying from time to time. To help you understand the emphasis a little more, the name of one of his books is, “The Post-American World”.
Zacharia’s guest, Matthew Hoh, on the show which aired on Nov. 1, said of the Afghan people: they resent their government’s intrusion [into their lives]! Such a statement forces me to wonder, “Don’t the American people resent the same thing from their government?” But I digress. Instead of touting the left-wing idea of central governmental control (federal vs. the states), Hoh said there are 34 provinces in Afghanistan - there are 34 solutions. Why would such a conservative idea be pushed for other countries when at the same time, for America, the left wants our federal government to control everything? Why did they reject the Republican suggestion to let a single state experiment with the federal health care bill before forcing it on all the states? To be consistent with Hoh, shouldn’t the left say there are 50 states, and therefore there are 50 solutions for health care reform?
A question I ask myself frequently is, “Why does the mainstream media (TV) have the propensity to hand their conservative guests a title? For example, when introducing a guest author who happens to be a conservative, they’ll usually say, “…I want to introduce the conservative author [their name]…”. While introducing a liberal author they generally leave out the “liberal” in the title, and come up with, “I want to introduce [their name], author of…” For example, on CSPAN on Oct. 26, Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor for National Review - a conservative magazine - was asked by the host, “In your view as a conservative columnist…” So, I ask you, “Why do they do this?” Is it fair, or are they trying to get a response or rise out of their (assumed liberal) audience when they use the word “conservative” in the person’s title? If you have not noticed this, listen for it when you watch the Sunday talk shows. (Fox News is excluded, because it does no such thing. I encourage you to watch all the Sunday shows anyway!)
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Keywords: Conservatism, Conservative, blog, politics, political, Mark Cohen, Mark A. Cohen, From The Left to the Right, conservative blog, conservative blogs, Matthew Hoh, GPS, Fareed Zacharia
Keyword Phrases: "Conservatism", "Conservative", "blog", "politics", "political", "Mark Cohen", "Mark A. Cohen", "From The Left to the Right ", "conservative blog", "conservative blogs", “Matthew Hoh”, “GPS”, “Fareed Zacharia”
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