Reply #30: Do we actually want to be on an equal footing? [View All]

About 10 years ago, Michael Lind wrote a book, Up From Conservatism. In it he described the conservative money machine. A good description is "lockstep." Once they have taken a position on an issue, then everyone must agree with this position. Any disagreement, and you're off the gravy train - no more money - period. This leads to the dissemination of very clear, unanimously supported, effective messages.

But, for all its effectiveness, I think this is a bad model. Ideas that haven't been thoroughly kicked around and discussed tend to be very weak ideas. They don't survive the test of reality. Conservatives successfully sold their message to the public, but, having come to power, their programs have been absolute disasters. The conservatives success has been due to deceit.

I think we need a better model. We need open disagreement and discussion of ideas. And, somehow we have to get people to think about the ideas. We have to get them to accept that there isn't a perfect solution, but only a currently best possible solution. We have to get people to vote for realistic solutions rather than "pie in the sky" nonsense (e.g. Just cut taxes and government revenues will increase).

My thought is that neocons win through deceit. We may be able to build a network that mimics what they do. But, that is a corruption of the democratic process. It's basically assuming that people are too dumb to govern themselves, and to get the public to vote the right way, you need to deceive them. If democracy can actually work, then we need a thinking public. If we can't get that, it doesn't matter whether we win or lose.