Brendan Miniter: How Conservatives Have Stolen Arguments from Liberals
Quick, someone call Howard Dean. It appears the right has stolen the left's playbook and is now using tactics liberals have used for decades. Unlike Jimmy Carter's debate briefing book, which someone slipped to Ronald Reagan's staff in 1980, there are actually useful nuggets that the old Reaganites and the new Bushies can use.
It's hard to know when this began. But on a variety of fronts conservatives are using arguments and tactics heretofore under patent protection by the left, including pushing for activist judges (with four decades of liberal jurisprudence on the books, the left's best hope is judges who respect precedent above all), using federal dollars to build political constituencies, filing lawsuits, launching boycotts, and arguing for free speech and "diversity" in education. The last has drawn a surprising amount of attention lately with a debate over evolution and "intelligent design"--the hypothesis that evolution isn't random but rather the mechanism an intelligent being uses to change the universe.
President Bush pushed this debate well into the public spotlight by remarking that intelligent design should be taught in addition to random evolution. Whatever the merits of this debate, it's interesting that the "religious right" is co-opting the arguments of the left. With "diversity" a worthy goal in education, why not present students with "both sides"? That way no one is left out and everyone is included.
The question alone has to be infuriating for the left. It's nice to think that there was once a golden period in education when the pursuit of truth was paramount. But from the elementary curriculum to politics in college classrooms, education has always been determined by cultural and political movements. Many of the elite schools were themselves founded to sidestep one prevailing orthodoxy or another. So for years we've had a new god in education and he goes by the name of "diversity." Not to be confused by the worthy goal of striking barriers to education once placed in the path of minority groups, this form of diversity has been the principal vehicle for a liberal intellectual agenda that wasn't otherwise up to intellectual speed.
That the right is now adopting this creed shows that the liberal tactic is nearly played out. Colorado University professor Ward Churchill, who likened 9/11 victims to Nazi functionaries, can take diversity for a test drive in hopes of leaving the controversy he stirred up in the dust. But with that logic, intelligent-design folks can jump behind the wheel too and see where "diversity" takes them. ...
Read entire article at WSJ
It's hard to know when this began. But on a variety of fronts conservatives are using arguments and tactics heretofore under patent protection by the left, including pushing for activist judges (with four decades of liberal jurisprudence on the books, the left's best hope is judges who respect precedent above all), using federal dollars to build political constituencies, filing lawsuits, launching boycotts, and arguing for free speech and "diversity" in education. The last has drawn a surprising amount of attention lately with a debate over evolution and "intelligent design"--the hypothesis that evolution isn't random but rather the mechanism an intelligent being uses to change the universe.
President Bush pushed this debate well into the public spotlight by remarking that intelligent design should be taught in addition to random evolution. Whatever the merits of this debate, it's interesting that the "religious right" is co-opting the arguments of the left. With "diversity" a worthy goal in education, why not present students with "both sides"? That way no one is left out and everyone is included.
The question alone has to be infuriating for the left. It's nice to think that there was once a golden period in education when the pursuit of truth was paramount. But from the elementary curriculum to politics in college classrooms, education has always been determined by cultural and political movements. Many of the elite schools were themselves founded to sidestep one prevailing orthodoxy or another. So for years we've had a new god in education and he goes by the name of "diversity." Not to be confused by the worthy goal of striking barriers to education once placed in the path of minority groups, this form of diversity has been the principal vehicle for a liberal intellectual agenda that wasn't otherwise up to intellectual speed.
That the right is now adopting this creed shows that the liberal tactic is nearly played out. Colorado University professor Ward Churchill, who likened 9/11 victims to Nazi functionaries, can take diversity for a test drive in hopes of leaving the controversy he stirred up in the dust. But with that logic, intelligent-design folks can jump behind the wheel too and see where "diversity" takes them. ...