Greg Krehbiel
Who is suppressing dissent these days?
by Greg Krehbiel on 27 July 2010
The story goes that in those evil 1950s, it was the conservatives who were suppressing dissent and trying to control the culture. And there is certainly some justice to the charge. There were laws regulating the content of books and other crazy stuff that was appropriately overturned by the courts.
Conservatives were able to pass these laws and get these restrictions because they held the reins to power.
A little while before that, conservatives even controlled Hollywood — which is almost unthinkable now. You never saw Roy Rogers kiss Dale Evans, but now you can see just about anything you want.
So who has the power nowadays? And who is suppressing dissent?
In order to get tenure, young professors have to suck up to the overwhelmingly liberal faculty. If you don’t, you don’t get hired, and you certainly don’t get tenure.
In order to get a movie published, it has to go through liberal Hollywood producers. And TV shows continually pour liberal political and social views into couch potato brains.
Universities have speech codes to stifle conservatives. Liberal student groups shout down conservative speakers. Liberal teachers’ unions control the government-run schools. Some professions (like psychiatry) have been entirely taken over by liberal ideology, to the point that dissenters can’t get their degrees and can’t get licensed.
I don’t think there’s any question that today it’s the liberals who are stifling dissent and forcing their ideology on the rest of us. When they can’t shut somebody up, they make of charges of racism or simply shout them down.
But there is an exception. Liberals used to have a lock on the news media — and they still have a lock on the “main stream media” — but cable news and talk radio has broken their monopoly. Now you can choose which ideology you want to listen to.
Maybe the pendulum is starting to swing the other way. But I’m not holding my breath. I don’t see any signs that conservatives are going to re-take academia or Hollywood.
2010-07-27 » Greg Krehbiel
27 July 2010 @ 4:56 pm
Ugh! Why on earth would anyone want to take over Hollywood!
Lol, maybe Bollywood, for fun! Or the video game industry, to really afffect the next generation, or maybe Apple, to enjoy getting tomatoes thrown at me for excluding child porn (like a dirt rotten scoundrel!)
Ultimately I wonder if the actualy hurdles to any “takeover” would not be what I first think of: money, power, contacts. Maybe instead it is the culture of the industry. Just think of all those entrenched Victorian ideals and how long it took to sweep them away. We could be in for a long haul. . . .
28 July 2010 @ 9:05 am
Movies have a strong cultural effect. If somebody wanted to change the culture, controlling Hollywood would be a key way to do it.
Just for example, if you wanted to normalize homosexuality in the public’s mind, you could fill movies and TV shows with homosexual characters portrayed in a positive light. And you could portray any kind of dissenting view as bigotry, fear or hatred.