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The Times’ laughable opinion mongering
In what may be a hopeful sign of the deliquescence of liberalism, the New York Times has gotten so sloppy and unselfconscious in its attempts to manipulate opinion that it barely tries to conceal the fact that it’s doing so. Consider the lead paragraph of its front page story, “Armed Pilots? Many Travelers Are Gun-Shy.” Airline passenger Todd Ross, the Times portentously informs us, has thought “long and hard” about the issue of airline security. And the results of Mr. Ross’s cogitations? “Anything could happen. I think it’s wrong. Absolutely wrong. It’s not the way to go. If a pilot had a gun, I don’t think I’d feel any safer.” This is what our leading newspaper regards as a thoughtful opinion to be featured in the lead of a front page news story on an important national issue.
The rest of the article gives similarly profound views from several other passengers who are against the plan, including a college student who mutters that arming a pilot is “almost like arming a terrorist.” The Times suggests that such sentiments are representative of the country as a whole; sixty percent of its 48 interviewees, it tells us, oppose the arming of pilots. Yet it fails to mention the numerous national polls that show a large majority of the American people supporting the idea.
Comments
A comment on my own post. I wrote that the Times’ utter sloppiness in pushing its own favored views as the views of the nation is a sign of liberal deliquescence. However, it could just as easily be argued that it’s a sign of liberal triumph. As things are now, liberals can say whatever they want to say, and they know that they will not be held to account. They’ve delegitimized the previously existing standards, and they’ve silenced the people who once would have held them to those standards. What a weird article! The idea seems to have been to collect some dumb comments, present them portentiously, and stick it all on the front page. On the grander issue, though, I think the triumph and dissolution of liberalism are the same thing. Liberalism is critical rather than constructive. When it becomes the sole respectable political outlook and has to run the show by itself it can’t do it and so relies on arbitrariness and obfuscation. There’s really no choice. Posted by: Jim Kalb on July 15, 2002 8:14 AMMr. Kalb says “the triumph and dissolution of liberalism are the same thing,” which is also one of the themes of his magnificent article, “The Tyranny of Liberalism.” But does the fact that triumphant liberalism can only rule through lies and arbitrary assertion make it any the less triumphant and powerful? After all, liberalism, even before its complete ascendancy in recent years, has always been a schizophrenic thing, attacking the fundaments of the existing order while simultaneously upholding it just enough to keep the machine in operation. Now I agree that the fact that liberalism is now in complete control (and thus no longer has an “old order” it can simultaneously villify and feed off of) changes the dynamic, and furthermore that an entire social order based on the lies and social attacks of liberalism cannot endure forever, since such lies and attacks inevitably rot out the society from within. But does that make the actual power of liberalism (for as long as the liberal society endures, which may be certainly be beyond our lifetimes) any the less? Posted by: Lawrence Auster on July 15, 2002 9:11 AMThe incoherence of liberalism as a governing philosophy most likely means that liberal governments will become increasingly corrupt and ineffectual. That’s not all bad if you’d just as soon not have everything remade on liberal lines. Posted by: Jim Kalb on July 15, 2002 9:45 AMThat’s a good answer. Also a hopeful one. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on July 15, 2002 10:32 AM |