TL;DR: American Conservatives have spent millions of dollars since the 70s studying language and ideas and figuring out how to frame every issue from a conservative, pro-capital, pro-business perspective.
Well, you see, back during the 1960’s and 1970’s there was a huge push in the US against war, against white supremacy, against fascism, against the draft, against segregation, and many other things. Many of the people who currently hold US political offices today were either in the universities and colleges when these protests were ongoing, or were already working as staffers for conservative politicians. They saw what was going on and became determined to never let these things happen again. In 1971 when then Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell mailed a confidential memo to his friends in the US Chamber of Commerce titled: “Attack on American Free Enterprise System” and outlined Powell’s concerns re: the youth of the US and the growing sentiments against the Vietnam War. He was worried that our nation’s best and brightest were becoming anti business because of our involvemnt in Vietnam. Powell’s agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that.
And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talk show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they understand their own moral system. They understand what unites conservatives, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.
Now, you might be wondering why progressives haven’t done the same thing. There’s a systematic reason for that. You can see it in the way that conservative foundations and progressive foundations work. Conservative foundations give large block grants year after year to their think tanks. They say, ‘Here’s several million dollars, do what you need to do.’ And basically, they build infrastructure, they build TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV. They do all of that. Why? Because the conservative moral system has as its highest value preserving and defending the “strict father” system itself. And that means building infrastructure. As businessmen, they know how to do this very well.
Meanwhile, liberals’ conceptual system of the “nurturant parent” has as its highest value helping individuals who need help. The progressive foundations and donors give their money to a variety of grassroots organizations. They say, ‘We’re giving you $25,000, but don’t waste a penny of it. Make sure it all goes to the cause, don’t use it for administration, communication, infrastructure, or career development.’
That is a good analysis. I think it ignores the obvious components that the conservatives are well funded precicely because conservative dogma is all about protecting the owner class. Wealthy business people are not going to fund efforts to impose progressive taxation, mandatory sick time etc.
Sure there are rich people in the arts who lean liberal at least in public, but they are outnumbered and out-spent by capital owners.
The left will never be able to spend as much on communication so the approach has go be completely different. Using the products of capitalism like social media has been effective. Peer-to-peer organizing is slow but costs little. Tacking pro-worker policies onto the platforms of the otherwise pro-business Democrats as a differentiator has lead to some success.
Reaching the mass media reach of the far right is so difficult to do without the capital backing though. The left really needs to get into the talk radio game. NPR tries but they are inevitably quite centrist.
I think unifying ideology is also much easier a task for conservative thought, because it’s all about “F you, got mine.” And “Those that aren’t us are trying to ruin everything.” And “Eat enough leather and maybe you’ll get rich lol.”
Leftier-leaning stuff has a “unity problem” because it seeks to understand and accommodate the vast spectrum of human experiences and points of view. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it’s certainly much tougher and more complex to pitch, and rally, and galvanize.
Conservatives are really good at being chill and most importantly simple for the most part at an introductory level, so they recruit a lot, and then slowly work their adherents into raging, scared, insecure violence-fantasists.
A good example is with men. Leftists groups have a serious deficiency in speaking to and empathizing with masculine issues, and are shocked when normally moderate, but wayward, men are happy to just be accepted…then radicalized, by hyper-nationalist conspiracy theorists with a fetish for sharp geometric symbolism…
TL;DR: American Conservatives have spent millions of dollars since the 70s studying language and ideas and figuring out how to frame every issue from a conservative, pro-capital, pro-business perspective.
Well, you see, back during the 1960’s and 1970’s there was a huge push in the US against war, against white supremacy, against fascism, against the draft, against segregation, and many other things. Many of the people who currently hold US political offices today were either in the universities and colleges when these protests were ongoing, or were already working as staffers for conservative politicians. They saw what was going on and became determined to never let these things happen again. In 1971 when then Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell mailed a confidential memo to his friends in the US Chamber of Commerce titled: “Attack on American Free Enterprise System” and outlined Powell’s concerns re: the youth of the US and the growing sentiments against the Vietnam War. He was worried that our nation’s best and brightest were becoming anti business because of our involvemnt in Vietnam. Powell’s agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that.
And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talk show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they understand their own moral system. They understand what unites conservatives, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.
Now, you might be wondering why progressives haven’t done the same thing. There’s a systematic reason for that. You can see it in the way that conservative foundations and progressive foundations work. Conservative foundations give large block grants year after year to their think tanks. They say, ‘Here’s several million dollars, do what you need to do.’ And basically, they build infrastructure, they build TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV. They do all of that. Why? Because the conservative moral system has as its highest value preserving and defending the “strict father” system itself. And that means building infrastructure. As businessmen, they know how to do this very well.
Meanwhile, liberals’ conceptual system of the “nurturant parent” has as its highest value helping individuals who need help. The progressive foundations and donors give their money to a variety of grassroots organizations. They say, ‘We’re giving you $25,000, but don’t waste a penny of it. Make sure it all goes to the cause, don’t use it for administration, communication, infrastructure, or career development.’
Another reason for the lack of liberal response from think tanks in the last few decades is infighting and cultural purity tests: https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-infighting-callout-culture/
That is a good analysis. I think it ignores the obvious components that the conservatives are well funded precicely because conservative dogma is all about protecting the owner class. Wealthy business people are not going to fund efforts to impose progressive taxation, mandatory sick time etc.
Sure there are rich people in the arts who lean liberal at least in public, but they are outnumbered and out-spent by capital owners.
The left will never be able to spend as much on communication so the approach has go be completely different. Using the products of capitalism like social media has been effective. Peer-to-peer organizing is slow but costs little. Tacking pro-worker policies onto the platforms of the otherwise pro-business Democrats as a differentiator has lead to some success.
Reaching the mass media reach of the far right is so difficult to do without the capital backing though. The left really needs to get into the talk radio game. NPR tries but they are inevitably quite centrist.
I think unifying ideology is also much easier a task for conservative thought, because it’s all about “F you, got mine.” And “Those that aren’t us are trying to ruin everything.” And “Eat enough leather and maybe you’ll get rich lol.”
Leftier-leaning stuff has a “unity problem” because it seeks to understand and accommodate the vast spectrum of human experiences and points of view. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it’s certainly much tougher and more complex to pitch, and rally, and galvanize.
Conservatives are really good at being chill and most importantly simple for the most part at an introductory level, so they recruit a lot, and then slowly work their adherents into raging, scared, insecure violence-fantasists.
A good example is with men. Leftists groups have a serious deficiency in speaking to and empathizing with masculine issues, and are shocked when normally moderate, but wayward, men are happy to just be accepted…then radicalized, by hyper-nationalist conspiracy theorists with a fetish for sharp geometric symbolism…