Friday, September 24, 2004

“Memogate” and the (ongoing) Disgrace of the Left

Something that causes me mental tailspins on occasion is the sad fact that the people and movements who seemed so idealistic, creative, progressive, and full of moral loftiness in the 60s are now the overbearing, self-righteous, controlling, power-hungry establishment they used to rail against. Was it all show? Was it always “the end justifies the means”? Maybe it just boils down to Winston Churchill’s oft-quoted truism, “Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.” This must explain why so many young academics are still buying into the lies and hypocrisy of the oh-so-self-righteous Left.

Over at the National Review, Victor Davis Hanson, in an article entitled "The Fall", writes of the long downward slide of Liberal journalism, citing the current Dan Rather FUBAR as a possible turning point in the future of alphabet network (the big three) news:

“Hypocrisy and aristocratic smugness are drawing the ancient regime to its death. Rather's now-ossified generation came of age in the heady Vietnam era, on the apparent premise that Main Street, USA, and the Kiwanis had given us Vietnam, Watergate, racism, and the other isms and phobias — and that only hip, swashbuckling 60s-types could tell the American people the ‘truth’ about what
the ‘establishment’ was up to.

“Ever so incrementally along this inevitable road to Rathergate, John Kerry's searing ambodia-patrol story, and Kitty Kelley's Reagan and Bush pseudographies, many Americans began to worry about the ends-justifying-the-means culture of the sanctimonious Left. The counterculture was defended on the dubious premise that the activists needed to fight fire with fire as they exposed everything from Nixon's lies to the embarrassing Pentagon Papers.

“But in the process there also began a professional devolution, as questionable legal and ethical methods were excused in the name of the greater good.” (entire article here)


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