DAVID FRUM - "conservative self-consciousness of being a minority in the world of ideas" That's got a connection to the world of conservative religiosity, b/c if you are an intensely committed Christian and especially an evangelical Christian, you do feel yourself kind of beleaguered in an intellectual world that's not hospitable to you, and that feeling of isolation and victimization
is then spread through the tone and style of the whole conservative world....b/c of the historic weakness of the conservatives in getting positions in universities, and other tenured positions of intellectual life, they are much more economically dependent on places where their livelihoods are much more volatile and unpredictable, like the think tank world. There's no tenure at think tanks,
which is potentially a good thing, if the think tanks have a strong sense of Intellectual integrity in their mission. But if they don't it's potentially a bad thing.
Frum was cut from his post at the American Enterprise Institute AEI the premier conservative think tank, after criticizing Republican strategy on health reform.
"Thus, the growth of conservative think tanks, and the leftward shift of academics and intellectuals are two more critical factors in the "oven" of our politics that sharply drive our war over expertise
and fact today. The result is polarization over the nature of reality itself.""...a true battle of deep
seated and irreconcilable worldviews..."
"This factor, which allows ppl to select themselves into ideologically-reinforcing streams of
information, and ultimately to construct their own realities, is so powerful that many have
argued that it is the cause of the problem we're tackling."
"People don't believe whatever they want to believe, they believe whatever they can get away
with believing"...Peter Ditto U of California-Irvine
CHAPTER 8 - THE SCIENCE OF FOX NEWS
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