On an average day, the Left tries to dominate our culture and our politics by pretending it doesn't actually exist. By that, I mean our media outlets and Hollywood propagandists rarely speak in public about being "liberals" or "progressives" or ideologues of any kind. They organize for nebulous-sounding causes, like "women's rights" (abortion) and "civil rights" (racial quotas/equity) and "the planet" (fossil fuel abolition).
The exception came on "CBS Mornings" on Sept. 29, during a segment promoting a new book by Republican-loathing leftist historian Heather Cox Richardson titled "Democracy Awakening." The Left routinely insists they are "democracy," and "democracy" is them.
CBS lauded Richardson upon arrival as a "one-woman Time magazine," which certainly implies liberal propaganda. But they pretend it doesn't.
Co-host Tony Dokoupil, no one's idea of a right-winger, sounded like a troublemaker when he talked polls with Richardson: "If you look at surveys now, Republican trust and confidence in higher education in colleges just nose-dived, right? And there's some evidence that the people running colleges are liberal, the people teaching colleges are liberal, and even more and more of the students identify as liberal."
Saying there's "some evidence" of the Left's dominance in academia is like saying there's "some evidence" that the North Pole is chilly. But Dokoupil suggested it might be a problem: "Is that a problem for the generation of knowledge in our country? Is that a problem for our politics? Is it a problem for the reception of a book like yours?"
Richardson took that opportunity to unpack a box of lies. She suggested "one of the foundational documents" for conservative politicians is William F. Buckley Jr.'s 1951 classic "God and Man at Yale: The Superstition of Academic Freedom." Let's hope that's still true.
Then she described Buckley's argument in the most ridiculously inaccurate terms: "And what his position was was that we should not focus on fact-based arguments when we try to move the country forward. Because if you used fact-based arguments, people voted for the terms of the New Deal, the idea that the government should regulate business, protect a social safety net, promote infrastructure and protect civil rights."
The Left thinks they are democracy, and they are also facts. Richardson underlined the Stephen Colbert position with a straight face: "That what we're really talking about is the idea of basing our reality in reality, you know. And that -- you know, what do they say? Reality has a liberal bias. But I think all of us want to get back to a world that has our feet under us with actual facts."
She claimed Buckley's thesis was anti-factual: "Instead of actually using fact-based argument, what we really should do was indoctrinate them -- and that's my word, not his -- but push the idea of Christianity and free-market capitalism."
Richardson typically suggests it's not "indoctrination" for professors to use the classroom to advocate for the superiority of atheism, socialism and critical race theory. That's just building "democracy" with "fact-based arguments."
In 1951, the leftist tilt of America's elite colleges was just beginning. By now, the Left's "long march through" academia is complete. Today, professors have to worry that woke youngsters will get them fired, and "academic freedom" would save no professor from the mob. In 2015, Erika Christakis, then associate master of Silliman College at Yale University, questioned a university edict against culturally insensitive Halloween costumes and resigned after a very hostile student reaction.
That wasn't "democracy" in action, and it wasn't a fight about "facts." It was a demonstration of intellectual dominance. In the end, the Left doesn't tolerate dissent. Everyone who speaks against them should be punished. But remember, they're "democracy."
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