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Conservatism isn’t what it used
to be
By Paul Craig Roberts
09/17/07 "ICH" -- -- When I was in the Reagan administration,
America had a lively press that never hesitated to take us to
task. Even the “Teflon President” received more brickbats than
Bush and Cheney.
The lively press disappeared along with its independence in the
media concentration engineered during the Clinton
administration. Shortly thereafter all the liberal news anchors
disappeared as well. Today the US media serves as propaganda
ministry for the government’s wars and police state. Yet, some
conservatives continue to rant on about “the liberal media.”
That other conservative bugaboo, liberal academia, has also been
crushed. Universities once controlled their appointments, but no
more. Recently, the political science faculty at DePaul, a
Catholic university, voted to give tenure to the courageous
scholar and teacher Norman Finkelstein. The department was
unable to make its tenure decision stick over the objections of
the Israel Lobby and their conservative allies, who were able to
reach in over the heads of the political science department and
the College Personnel Committee and force DePaul’s president to
block Finkelstein’s tenure. Finkelstein, a Jew, had angered the
Israel Lobby with his criticisms of Israel’s misuse of the
holocaust sufferings of Jews to oppress the Palestinians and to
silence critics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Finkelstein
On September 14, 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported that the
appointment of the distinguished legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky
as the Dean of a new law school at the University of California
at Irvine had been withdrawn by the university’s chancellor,
Michael V. Drake, who gave in to the demands of conservatives
outside the university. Conservatives are outraged at
Chemerinsky because he criticized Attorney General Gonzales. In
withdrawing Chemerinsky’s appointment, Drake told him: “I didn’t
realize there would be conservatives out to get you.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-uci14sep14,1,3096423,print.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=2&cset=true
Gonzales is the attorney general who wrote memos justifying
torture and denying that the Bush administration was bound by
the Geneva Conventions. Gonzales told a stunned Senate Judiciary
Committee that the US Constitution did not provide habeas corpus
protection to American citizens.
To experience an attorney general of the US fiercely attacking
the US Constitution, rending its every provision, is the most
frightening experience of my lifetime. That the head of the
legal branch of the executive, sworn to uphold the Constitution,
would turn against it in order to enhance unaccountable
executive power is a clear impeachable offense. If anyone
anywhere in the world deserved criticism, Gonzales did. But when
Chemerinsky unbraided the despicable Gonzales, conservatives
rushed to Gonzales’ defense, not to the defense of the American
Constitution.
It seems only yesterday that conservatives were complaining
about the liberties that liberals took with the Constitution.
Liberals were expanding rights, fancifully perhaps. But today
conservatives are curtailing long established rights, such as
habeas corpus and protection against self-incrimination.
Conservatives abandoned “original intent” and all of their
constitutional scruples once they had a chance to cram more
power into the presidency.
In my conservative days as an academic, I experienced some
liberal blackballs. But liberals did not attack academic freedom
per se. The new conservatives despise academic freedom and have
created organizations to monitor departments of Middle East
studies in order to lower the boom on scholars who follow the
truth instead of neoconservative ideology or Israeli policy.
Today academic freedom has disappeared just like the independent
media. No one but powerful organized interest groups has a
voice. In the media truth can only emerge on comic shows like
The Colbert Report and Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show.
In years past, conservatives were often shouted down on
university campuses by left-wing students. But today speakers
disapproved by powerful interest groups are simply disinvited in
advance. Even Harvard University has fallen to the new
censorship. On September 14, 2007, the Harvard Crimson reported
that the Israel Lobby was able to force Harvard University to
disinvite three speakers, an Oxford University professor, a
DePaul professor, and a Rutgers professor, because they had
criticized Israeli policy.
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1233
In America today, speaking your mind in the media or in academia
is a thing of the past. A country that has no voices independent
of powerful interests is a country in which freedom is dead.
Notes
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-uci14sep14,1,3096423,print.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=2&cset=true
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1233
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Finkelstein
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