Yet that's exactly the path the conservative movement is following behind leaders such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and other TV yakkers.
I recently wrote a note to a columnist in the conservative mag Townhall .
The writer, Derek Hall from the group Americans for Tax Reform, wrote to slam President Barack Obama's stated desire to extend the reach of broadband Internet access further throughout America.
Hunter leads with some good points that question the very premise that broadband access is a necessity worthy of government intervention, a great start for a conservative argument.
Then, sadly, he goes off the rails. Since I couldn't find the column on the Townhall Web site, you'll have to glean the gist of his inaccuracies from the text of the e-mail I sent to object.
"Mr. Hunter:
I recently read your piece in Town Hall criticizing the government effort to
increase access to broadband Internet access.
While I'm certain the government will provide many credible targets for
criticism with its effort, your article failed to identify them.
Specifically, the statement, 'The Internet has not developed into the
economic powerhouse it is because of government, it's done so without
government,' is flat out wrong.
I won't bore you with the
details<http://www.isoc.org/
but the very concept of what became the Internet was developed in 1962 in a
series of memos by an MIT trained scientist who was the first head of
computer research at DARPA <http://www.darpa.mil/about.
Advanced Research Project Agency -- which is funded by the government.
Further, the idea was refined into rudimentary networking at DARPA and
further developed into what we might recognize as an early version of the
Internet at University of California, Los Angeles -- a publicly funded
university.
Also, you attempted to draw an analogy between your incorrect statement
about the Internet with yet another incorrect statement about the
development of the automobile.
You wrote, 'When the car was introduced, it was an innovation that changed
the world, yet the government didn't subsidize it (until recently) to make
sure everyone could afford one.'
The government has spent billions -- maybe trillions -- on roads, highways,
bridges and other infrastructure that make it feasible for individual,
privately owned cars to be practical modes of transportation.
The government also spends billions -- maybe trillions -- to defend the
petroleum supply chain we rely on to have affordable gasoline that fuels the
cars we drive. (Even if you accept the premise we're fighting for freedom in
the Middle East on its face, the alleged freedom fighting has the fortunate
byproduct of maintaining access to massive oil reserves.)
If you want people to take seriously the conservative movement espoused by
your magazine, it would behoove you to check your facts and avoid using
misleading and incorrect statements to support your sweeping arguments
against government programs."
What's sadder than the fact Hunter didn't bother to check the facts behind his column is the fact it was printed in a prominent conservative magazine.
With the political left in control of the executive and legislative branches of government, smart conservative criticism is more important than ever.
Yet poorly researched writing like the Townhall article and mean-spirited and ill-informed rants by the aforementioned TV jabberers have seized lead roles for the opposition.
Which brings me to my greater point regarding the media.
Media outlets driven by ideology are no substitute for fact-driven, market-supported sources of information.
The former are too likely to put ideology ahead of readers, which means making the story fit the ideology by any means necessary.
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