Newspaper and TV Network
In case anyone would like to know, it seems to me that any alliance with the political Right is a fool's errand. Not because the Left is some sort of preferred alternative; the opposite is the case. The political Left is a mental illness. And almost all the social values of the Left are evil. But the political Right consists almost entirely of stupid people who do not know what in the hell they are doing. OK, this is an exaggeration -but not by much. Try talking politics with anyone on the Religious Right. How anyone can top the out-to-lunch quotient of the political Right may seem impossible, but there it is: Evangelical voters. Which I say in deep sadness, in despair. For far longer than made sense I continued to hope that there might be some Evangelical, somewhere, who would finally understand what is at stake and act decisively to counter-attack against the Left with all available resources and use every available means to roll back the gains of homosexuals, Cultural Marxists, libertarians, gender feminists, militant black people who sometimes are reverse racists, anti-Semitic Leftists, anti-Christian Leftists, and you name it, a panoply of diseased characters who hate America and hate Western civilization. But the Right, maybe especially the Religious Right, has deaf ears for all of it. These people literally cannot hear you, political sense has been bred out of them by a theology that either is ridiculously indifferent to real world politics or that is so hopelessly naive about politics that all hope of political success is unthinkable. Yet, even after decades of failure and decades of hero worship of people like Ronald Reagan, who did not do anything (or anything much) by way of helping the values agenda of the Right, and still they don't get it. Clearly, so they reason, we haven't prayed hard enough, that's the problem !!! Actually the problem is a religious viewpoint that the young in overwhelming numbers is rejecting wholesale. For all the many flaws of today's young they get this much very right, the Right is incompetent and uninformed and has no interest in becoming competent or informed. This is the tragedy of our times. What is the solution? A complete break with the Right, both the political Right and the Religious Right. This does not rule out strategic alliances: In any case where the incompetence and ignorance of the Right can't possibly lead to everything getting mucked up But otherwise this is, for the most part, to discuss boneheads. As well, even though it does me no good and cannot possibly do anyone else any good, I still plan to help out individual Evangelicals and even specific Evangelical groups in the future. After all, about a good number of values issues they favor ideas that I also favor. And significant numbers of Evangelicals are good and decent people who have the potential to be good friends. But I do not expect anything in return from most Evangelicals, nor should anyone else. It is not in their moral system to see good in anyone but other Evangelicals (plus some Jews and some Catholics) and no-one else, as they see it, can be trusted. Besides, -and here is a spoiler alert, I'm being sarcastic- long ago most Evangelicals demoted Jesus to second place in their religious universe because, in fact, they came to realize that making money is more important. Enough of all of it. It is imperative for thinking men and women of good will to set out on an Independent course, to forget either major political party because each is irredeemable. Sure, there may be no choice but to vote for the lesser of two evils in elections, at least for now, but it is essential to try and create a new center of political power in America and to create a major alternative to the kind of religion that a plurality of Americans have already abandoned and that majorities may well abandon in the future. You also cannot talk with anyone on the Right about this because, and this is not sarcastic, they will not listen unless they can make money from any reform you suggest, no matter how well conceived, well intentioned, and practical for achieving the objective of recapturing the culture. Their attitude is: "If I can't make a lot of money at this I'm not interested." So much for Christian faith; it comes in second place to libertarianism and money. What is being suggested here is an all out assault against not only the pathological Left but against the libertarian Right, which by now has infected all of the Right, secular as well as religious. What is being suggested here is a values war against Silicon Valley -which combines both far Left social values with hard Right libertarian economic values. This is not a recommendation for neo-Luddite politics, not in any way, but it is complete rejection of the social values currently espoused at nearly every major corporation in the Valley and among its outliers elsewhere in the United States. What is being suggested here is a values war against the Hollywood film industry. What is being suggested here is a values war against the elite-university establishment. What is being suggested here is a values war against the mainstream media and against most of the cable TV industry. What is being suggested here is a values war against.... but you get the idea. What this is all about is creating two things first and putting all available resources into the effort, a national newspaper and a national TV network. The newspaper would be a journal of practical new ideas more than anything else, there should be investigative journalism and "ideas journalism," and as many, useful ideas as possible, hard hitting ideas, it should not simply cover city desk reports. The idea is taking back the culture, not something else. Each should have major presence on the Web with a large number of spin off websites, blogs, video services, and the like. The TV network should have its own film studio. The idea is a massive offensive to conquer the culture. The idea also is to employ the very best people for the purpose. To give you an idea of who might be approached, even if some or all of these suggested people decline, a few names can be mentioned: Ross Douthat, Victor Davis Hanson, Jonathan Haidt, Amy Walter, John McWhorter, Thomas Sowell, Judith Reisman, Stephen Prothero, Kevin Philips, and so forth, very smart people with acute political sense as well as expertise in their respective fields of study. Other names could be added but to give you a sense of that this is all about. Not on the list are any Evangelicals that I know about. I am not interested in political policy that consists of pietistic anything, since pietism simply does not work in any political context. And any thought of pietists involved in political decision-making would be a huge mistake. That is, pietists are like the peaceful Quakers in the classic movie, High Noon, totally ineffective in terms of social policy which, in any case, they do not understand. To get things done you need to turn to Gary Cooper, someone willing to get his hands dirty, who may not like standing up to evil people and fighting against them, but that is what he is prepared to do, to the death if necessary. Pietists cannot bring themselves to become "Gary Coopers" even if they may make good nurses or doctors or the like. But keep them the hell away from politics, they would only get in the way. The idea is not to declare war against business, quite the contrary, the concept is to be as pro-business as possible; but not pro-business if we are discussing money obsession, companies that specialize in ruing lives, in price gouging in unfair competition, in invasion of privacy, and so forth. The idea is to appeal -as strongly as possible- to political Independents and, last I looked, these people buy homes, send their kids to college, buy books and apps and cars and appliances and groceries. They also comprise about 40 % of the adult age population in America. That is, yes, it would be a good idea to be solvent and to earn a profit, but money is not the prime objective. There should be a cap on earnings, somewhere in the 10% - 12 % range, written into the charters of the appropriate corporations. Surplus money would be used to expand the businesses, which is to say to increase their effectiveness is taking back the culture. About religion specifically, no-one should think for one moment that they must join any new religious cause, not mine, not anyone else's. However, what is essential is willingness not to oppose my efforts at making a new religious movement a reality. I have put up with decades of poverty, decades of crying in the wilderness, decades of being criticized, often unfairly, and I am not interested in any more such crap. That is, the newspaper and the TV channel should include coverage of religion including ample coverage of the beginnings of the New Christianity. I want this to be successful. This said, I also want to help people of other faiths to the extent that they advocate values consistent with the New Christianity. Help them with publicity for various of their causes, with scholarships for promising students, with grants to selected charities, and so forth. That is, if it becomes possible within a year or so after becoming solvent and on a positive trajectory, I would like to help out various Baptists, Lutherans, Catholics, Buddhists, Jews, Hindu charities, Zoroastrians, etc, and hope they do well with the investments. At first, when getting started, at most there could only be tokens of helpfulness, but at least the newspaper and the TV network would be on record. To make this reasonably clear. I am ecumenical in my soul and my faith reflects this fact. But while I certainly can be tolerant of Qadiri Sufis and have no animus against cultural Muslims, all forms of orthodox Islam are the enemy, this must be understood -and anyone who is unwilling to stand up to Muslims should go elsewhere. After all, my faith is based on identification of the Holy Spirit as female, with Goddess attributes, and Islam regards any such belief as the worst of sins deserving death. I am not about to tolerate anyone with that kind of criminal morality. The politics of the newspaper and the TV network should be Radical Centrism. Basically, "cafeteria politics" which chooses the best of Left and Right and "Other." Positions taken are strong, not meet-in-the-middle compromises. But there must always be some kind of balance, hence, to provide one example, while I am in basic agreement with pro-life views, you will not find anyone who is more pro-evolution than I am, plus I agree with the ideas of sociobiology. This kind of balancing is unthinkable on either the Left or the Right. Radical Centrists generally prefer new political ideas that cannot be classified Left or Right, original concepts, creative solutions to problems. And I am 100% in agreement with this approach even if, in the real world, sometimes all that is possible is balancing good ideas from Left and Right while junking the bad ideas of Left and Right. This is the program. It would cost real money. It would require sacrifice to make it happen. No illusions about anything. It seems obvious to me that nothing is a vital as taking back the culture. No compromises about anything important. If anyone is interested you know how to reach me. Billy R. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
