Letters to a Young Conservative (12 page)

I cannot believe that this kind of extreme bias is typical. Probably most journalists aspire to objectivity. Some even recognize that they hold liberal convictions and work hard in their stories to include alternative points of view. Usually, however, journalists allow their ideological compasses to shape their work without even realizing it. During the 1980s, many reporters couldn’t bring themselves to call the Sandinistas “Marxists” even though that’s what the Sandinistas called themselves. Instead, they called the Sandinistas “left-leaning,” as if they were the Latin American equivalents of Tom Daschle. Today, journalists routinely call John Ashcroft “ultraconservative,” but they don’t call Ted Kennedy “ultraliberal.” From their point of view, Ted Kennedy is
basically a centrist because he occupies the same position on the political spectrum that they do.

Media bias is a big problem because many Americans open the newspaper or turn on the television set and they think they are witnessing “the news,” that is, what just happened. They don’t seem to realize that countless things have occurred, and that a crucial process of selection determines what they read and see. What gets into the newspaper, what goes on page 1, what the headline says, which picture is chosen to illustrate the article, which premises shape the way the article is written—these are all subjective decisions made by editors and writers. And they are highly susceptible to ideological manipulation.

Most Americans don’t realize that behind the news stories they read are what may be termed “meta stories.” The meta story is the hidden general premise that controls the specific news story. During the 1980s, the “meta story” shaping news coverage was that Reagan’s economic policies were having disastrous social effects. One such effect, according to the media, was homelessness. That’s why we saw countless articles and television features on “the homeless.” Homelessness was identified as a major problem. Millions of people were said to be homeless. Then, suddenly, homelessness ceased to be a social problem. This change corresponded with the election of President Clinton. During the Clinton era there were hardly any stories on the subject. Had all those people found homes? Of course not. But most journalists
did not identify Clinton’s policies with hurting the poor. They lost interest in the homeless because the homeless had ceased to illustrate the follies of Reaganism.

What are some of the other “meta stories”? One is “Another Vietnam.” Every time the United States intervenes abroad—whether in Grenada or Bosnia or Afghanistan—a chorus of voices in the media warns that it’s Vietnam all over again. Terms such as “bogged down” and “quagmire” start surfacing in
Newsweek
and the
Boston Globe.
Dan Rather’s expression becomes even more constipated than usual. Never mind how often the Vietnam analogy is proved wrong: It is embedded in the psyche of a media generation that came of age during the Vietnam era. Another “meta story” is Women and Minorities Hardest Hit. You’ve probably seen the headline: “The Bush Economic Program: Women and Minorities Hardest Hit.” Columnist Joseph Sobran notes that, if nuclear war erupts, the headline in the
New York Times
will read, “Nuclear War Breaks Out: Women and Minorities Hardest Hit.”

These “meta stories” are generally immune to refutation. As an illustration I submit a series of articles that appeared recently in the
New York Times.
The premise of these articles was that it was highly ironic and troubling that more Americans were in prison than ever before at a time when violent crime rates were shrinking. It never seemed to occur to the editors that maybe violent crime rates were shrinking
because
many of the criminals were locked up!

Unlike many conservatives, who are incensed by media bias, I take a wry view of it because I think that it is becoming less of problem. First, more and more Americans realize that Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw don’t just report the news; they are instrumental in deciding what is news. The
New York Times
doesn’t present “all the news that’s fit to print” but “all the news that fits.” This is not to say that the
Times
isn’t worth reading. It is a valuable expression of the Manhattan liberal Jewish perspective. Once people figure out the ideological compass that is directing their news they become more critical viewers and readers.

A second reason for optimism is that the liberal monopoly on the way the news is reported has been effectively shattered.
Time
magazine, the
New York Times,
and the major television networks once had a shaping influence on virtually all the major news stories, from Watergate to the Iran-contra hearings. Those days, thank God, are over. Now lots of people get their information from talk radio and from the Internet and from cable news channels such as Fox News
.
Suddenly there is real diversity in what Americans see and hear. The liberal pundits fret about the decline of American journalism—Americans prefer the Fox News Channel to PBS! People would rather listen to Rush Limbaugh than to Bill Moyers!

But journalism isn’t in decline, only liberalism. Americans prefer Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and the fiery faces on the Fox News Channel because they are in
the
Dartmouth Review
mold: jocular, outrageous, and unafraid to slaughter sacred cows. Not only are these right-wing figures more interesting, they are also more insightful than liberal drones such as Moyers. Not only are the liberal drones consistently wrong, they are sanctimoniously convinced that they are right and that they are better than everyone else. They have been done in by that little device called the remote control because now Americans have alternatives. It’s great, and there’s nothing that the liberals can do about it.

Dear Chris,

Having said what I think about liberal professors and about liberal journalists, I will now tell you my view of liberal judges. This group is probably the most corrupt of all, corrupt not in the sense of taking bribes, but in the sense of betraying the basic function of a judge. Yes, the very concept of the “liberal judge” is an oxymoron, and the presence of so many liberal judges in our courts has had the most deleterious consequences for our society and for our system of government.

We have witnessed nothing less than a social revolution in America in the past half century. This social revolution was not produced by the American people. It was produced by the Supreme Court, and then imposed on the American people. “But we are not undermining the democratic process,” the liberal advocates of these
changes insist. “The judges are merely interpreting the Constitution.”

Well. The Constitution is indeed our supreme law, and it is the function of the Supreme Court to interpret the law. But liberal judges have gone beyond interpretation in making rulings that fundamentally revise the Constitution. The liberals have effectively rewritten the Constitution in a manner that those who wrote that document would not recognize. Moreover, liberal scholars such as Laurence Tribe and Bruce Ackerman have produced a theory of jurisprudence that says the Constitution is a living document and that judges should feel free to adapt it as they see fit to current circumstances.

Let’s begin by looking at what the Supreme Court has done. Without any constitutional authority, it has invalidated numerous state laws on such matters as school prayer and the regulation of obscenity. But, the liberal will say, what about the specific constitutional provision of “separation of church and state”? What about the First Amendment? Actually, there is
no
specific constitutional provision for the separation of church and state. Moreover, the First Amendment clearly specifies, “Congress shall make no law . . .” It is a restriction on federal, not state, power.

Liberal judges Earl Warren, William Brennan, and Thurgood Marshall devoted their careers to trying to take things that they don’t like out of the Constitution, such as gun rights and the death penalty, while putting in things that conform to their liberal ideology, such as
constitutional protections for abortion, homosexual rights, and obscenity. Today this addition and subtraction process continues with judges Ruth Bader Gins-burg, Stephen Breyer, and David Souter. In a sense, these people are policymakers masquerading as judges.

If that seems an unduly harsh way of putting it, let me try to show why it is duly harsh. Consider the “right to privacy” that the Supreme Court invoked in striking down all state laws that restricted abortion. Where is this right to be found in the Constitution? The document contains specific privacy protections, such as the right against “unreasonable search and seizure.” But there is no general right to privacy. Examine the text, hold it up to the light, read it backwards in the mirror—it just isn’t there.
Roe v. Wade,
the 1973 decision declaring abortion a constitutional right and invalidating numerous state laws regulating abortion, represented a grotesque abuse of judicial authority. Yet even today the Supreme Court continues to uphold, and even expand, this “right.”

Let me be clear: I am not here debating the policy merits of the Supreme Court’s decisions about school prayer, obscenity, and abortion. Possibly the liberals are right that public prayer is dangerous and that perusing obscene materials and killing the unborn have great social merit. Personally, I would question such priorities, but I am not interested in doing so here. Here I am simply raising the question of whether these are policy issues that it is the role of the Supreme Court to decide.
Does the Constitution confer legitimate warrant for the Court to settle such questions?

In a famous speech a few years ago, Justice William Brennan answered yes: “For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.” This sounds reasonable, but it should take only a moment’s reflection to see why it is utterly bogus. Sure, the Constitution needs to adapt and change, but the framers anticipated this. There is a procedure specified in the Constitution—the amendment process—by which the document can be changed. And several times during the course of American history the Constitution has been amended. But it takes an overwhelming majority in the Congress and in the state legislatures—a virtual consensus of the society—to do this. The framers wisely made it hard to change the Constitution so that it would remain an expression of the enduring will of the people and not become the property of any particular interest group.

By exploiting the discretion that is inherent in the process of interpretation, the liberals have succeeded in hijacking the Constitution for their own political ends. In essence, liberals frequently seek to use the courts to bring about political and social changes that they cannot achieve by amending the Constitution or by going through the democratic process. One target of contemporary liberal judicial activism is the death penalty. The Constitution specifically provides for the death penalty.
A sizeable majority of Americans support it. It is unlikely bordering on impossible for liberals to amend the Constitution to impose a comprehensive ban on the death penalty. But liberal judges are seeking to use the “equal protection” and “cruel and unusual punishment” clauses of the Constitution to strike down the death penalty.

Once again, I am not here debating the merits of the death penalty. There is a legitimate argument over whether the death penalty effectively deters violent crime, although my personal observation is that not one of the criminals who have been executed over the years has ever killed again. However this may be, the issue here is whether judges should have the power to make a ruling that specifically contravenes the Constitution and also goes against the wishes of the American people. Here the liberals generally say yes, and the conservatives generally say no.

The question goes to the heart of what kind of society we are. In a democratic society, the people make the laws. The judge’s job is to interpret the law, to apply it to specific cases. When judges go beyond their constitutional authority in making laws they usurp the prerogatives of the legislature and of the people. Do we want to be ruled by nine unelected individuals drawn from a relatively narrow segment of society, or do we want to be ruled by people elected in the manner that the Constitution provides?

The role of the judge is like the role of an umpire in a baseball game. The umpire does not make the rules. The
rules are given to him. His job is to apply the rules. The fairness of the game depends on whether the umpire performs this neutral function. The liberals, however, want their judges not to be umpires but to be players. They want activist judges who will issue rulings that are congruent with liberal ideology.

The liberal success in this area poses a special problem for conservatives. For years conservatives have advocated a jurisprudence of “judicial restraint.” Let us have judges, President Bush says, who will issue rulings that are within the parameters of the Constitution. In theory this makes sense, but in practice it is not enough for conservatives to seek judges who are restrained, who refrain from imposing their personal views on their rulings. If liberal judges push left and conservative judges remain neutral, the result will be a continual ratcheting toward the left. This is what has happened over the past half century.

What is needed, therefore, is a couple of decades of right-wing judicial activism.

Conservative judges should give the liberals a dose of their own medicine. One exciting possibility is to invalidate the provisions of the progressive income tax by finding them inconsistent with the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Who cares that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to address entirely different issues? Who cares that its provisions were intended to apply to the states?

When the liberals scream, they should be solemnly assured that the Constitution is a living document, we
should not be constrained by old rules, we now understand better how multiple levels of taxation create multiple classes of citizens, and so on. The goal here is to teach the liberals a lesson, to show them that two can play at this game. Let us hope that, by demonstrating how judicial activism can be invoked to harm the causes they hold dear, we can persuade the liberals to adopt the view that judges should interpret laws and not make them.