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What we need these days -- desperately -- is some advocacy for objective truth -- for a rigorously "reality-based" discussion. Sunstein's nicey-nice, the-liberals-make-some-good-points-but-wait-the-conservatives-also-have-some-good-points rhetoric is the same shit we've been hearing for six years from those who would abdicate their responsibility to keep the conservative movement from destroying our country, and the world.
I don't think there's a liberal equivalent to "dittoheads," nor can the cowing and aping that characterizes programs like Limbaugh's, and their listenerships, be fairly called a bipartisan phenomenon. Even on sites like Dailykos.com -- and Dan Froomkin's blog -- there's intense and serious debate on the threads about nearly every post. (Okay: not so much on Froomkin . . . but then, what is there to argue about? Every day, he lays out in methodical detail the ways -- new ones every day -- in which every branch of government has become corrupted and politicized, with the tacit approval of the Platonic guardians who Sunstein believes should be delivering our news and analysis.)
Isn't one of the Big Ideas of civil political discussion that the "correct" ideas gain influence as others are exposed to them? Therefore, it makes sense that, if certain policies are better reasoned, and more beneficial, then discussion among perceptive, open-minded people will swing the consensus that way. When this happens, it's not a "troubling problem" requiring diagnosis. It's only a problem when badly reasoned, destructive ideas are gaining influence through dogmatism.
Cass Sunstein doesn't report on anything specific that happened during those panel discussions, and I'm curious to see whether the book discusses them in more detail. He seems to imply that when somebody mutters "The queers make me sick . . . Do you know what they do in bed?" and then others, not surprisingly, assent to that position from social pressure, this is basically the same phenomenon that happens when a liberal says "The truth is, my own marriage isn't affected by a gay couple's marriage . . . and in states like Massachussets and Vermont, where gay marriage (or its equivalent) has now been legal for some time, nobody seems to be reporting that 'traditional marriage' is under threat, or in decline," and with this argument convinces others to change their positions.
He also seems to suggest that we need equal room in our political discourse for people who advocate (or tolerate) rape, torture, and pillage (abroad) and looting and corruption at home, and for those who oppose these things. Is it really a problem that I'm not open-minded enough on the issue of the CIA's "black" torture sites in Romania and Poland? Am I so woefully underinformed about the objective science of global climate change?
Also, Sunstein assumes that, before the advent of the blogosphere, liberal and conservative viewpoints were getting fair play. That's not what I remember. In fact, it hasn't been until the last few years that I've been able to easily find intelligent commentary from the left. That's not because the commentators weren't out there before, but because the conservative, corporate newsmedia excluded them from the discussion.
"Dittoheads" -- and Limbaugh -- were a cultural phenomenon a good while before the advent of the Internet as a political force.
Finally, while ivory-tower intellectuals like Sunstein may enjoy long, serious daily conversations in their "salons" about the various issues of the day, for most of us working stiffs, it's been very hard, until the last few years, to find a place to discover the viewpoints of other concerned nobodies, and to express our own. I may be wrong about Sunstein's thesis, but my opinion (if I can say so myself) isn't worthless or idiotic. Because of a "niche" "content-provider" called Salon, others are able to hear my comments, echo them, or shout them down. I much prefer this to getting my news from Brian Williams and Katie Couric, or from roundtable discussions on NewsHour with approved commentators like Sunstein.
If you're "deeply concerned" about the blogosphere, you're "deply concerned" about the idea of a truly democratic marketplace of ideas. We liberals need to hone our rhetoric, and we need to gain more skill at holding our elected representatives to task. Our problem is not that we haven't given the conservative movement a fair hearing.
