less and more than a conspiracy

I wish I had been invited to Rob Stein's presentation on what Lewis Lapham has called "the organizational structure of the Republican Message machine. As Lapham writes in September's Harper's which is not (yet?) on line, "Having devoted several months to his research through the available documents, he was content to let the facts speak for themselves--fifty funding agencies of different dimensions and varying degrees of ideological fervor nominally philanthropic but zealous in their common hatred of the liberal enemy disbursing the collective sum of roughly $3 billion over a period of thirty years for the fabrication of 'irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.'"
Irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas - a brilliant formulation, attributed I'm assuming to Stein. Now if we take Stein's research seriously, the right wing has bought an entire class and generation of intellectuals and academics, funding the 'research' of eager to please scholars such as Milton Friedman and Dinesh D'Souza. The first defends the miraculous power of markets while the second condemns cultural and moral relativism.The loosely organized system of funders, ideologues and foundations have more recently started to fund the campus (see gadflyer. So if the Young Conservatives are suddenly looking good on your local campus, you'll know that they're energized by large infusions of good old cash.
Lapham ends his editorial on a dark note: the concerted effort to dumb down public discourse has worked as both presidential candidates campaign on values and virtue rather than ideas. But at least one of them appears to believe in reason. The bottom line in America is -- it is better to be "good" than to be capable of "critical thinking." Wendy Kaminer has described this as piety triumphing over dissent. But the Academic Left has certainly contributed to the pathetic state of public discourse. Jeff Wallen's criticism of how contemporary academic debate gave more importance on "where the speaker comes from" than  what the speaker says is most succinct; this leads to the most radically individualist ethos -- each individual defends the interests of his or her identity rather than the validity of his/her argument. I think things are changing because I think finally we are realizing that it is democracy and NOT identity that needs to be defended.  At a meeting I attended this past year, a speaker tried to say, "Well as a ...., this makes me feel..." and no one was buying it. It didn't silence discussion. We moved on.