A Small-Minded, Easily-Swayed American Public
Over the past month we are witness once again to the incredibly myopic view of our citizenry as well as that of our elected officials. We as a country are stuck in a collective rut, allowing ourselves to be swayed by the best sound bites reproduced over and over again on the cable news networks, the best Republican bites and worst Democratic offerings replicated repeatedly on Fox, the reverse on MSNBC.
Back in 2005, James McGann took a look at one of the places our ideas come from, the concept of a “think-tank.” McGann noted the famous quote offered by Bill Baroody Sr. of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
“The competition of ideas is fundamental to a free society.”
I could not agree more.
While reviewing this notion, McGann suggests that conservative think-tanks were created to “develop an alternative set of ideas …. intended to challenge the liberal orthodoxy that dominated policy debates in Washington and on college campuses throughout the United States. McGann notes that these institutions initially were able to achieve “their objective through thoughtful and independent analysis of policy issues.”