After Action Report - PBS Deliberation Day

My package of material for this event only arrived about 2 days prior to the actual event, so a lot of preparation that I could have done on the specific subjects to be covered was taken up trying to cover all possible discussion subjects.

The event itself was sponsored by McNeil/Lehrer Productions,Yale, Stanford, Global Connections, Carnegie Mellon University, WQED

Everyone began gathering at a location on the CMU campus at 8:00 AM Saturday the 16th. Registration, nametags, & morning buffet available - I made sure to drink enough coffee to kickstart myself properly, and started in on some small talk with other participants. I understood that this group was supposed to be a representative sampling of Allegheny County voters, and I noticed more older people than younger included in the group.

Everyone was friendly, not quite knowing what to expect, and talk was easy, no one pushing politics at that time that I heard.

They began the session with introductions of all the major players, showed us a film clip with details on Bush, Kerry, and the approaches to national security & terrorism and the ecomomy & jobs. These would be the subjects for discussion through the rest of the day.

They had us split into groups of 10 people, each with a moderator, and note-taker, fill out our releases for appearance on TV, etc.

Our morning session lasted about 2-2 1/2 hours, the subject covering national security, terrorism, and the war in Iraq & Afghanistan.

Of the 11 people, the distribution I could make out on political leanings went 3 very liberal, 4 moderately liberal, 2 moderately conservative and two conservative. I believe the day’s effort was to shift peoples opinions with political debate, so there was always an element of change, but I think this is accurate. The discussions were civil, though sometimes emotional, and everyone had ther chance to speak.

Sessions ended with each group drafting two or three questions on the subject, to ask a panel of experts later in the day. A survey on our views was taken, most of the questions the same or very similar to the ones from the initial telephone interview.

I won’t say I dominated the conversation, because everyone did have their chance to speak, but I did not hesitate to speak up to represent the conservative side of the issues. If there was a pause in the conversation, I filled it. Later on, I tempered my approach by asking the group questions, the obvious answers being a conservative or Bush-positive response.

Got the chance to talk w/ participants outside my group. I did what I could to spread the word during these conversations & pass on FreeRepublic’s web address, along with Drudge & suggestions to start reading Sowell, Williams, etc. to anyone I encountered that was the least bit conservative.

On return from lunch, our group began the second round of discussion, this time on jobs, the economy, taxes & the cuts.

Afternoon session was shorter. We composed two questions from the ‘jobs/economy’ discussion, took the survey again, and went back to the main assembly room.

The questions from the groups were presented to a panel of ‘learned’ individuals with lots of important sounding credentials. I listened for a bit, but was not that impressed with the answers. One of the panelists tried to answer a question concerning other countries response to terrorism by beginning ‘Well, I imagine...’.

We returned again to the small groups, completed the survey again, and were sent along to collect our stipend for the day, and a small reception.

Everyone I spoke with enjoyed themselves. One lady at the end of the day admitted she would have done it for nothing The chance to spend the day talking politics in an environment where everyone stuck to the ground rules was a change from the normal confrontational situations we always run into.

Very little mention of the candidates was made at any time during the day, but the surveys did contain questions relating to how we would rate the job performance of each on the particular issues, and who we would vote for.

The end of the day left me feeling like I’d just spent a few hours at the range, which I found very odd. The shooters out there will know what I mean.

Finished watching the WQED (On Q) piece just now, & must have received 2 minutes of air time that had been filmed during our discussions.

Thursday, October 21st PBS McNeill Group will use what they want from the WQED filming to assemble their own presentation.

Everyone was polite through the whole day. I was able to willingly carry on political conversations with liberals, something I haven’t been able to bring myself to do in a long time.

The web-sites of the groups partnering in this event, and the list of groups included in the material distributed to us had a definite globalist approach to government, economy, etc. The thought I kept having was that they are surveying the group to measure what changes occur, and how fast in these discussion situations. Based on the literature I saw on some of the web-sites, there is no question that they want to replace our representational Republic with direct vote democracy.

I did make this point to several people outside the discussion group, but from what I can tell, nobody else was looking for the man behind the curtain. At least a few more are now.

I too participated in PBS deliberation day here in Virginia. I parked away from the auditorium so my multiple Bush Cheney stickers would not give away my position beforehand, and left my Bush button and my "W The President" hat in the car.

After registration, we watched the same videos, and then went to the small groups. Our morning session was economic issues, and of the 12 of us in the group, I'd say there was only 1 other conservative, and she was kind of light. Several nurses, a teacher, a retired stock market type, a sex counselor.

I kept my powder dry for the first 15 minutes or so, and then saw my chance. I asked for the floor and started rebutting the general left wing drivel I'd been listening to by starting with one of my favorite observations. I pointed out that the left and the liberals in this country are the true reactionaries, because they're always intransigent: against partial privatization of social security, against health savings accounts, against anything that strays from the Kennedy/Johnson "great society" type of thinking.

There was a stunned silence. The group couldn't quite get their heads around idea that the "progressives" were the one's that actually impede meaningful change.

The teacher took the floor and talked about the flu vaccine issue, and how the government should work with private industry on these types of problems, and then agreed when the stock-broker started in on how the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. I jumped in again to point out to the teacher that the type of "public private partnerships" that were so popular with Hillary Clinton were not unlike the Italian fascism of the 1930's, and called the broker on his statement about poverty. He struck back by saying that 30 years ago in the South you had real poverty and situations akin to slavery, and I countered that that was exactly my point: the poor in this country live quite well in most cases compared to the rest of the world and to the impoverished in the sixties.

When we broke for lunch, I assumed I had no allies, but to my surprise several people came up to me and thanked me for forcing them to think differently. The other conservative wanted to discuss the national sales idea I'd broached, and at lunch the sex counselor bustled up to inform me that she was a lesbian. I guess she figured I needed to know. When I brought up Kerry's mean spirited remarks about Mary Cheney, she admitted that it had been inappropriate.

After lunch we got into the conversation about Iraq, Al Queda and terrorism, and as you might imagine, I was fierce in defense of our President. I brought up the historic vote in Afghanistan, only to have the lesbian tell me that women there were now worse off than they'd been under the Taliban (!), and the broker confidently assured me that the administration had incorrectly linked Iraq to 9/11, and that everyone now agreed that the Iraq war was a useless misadventure. When I politely told him that that was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard, he fumed that I must read a different newspaper than he did. When I told him that I was sure he was still reading the discredited New York Times, his mouth just hung open. It grew quite heated.

When we broke for the final session, four others surprised me when they came up to thank me for articulating how they felt about the President and the issues, and I left thinking that our group would likely split 6 for Bush and 6 for Kerry. I think that as the group had an 80% liberal slant, that this result was quite satisfactory and I hope I had some influence in turning at least a few votes our way.

All in all, a productive Saturday.

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