Truth is, There's No One Behind the Wheel

Townhall.com ^ | January 3, 2015 | Jonah Goldberg

[Sheapdog]

Goldberg runs interference like Medved and others to de-legitimize the idea that their exists a coordinated “power behind the throne” orchestrating events. The question always posed is what group and prove it; and if one cannot do this in two or three succinct statements they are a crazy wacko birds. I can agree with many things people like Goldberg say in their writings but they leave out or confine the realms of discussion much like spiking a story and or controlling the bookends or parameters thus serving to obfuscate or poison the well as far as understanding what’s really going on in the world and America.

[Popman]

So the world’s march toward one world communist control is mere happenstance?

Seriously ?

Sure there are a few powerful people and organizations that are trying to lead that march, but very few followers...

[subterfuge]

There are plenty of followers. They’re known as useful idiots, low information voters, progressives.

[SunTzuWu]

Perhaps in your snarky reply to SeekAndFind ( SeekAndFind's post )you might have done a little homework first.

This article comes from two different sources. The first is from Townhall with the title "Truth is, there’s no one behind the wheel", and the second is National Review with the title "Who’s Running the Country?

You locked down his thread from the National Review with the oh so polite "Do you ever search before posting?".You didn't even provide a link to the article you claim was posted first.. You should know better than most how unreliable FR search function is. It's legendary for its inconsistency and failure to find the easiest things.

I think you owe SeekAndFind an apology and if you're tired of duplicate posts then FIX the damn search function.

[Zeneta]

The “Invisible Hand”.

In every voluntary transaction each party gets what they want.

The problems occur when people allow others to enter into transactions on their behalf.

[Admin Moderator]

Feel free to look again at the respective headlines of the articles. Look real hard.

All one had to do (if one wanted to) was search for 'Wheel'. It ain't rocket science.

[right way right]

We were under God...today...not so much.

[SunTzuWu]

So now we are suposed to pick one random word for our search?
You were wrong and you know it.
You were rude and you know it.
The search function sucks and you know it.

[what's up]

Throughout history, from when man first left their caves and began trading and accumulating things, the bankers have run things.

They didn't run things from '29 to '45.

And that was the problem.

[Admin Moderator]

So now we are suposed to pick one random word for our search?

You could - or you could pick a significant word from the headline of an article you want to post. Or even 2 words. Even "no one behind the wheel" works.

[slowhandluke]

The Franklin School decided that you didn't have to run the government, or the economy to rule. You run the institutions, and importantly the schools. Look at the singleness of thought in all the education establishment, and you will see that they have been pretty successful.

Jonah is looking in the wrong place for the folks who want to steal his liberty. They are instead going to steal the minds of his kids and grandkids, who will then steal his liberty.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The right has its bugaboos, too. For instance, there are many who think the mainstream media is biased (it is) and that its bias is somehow centrally orchestrated like a scheme by some Bond villain (it isn't).

”The Mainstream Media” is biased, yes - but that doesn’t begin to cover it. Adam Smith famously asserted that  

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

The mere fact that members of “the mainstream media” read/listen to each other would be sufficient to qualify them as “meeting together” - not for merriment or diversion, but precisely about business. But in fact all of “the mainstream media” are associated, via their common membership in the Associated Press. And that has been continuously true for over a century and a half. The only question, then, is, “What motives do the members of the AP share which are distinct from the public interest?” Identify that, and you can explain the particular way in which the membership of the AP conspires against the public.

We know of the “bias in the media” as a "left wing" phenomenon. But what is “left wing,” anyway? I put it to you that the defining characteristic of "the MSM” is that its membership doesn’t do anything, it talks about others doing things. Theodore Roosevelt famously defined the public interest when he said, “It is not the critic who counts . . . the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena” getting things done, or at least trying to. As illustrated by Liz Warren’s formulation, “If you have a business, you didn’t build that,” the idea that the critic and not the doer is the one who counts is precisely the leftist conceit.

The “bias” in “the mainstream media” is its role in promoting the members of the AP and the “liberals”/“progressives” (call them what you will, I like “Grubercrats” myself) in an intensive go-along-and-get-along campaign against “the man in the arena.” There may not be any one single “Mr. Big” in charge. But that does not mean there is no conspiracy. There is. Members of the AP are so completely absorbed into the Borg that they lose all consciousness of the fact that the Borg even exists.