Free Republic

TAKING LIBERTIES Shut Up, They ExplainedThe left's regulatory war against free speech.BY BRIAN C. ANDERSONWednesday, January 25, 2006 12:01 a.m. ESTThe rise of alternative media--political talk radio in the 1980s, cable news in the '90s, and the blogosphere in the new millennium--has broken the liberal monopoly over news and opinion outlets. The left understands acutely the implications of this revolution, blaming much of the Democratic Party's current electoral trouble on the influence of the new media's vigorous conservative voices. Instead of fighting back with ideas, however, today's liberals quietly, relentlessly and illiberally are working to smother this flourishing universe...

Talk radio, cable news, and the blogosphere freed U.S. political discourse. The Left wants to rein it in again. The rise of alternative media—political talk radio in the eighties, cable news in the nineties, and the blogosphere in the new millennium—has broken the liberal monopoly over news and opinion outlets. The Left understands acutely the implications of this revolution, blaming much of the Democratic Party’s current electoral trouble on the influence of the new media’s vigorous conservative voices. Instead of fighting back with ideas, however, today’s liberals quietly, relentlessly, and illiberally are working to smother this flourishing universe of political...

Conservatives in Hollywood?! Brian C. Anderson Autumn 2005 It was hard to parody Hollywood’s loony limousine liberalism this summer. “I’m coming out,” trumpeted actress Jane Fonda about her plans for an anti-Iraq-war bus tour (thankfully later canceled). “I have not taken a stand on any war since Vietnam”—if “stand” is the right word for her 1972 lovefest with the enemy. Paramount announced that conspiracy-minded director Oliver Stone, who described the 9/11 terrorists’ “revolt” as a legitimate “fuck you, fuck your order” to culture-controlling American movie corporations (of all things), will helm Tinseltown’s first large-scale drama about the attacks. David Koepp,...

<p>It was hard to parody Hollywood’s loony limousine liberalism this summer. “I’m coming out,” trumpeted actress Jane Fonda about her plans for an anti-Iraq-war bus tour (thankfully later canceled). “I have not taken a stand on any war since Vietnam”—if “stand” is the right word for her 1972 lovefest with the enemy. Paramount announced that conspiracy-minded director Oliver Stone, who described the 9/11 terrorists’ “revolt” as a legitimate “fuck you, fuck your order” to culture-controlling American movie corporations (of all things), will helm Tinseltown’s first large-scale drama about the attacks. David Koepp, co-writer of Steven Spielberg’s remake of War of the Worlds, likened the movie’s ravaging aliens to the U.S. military in Iraq. And on the Huffington Post website, such celebrity lefties as Rob Reiner and Laurie David huffed daily about President Bush’s outrages against civil liberties, Mother Earth, and all that’s proper.</p>

Nothing rattles the American Left so completely as the specter of a conservative, Bush-appointed Supreme Court. And no wonder. Over the last half-century, sympathetic judges have given the Left “progressive” policy outcomes that the voting booth wouldn’t deliver. It is this liberal judicial legacy — everything from affirmative action to partial-birth abortion — that the Left fears a Bush-influenced bench will sweep away. Haunted by the doomsday scenario of a Supreme Court dominated by Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the Democrats and their allies will fight with every means they can muster to block the appointment of conservative justices. If...

IN a well-known spoof of a typical talk-radio exchange, two callers debate a fatuous point. The first says: ''Right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up with this country being sick and tired. I'm certainly not and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.'' The second caller retorts, ''Well, I meet a lot of people, and I'm convinced that the vast majority of wrong-thinking people are right.'' A conservative housewife, listening to the blather, snaps, ''Liberal rubbish!'' and turns the dial. It's a shining example of...

In the sixties, many of us were pulled to the left because we thought it was the ideology of liberty. Duped by a false caricature of the conformist fifties as a neo-Puritan, repressed enemy of the individual, we were attracted by the spontaneous, exuberant celebration of individual freedom we thought characterized that decade. Those of us with intellectual pretensions further asserted that the sixties sensibility was squarely in the American tradition of autonomous individualism. Surely, as the movie Easy Rider suggested, the hippy was the new mountain man, the new Huck Finn, the new frontiersman — and so, more quintessentially...

The 'South Park' revolution By Bill Steigerwald TRIBUNE-REVIEW Saturday, June 4, 2005 Talk radio and Fox News are doing a fine job of countering the liberal tilt of such mainstream media outlets as CBS, NPR and The New York Times. But as Brian Anderson shows in his thin but valuable book, "South Park Conservatives," the revolt against liberal bias also is picking up speed in the pop culture, in book publishing, in the blogosphere and, of all places, on college campuses. I talked with Anderson by telephone from his offices in New York City, where he is senior editor at...

Oh, how we conservatives once envied liberal writers. Just 10 years ago, liberal writers could propose a book on, say, how American capitalism stiffs the workingman or how the bourgeois family spawns injustice. Major publishers would respond by throwing oodles of money their way, or at least consider putting out the book. But pitch a critique of affirmative action or a defense of limited government and, unless your name was Buckley or Will, you'd be lucky to get a personalized rejection letter. There was "a tremendous amount of marketplace and institutional resistance" to publishing conservative books, said Adam Bellow, an...

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It seems as if every week a new "political" book comes out, written by an author from either side of political spectrum. Most of these books, while great reads, mainly have the effect of "preaching to the choir". Not so with Brian C. Anderson's fantastic new book best selling book South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias. The book has sparked a raging debate about the future of conservatism, not only amongst Republicans, but also among the Mainstream Media. One gets the feeling that the book will stand the test of time and that many years from now...

Interview with Brian Anderson. Posted: May 1, 2005 Brian Anderson is the Senior Editor of City Journal, but he often contributes pieces to the magazine itself.  His new book expands on the idea of the South Park Republican, or a strain of conservative who believes strongly in the free market and our national defense, yet is socially liberal on many issues. The term was first created by Andrew Sullivan, but Anderson joined in on the discussion via his 2003 essay called “We’re Not Losing the Culture Wars Anymore” .  He now celebrates this ultramodern breed of anti-perfectionist in his newly...

That is the title of a new book by Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal magazine and a member of the Manhattan Institute think tank. I assume most have watched an episode of "South Park," but for the benefit of those readers who happen to be my parents, let me explain. A crudely drawn cartoon coupled with even cruder language, "South Park" is one of Comedy Central's hottest shows, in which each week four small-town Colorado grade-school boys find themselves in some outlandish adventure, often featuring one or more of the eccentric townspeople (the town itself is South Park)...

If there was any doubt that my fellow Democrats with white skin, the notorious white liberal, is the most intolerant creature on the planet, all you have to do is check one of their most popular daily blogs, the Daily Kos, to see how they operate. After I posted the column below, Daily Kos ACTUALLY SHUT DOWN the site and banned me from posting there. Keep in mind, I didn't use profanity. All I did was disagree with their opinion on Air America Radio. Also keep in mind that Daily Kos himself called for a boycott of Time Magazine after...

The idea that one possesses social views that diverge from the average conservative has caused many of us on the right to use “libertarian” as a means of self-description. Yet, there may be a better term for those devoted to the free market, the nation’s defense, and who consider pornography…slightly less than offensive. Andrew Sullivan was the first to describe such a subclass with words, “South Park Republicans.” The notion of cross-cultural rightists has since been expounded upon by numerous pundits. Brian Anderson first addressed the subject in 2003 through an essay in City Journal, a magazine he edits, called...

A review of Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity, by Darrin M. McMahon. In the spring of 1778, Voltaire's final play, Irène, opens at Paris's Comédie française to rave reviews. The aged philosophe, once persecuted and exiled, is now a national hero. Leaving his sickbed at the sumptuous Hôtel de Villete, he musters enough strength to attend a performance. An admiring throng, in a fever-pitch of excitement, surrounds and follows his carriage as it spirits him to the theater; within the hall, the crowd greets him with wild applause: "Long live our Homer!" It...

When Dan Rather retired a year early as anchor of CBS Evening News this March, his departure symbolized the end of an era of liberal media dominance and the onset of the new media era that is proving far friendlier to the ideas and arguments of the Right. Gone are the days when the Big Three networks, plus the New York Times and the Washington Post, decided what was newsworthy, usually with a liberal spin. Even if intrepid bloggers hadn’t debunked Rather’s specious September 60 Minutes II scoop that President Bush shirked his National Guard duties decades ago—a humiliation to...

One of the side benefits of presidential elections every four years is that it allows for fairly close readings of where America's culture as a whole currently stands. That's one reason so many books on the topic are released shortly after each presidential election's conclusion. One of the newest is Brian C. Anderson's "South Park Conservatives," the title of which will be familiar to Tech Central Station readers. The name is based in part on a piece that Stephen Stanton wrote for TCS back in 2002 called "South Park Republicans." Anderson, the senior editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal,...

One of the side benefits of presidential elections every four years is that it allows for fairly close readings of where America's culture as a whole currently stands. That's one reason so many books on the topic are released shortly after each presidential election's conclusion. One of the newest is Brian C. Anderson's "South Park Conservatives," the title of which will be familiar to Tech Central Station readers. The name is based in part on a piece that Stephen Stanton wrote for TCS back in 2002 called "South Park Republicans." Anderson, the senior editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal,...

<p>For decades, with few exceptions, a liberal sensibility dominated American humor. From Lenny Bruce to Norman Lear's "All in Family" to "Will & Grace," the laughs came at the expense of fuddy-duddy conservatives and bourgeois conventions. But over the last few years, a new kind of cutting-edge humor has emerged whose primary target is the Left. It's a sign of how much ground liberalism has lost in our cultural life.</p>