The Extremist Rhetoric is Self-Reinforcing

This aide and other Republicans describe a recurring chicken-and-egg question: Who came first to these hardline, no-compromise stands – conservative media or their audiences? Are media celebrities and outlets simply reflecting their audiences, or shaping the views of readers, listeners and viewers? “I think they just feed off each other” in “a pact from hell,” the Senate aide said. “In a way we’re our own worst enemies, not the Democrats. It’s the conservative media pushing us...

 Far-Right Rhetoric is Profitable

Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoman in the House Republican leadership and a former politics professor, said, “There’s a big difference between intellectual conservatism and what exists out there now. It’s much more populist in its orientation and much wider in its reach. This is not an elite opinion, a Bill Buckley sort of thing.” And in a nod to the new media’s greater profitability, Cole added, “While it’s conservative in its orientation, it’s a financially driven enterpr...

 Science and Art, the Few and the Many

In science, address the few; in literature, the many. In science, the few must dictate opinion to the many; in literature, the many, sooner or later, force their judgement on the few. But the few and the many are not necessarily the few and the many of the passing time: for discoverers in science have not un-often, in their own day, had the few against them; and writers the most permanently popular not unfrequently found, in their own day, a frigid reception from the many. By the few, I mean ...