The essence of misinformation is to claim the normal is abnormal and vice-versa. Normally, the main attribute of conservatism is stability. Normally, since the time of Hobbes (and probably before) conservatism aligns itself with established order. Normally, chaos and anarchy are the chief evils to society that the Conservative wishes to thwart. Normally, the Conservative has a dubious view of the natural human condition independently of culture/civilization. Normally, a Conservative would place the virtues of liberty, while desirable, subordinate to the virtues of stability.
If Levin wrote a book called Stability and Chaos: A Conservative Manifesto, I might have found myself in agreement with much of what he had to say. But Levin is opting for a devious (or simple-minded) coup d’etat here. With the implicit trust secured that conservatism includes all the good stuff about order, stability and security, he develops a thesis that equates conservatism with liberty, turning the abnormal into the normal. This combines misinformation principles 7 and 9.
Think about it. You absolutely cannot maximize both stability and liberty. To all conservatives out there (not drinking the Levin Kool-Aid) I ask you, which one do you tend to concern yourself with more? Granted, it’s good to have both in proper measure. It’s good to have advocates for stability in a society and it’s good to have advocates of liberty, and a just compromise has a chance of being worked out. But when you have the advocates of stability pretending to be the advocates for liberty you are setting the table for pulling a fast one, and no just compromise is in the mix. Instead, you create an atmosphere where some of the population thinks an ideology is the embodiment of pure good. Other parts of the population will look at that same ideology as pure evil.
You do not detect much of the opposite phenomenon. Whatever bad ideas you might attribute to liberals (and I attribute some myself), you don’t hear them claiming to be the advocates of stability with the same ardor that folks like Levin claim to be advocates of liberty. I think this relates to misinformation principle # 8, misinformation outspends information. Corporations want the order of the currently entrenched corporate economy and the stability that necessitates strong, centralized government. Corporations have large coffers. Corporations are better able to subsidize misinformation turning the abnormal into the normal.
If you doubt that consider this. All labor interest groups combined contribute less than a quarter to lobbying than the single most important interest group for corporations, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. They would not spend such large sums on misinformation unless: 1) they had to in order to convince people that the abnormal is normal; and 2) they were successful at it.
Here is previous background material.
An overview of misinformation principles
A basic understanding of free markets
A basic understanding of property
Tags: Ideological Interest Groups, Liberty and Tyranny, Misinformation
