On Coulter: she does have a down side. I remember she had a real run in with one of our State Parties a couple of elections ago. She basically waltzed in and wanted to run without committing to the party platform. She wanted to use the LP for her own agenda and she is decidedly not a Libertarian, although I will at least agree she has more signs of reason than many in the other, less sane wing of the Demopublican Party.

On McCarthy… after the old Communist regime in Russia came down, some historians got access to files there. And found out that there really were Communists under every bed. Well, at least there were inside the State Department. The trouble is, McCarthy and Nixon didn’t catch any of the real ones.

It also came out of Russian records, much to my surprise, that the Rosenbergs really *were* guilty of passing nuclear weapon secrets on to the Soviets at a very dangerous time and thus really were guilty of high treason.

On NPR. I grew up in Pittsburgh and have memories of the weeks long annual fundraising telethon’s on WQED as they begged the public to raise money. The station was most decidely and proudly community supported. WQED was, by the way, one of the key stations in the system, one of the ones that created programming. And yes, I actually did live in a house that was really in Misterrogers neighborhood. I was also in the neighborhood of the WQED studio for quite some time as it is just behind Mudge Graduate house at CMU…

I was impressed by Coulter’s Treason and by her Slander. I have, of course, never seen her on TV, but surely it’s understandable that her personality, if combative, would come across more so when live and perhaps when provoked?

The junction of the internment of the Japanese and McCarthyism was unfortunate and certainly poorly thought out. They were entirely different things. As I have emphasised, the internment was Government initiated and, by and large, nationally supported. Who dissented? Not even the National Council of Civil Liberties, though, as Coulter points out, the California branch did. The Government, with FDR President, was Democrat. However, before we get indignant post hoc, let us remember that this was 60 years ago, there was a war on and racism was far more a conventional element in society than is conceivable now.

For what it’s worth, the Japanese interned or imprisoned all Allied Nationals, civilians and military respectively, in all the territories they occupied.

Surely after all this time it is not unreasonable to ask whether the activities of McCarthy should be re-examined, rather than subjected to routine vilification? Coulter’s pages in Treason are worth reading in this respect. It may also be worth asking, “Was it a fact that he was nationally popular, but a hate figure of the media, academics and intellectuals?”

‘Michelle Malkin is the primary person trying to rehabilitate internment, and Malkin is who the column is largely about.

FWIW, Malkin has been, I think, very solidly debunked by Eric Muller.’

Er, no, Michelle Malkin has been loudly challenged by Eric Muller – but not ‘solidly debunked’, nor anything like it.

You can see all of their exchanges at michellemalkin.com – you may have to go into the archives a bit. Muller comes off as a nit-picking pedant who can’t get his facts straight. Malkin comes off pretty dam’ good, all things considered.

I don’t think it’s fair to characterize Malkin’s book – which I have read, have you? – as trying to ‘rehabilitate’ the internment of Japanese-Americans in WW2. I think a better description might be that her book tends to show that the internment was not simply a knee-jerk racist/xenophobic reaction to Pearl Harbor, devoid of any real justification, which is the way that it is taught in the US and how it now sets in the public consciousness. Her book demonstrates that there were serious and substantive concerns about Japanses espionage and sabotage networks in the US, which may, at the time, have offered some justification for the internment.

llater,

llamas

FWIW, Malkin has been, I think, very solidly debunked by Eric Muller.

Those subsidies began to be shrunk under the Reagan administration until today they are minimal.

(“I’ll take a drive to
Beverly Hills
Just before dawn
I’ll knock the little jockeys off
The rich peoples’ lawns…”

Zappa, “Uncle Remus”)

‘The second is something that always troubles me when Americans say: “X per cent of trial lawyers voted Y” and “Z per cent of journalists voted N”.

While I admit it would nice to have it confrmed that in excess of 85 per cent of BBC “journalists” voted Labour or LibDem (my guess), it nonetheless makes me wonder about the sanctity of the secret ballot.’

Bear in mind that, in the US, party affiliation is usually recorded on voter-registration documents (for the purposes of primary voting) and so is a matter of public record. So American data on how a particular group votes (or might be expected to vote based on previously-declared party affiliation) is probably much more statistically-sound.

Some of these analyses also rely on public records of monetary contributions to the various parties by individuals and lobbying groups, which are freely available and which also would be (I would suggest) a very strong indicator of voting patterns. I doubt, for example, that the American Bar Association donated the millions of dollars it donated to the Kerry campaign against the wishes of its members.

Leaving that aside, many of these sorts of analyses are based on self-identification, as, for example, here:

http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett200412080850.asp

This column speaks primarily to acedemics, but I think you will find that Ann Coulter’s assertions about the liberal leanings of journalists are supported by similar, referenced studies.

llater,

llamas

You’re right, the name of the network doesn’t help its image a bit. And it’s probably true that the foundations are leftist – there’s certainly a “oh whatever shall we do now that capitalism has despoiled our world” attitude behind a lot of NPR news that could be attributed to such a situation. But while I may disagree with the viewpoints, I don’t really have a problem with that sort of talk when it’s basically underwritten by private sources. To me it’s virtually the same as commercial radio, except there are pledge drives at certain times of year. If NPR were more like the BBC I’d probably be pretty upset, but that’s a scenario that will almost certainly never come to pass in this country.

Thanks, too, Jason, for the corrective information about NPR – but I’m not an American and National Public Radio does sound suspiciously like Nationalized Public Radio to someone in the UK. For what it’s worth, I believe that a lot of Foundations have been captured by the left – Ford, Macarthur especially. Correct me if I’m wrong.

1. Historically, the best way to convert a liberal is to have them move our of their parents’ home, get a job, and start paying taxes.

2. Liberals dispute slight reductions in the marginal tax rates as if they are trying to prevent Charles Manson from slaughtering baby seals.

3. The most crazed religious fanatic argues in more calm and reasoned tones than liberals responding to statistics on concealed-carry permits.

4. Liberals hate America, they hate “flag-wavers,” they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam (post 9/11). Even Islamic terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do. They don’t have the energy. If they had that much energy, they’d have indoor plumbing by now.

5. After Andrew Sullivan attended a large church gathering to see the true face of the “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” as Hillary Clinton called it, he discovered that “they seemed neither fanatics nor bigots.” Responding to Andrew Sullivan’s suggestions that those on the right should take similar excursions into the world of the left, Ann replied, “In point of fact, conservatives do spend time with the radicals they oppose-and lots of it. It can’t be avoided. Liberals are forever leaping out at us from our TV screens, newspapers, magazines, movies, and college lecterns. We know liberals and we know what they think. Unlike Sullivan’s exotic excursion into a right-wing gathering, any conservative can already attach names and faces to entire colonies of liberals. Ironically, regular church-going, middle-class Americans are far more cosmopolitan than the self-styled sophisticates of the left.”

These quotes are both outrageous and funny, hence the work of a polemicist. But, unlike the polemicists of the left, Ann Coulter grounds her witticisms and observations on the firm bedrock of truth. As she put it, “At least when a right winger rants, they have a point.”

I’m not a parituclarly big fan of NPR, but in light of the above quote I think a little perspective is in order here:

“A small amount of NPR money comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a federally created private, not-for-profit corporation that administers some of the money allocated by Congress for public broadcasting. CPB funding amounts to between 1-2 percent of NPR’s budget and it’s often “seed” money for new programs. NPR must bid for these grants annually and there is no guarantee that NPR will get them. Funding also comes from other federally supported foundations such as the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. But money from those organizations accounts for less than 1 percent of the budget.”

- NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin

Outside of the money referred to by Dvorkin above, NPR’s budget is underwritten by corporations, foundations, or local listeners. NPR is simply not heavily susidized by taxpayers, especially not in any sense that approaches the BBC. There is some taxpayer money involved, true, but anything under a fifth of the budget just doesn’t strike me as a heavy subsidy. Should it be taken away? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to overstate the case.