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Contrary Notions

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In 2004, Clear Channel sponsored jingoistic “Rally for America” events around the country in support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. — location: 212 ^ref-64637

On foreign affairs the press’s role as a cheerleader of the national security state and free-market capitalism is almost without restraint. — location: 229 ^ref-61131

Railing against the press’s “liberalism” is a way of putting the press on the defensive, keeping it leaning rightward for its respectability. So liberal opinion in this country is forever striving for credibility within a conservatively defined framework. — location: 237 ^ref-24575

This is the conservative problem: reality itself is radical, so we must not get too close to it. — location: 253 ^ref-32035

internalized forms of self-censorship are more effective in preserving the dominant ideology than any state censor could hope to be. — location: 282 ^ref-30355

accompanied by an editorial that actually praised the Indonesian military for “rightly playing its part with utmost caution.” — location: 312 ^ref-9924

free-market and free-trade policies undermine local producers, rely heavily on state subsidies to multinational corporations, destroy public sector services, and create greater gaps between rich and poor nations and between the wealthy few and the underprivileged many in every nation. — location: 349 ^ref-29236

A minor hike in the program’s tax ceiling would take care of any increased demand when the baby boomers start to retire. This point gets relatively little play. — location: 371 ^ref-26274

False balancing was evident in a BBC report that spoke of “a history of violence between Indonesian forces and Timorese guerrillas”—with not a hint that the guerrillas were struggling for their lives against an Indonesian invasion force that had slaughtered some 200,000 Timorese. — location: 419 ^ref-31578

Follow-up avoidance is a kind of damage control. — location: 438 ^ref-9350

we can look at the internal evidence to find that, like any liar, the press and the officialdom it serves are filled with inconsistencies and contradictions. — location: 589 ^ref-450

After many difficult years, Savio died in 1996 at the age of 53. His last job was as a poorly paid adjunct at Sonoma State University. — location: 695 ^ref-47144

This is an odd argument coming from them, Steven Lubet points out, since conservatives usually dismiss the scarcity of women or minorities in a workforce or student body as simply the absence of qualified applicants. That is not discrimination, they insist, it is self-selection. — location: 839 ^ref-37122

They want to dismantle human services, get rid of public schools, public housing, and public health facilities; and they want to abolish the government’s regulatory role in the corporate economy. But they also want to extend government power into other areas. They want more federal power to carry out surveillance, classify official information, control private morals, vaporize civil liberties, and suppress public protest. — location: 1183 ^ref-18142

But for the most part, the press went about its business of blaming the victims, glorifying the police, and demonizing those who fought back. — location: 1713 ^ref-42225

Individual competition in the pursuit of private gain brings out the best of our creative energies and thereby maximizes our productive contributions and advances the well being of the entire society. — location: 2330 ^ref-27270

I try to be a speaker who makes himself an instrument for projecting a message of social justice. This is different from using the message as an instrument to project and elevate the speaker, which is what too many in public life seem to do. — location: 2404 ^ref-57339

I dislike powermongers because they attempt to inflate themselves by diminishing others, and they have no dedication to social justice. — location: 2412 ^ref-62163

Developed within an existing social order that is dominated by big government in the service of big business, modern technology takes a form that perforce favors the well-placed few over the general populace. — location: 2473 ^ref-29786

looking at the larger picture, money best serves those who have immense amounts of it and who use it to accumulate power in order to accumulate still more money. — location: 2494 ^ref-19613

To deny the possibility of false consciousness is to assume there has been no indoctrination, no socialization to conventional values, and no suppression of information and dissenting opinion. — location: 2516 ^ref-37311

To reject the concept of false consciousness as elitist is to ignore the fact that one’s awareness of one’s own interests and one’s political consciousness in general may be stunted or distorted by misinformation, disinformation, years of manipulated socialization, and a narrow but highly visible mainstream political agenda that rules out feasible alternatives. It is really not too much to say that people can be misled. — location: 2555 ^ref-5386

(There is also a more ideologically oriented component of the left composed mostly of Trotskyists, anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, “libertarian socialists” and others who will not figure in this discussion given their small numbers and intense sectarian immersion. What they all have in common is an obsessional anticommunism, a dedication to fighting imaginary hordes of “Stalinists” whom they see everywhere, and with denouncing existing communist nations and parties. In this they resemble many centrists, social democrats, and liberals.) — location: 2635 ^ref-48518

“free market” system is rooted in state power. — location: 2738 ^ref-36216