[Editor’s Note: This essay presents the personal views of Dr. Seymour Fein, retiring chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Media Research Center.]
For the past four years I have had the great privilege to serve as the Chairman of the MRC Board of Trustees. This has given me the rare opportunity to travel around the country, attend regional meetings and get to meet and speak with many of you. The Trustees I’ve met have diverse backgrounds, personalities and interests. But despite these many differences you also have much in common. You are busy, accomplished people, dedicated to your families, your communities and your work. And you are all true patriots, committed to your country and to the values on which it was founded and has thrived for over 230 years. You embrace service and sacrifice and, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, have pledged your lives, fortune and sacred honor to the task of defending and preserving our great nation.
While I have served as your Chairman for four years, I am writing to you in my personal capacity as a friend, a fellow conservative and an American citizen.
Our common cause as conservatives is based on shared principles and convictions about the primacy of freedom and liberty, the dignity and sacred value of human life and the essential role of private property and the rule of law in the construct of a civil society.
We understand the inherent fallibility of human nature and the dangers of utopian visions of perfected societies. Such hubris inevitably leads to tyranny and mass murder. We realize that government is not the answer to all individual and social problems and in many cases represents the problem. We embrace the wisdom of the Framers and the federalist system they created with circumscribed powers as delineated in the Constitution granted to the central government and checks and balances within the federal government to protect the rights of the States and the liberties of individuals. The wisdom of limited government derives from these truths as do the modest political and social objectives which are commensurate with man’s flawed nature. We honor the role of the family as the essential building block of society and traditional moral values derived from Judeo-Christian beliefs as the proper standard of behavior.
For most of America’s history, the principles and value system described above forged a consensus across political parties, geographic regions, social and economic strata and ethnic and racial divides. No longer. There have always been fringe elements estranged from mainstream American society and determined to transform the nation, overturn the Constitutional order and impose their alien vision, usually consisting of some version of a totalitarian paradise. Today, however, the progressive movement and its political disciples have betrayed this consensus, abandoned any pretense of loyalty to the principles on which the country was founded and is actively working to repeal core provisions of the Constitution including the Bill of Rights. The progressive mob seeks to impose centralized control by executive order and regulatory fiat not only of the political process but of the private sector and, worse yet, the private aspects of our day to day lives as individuals. They seek to control what we are allowed to say, how we raise and educate our children, what we can eat, what books we can read, what movies we can see and how we are allowed to express our religious faith. These insidious political objectives are fully supported by the mainstream media and its allies in the entertainment industry which conspire to obscure the left’s real goals and sanitize their true meaning.
The progressive fallacy is as dangerous as it is deluded. At its foundation is the belief in false Gods and creation of the secular religion of humanism which worships at the altars of reason, fairness, aesthetics and man himself. This belief system was codified during the Enlightenment and has directed much of modernity. As G. K. Chesterton wrote, “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” And progressives do.
The substitution of aesthetic conceits for traditional morality is at the heart of every totalitarian doctrine whether it is National Socialism, Communism or some versions of Islam. The aesthetic principle may vary from ethnic purity and superiority to a classless perfected society to paradise on earth, but it is essentially the same vice in different disguises. The progressives’ passions are directed at extreme versions of social justice, egalitarianism, diversity and environmentalism. In all cases, a controlling central government ruled and administered by progressive elites is required to achieve these ends. These progressive passions are forms of idolatry. The irony is that in the pursuit of these idols the most dangerous and destructive elements of human nature are released and given free rein. There is no extremism which is beyond human imagination and rationalization. The first two of the Ten Commandments are not the demands of a jealous God but the loving instruction of a God who knows man’s inherent nature. In the American progressive, one sees these conceits in a forme fruste. But the impulse to control, the illusion of supreme competence and the determination that the ends justify the means are still present, ready to fully blossom upon acquisition of sufficient power.
It has been true for some time that American politics is to a large extent driven by American popular culture. In turn, since the 1960s, American popular culture has been driven by individuals who are overwhelmingly secular, urban, elitist and anti-democratic, which is to say progressive. The counter-culture movement of the late 1960s was more focused on liberating the individual from the constraints of traditional moral and social values than on political revolution. The refugees from this movement gravitated to the academy, media, entertainment, non-profit NGOs, civil service and elected office. They constitute a potent progressive alliance which is determined to rewrite American history, transform American culture, degrade traditional civil and religious institutions and elevate a federal government controlled by executive agencies with unfettered regulatory power and activist judges. This has continued down to the present and explains the left’s focus on deconstructing the definitions of marriage and family and tearing down the societal institutions associated with Judeo-Christian values under the guise of civil rights, women’s rights, privacy and multiculturalism. The better to create a world in which each person has license to define his own moral code as long as it does not conflict with the progressive view. A world in which the traditional societal institutions which counterbalanced the leviathan have been neutered or eliminated. A world in which each person stands alone serving the state and its ruling elite. A world in which American exceptionalism is dismissed and our country is reduced to just another member in the chorus of nations. This is the progressive’s statist dream of a perfected society and the one which many holding high elected office have embraced and are trying to impose on our nation.
This set of circumstances amounts to a full blown assault on America, its historical character and its traditions. For those of us who cherish that America it is an existential crisis. The outcome of this battle will determine whether, in Lincoln’s words, “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
At the Media Research Center’s Founders Night Dinner at the Smithsonian Institution, Senator Ted Cruz was the guest of honor and after dinner speaker. He recounted the inspiring story of his family’s history in Cuba and escape to the United States. Senator Cruz described recent visits back to Cuba by family members to see relatives still there, the true conditions in which most Cuban citizens live and their real beliefs. The Senator then described the little reported attempt by Senate Democrats to undermine the Bill of Rights of the Constitution and change the First Amendment to limit freedom of speech under the guise of campaign finance reform. The revised wording granted Congress the power to control and limit speech, books and movies. None of the 55 Senate Democrats voted against it. When Senator Cruz had introduced a competing amendment in the Senate Judiciary Committee which would have retained the exact wording of the First Amendment as it has read since 1789, every Democrat on the committee voted against the First Amendment.
This assault on the Constitution by a majority of Senators was subsequently reported by the liberal media as an obstruction by the Senate Republican minority of campaign finance reform. There can be no clearer signal of the contempt which the Senate majority and its allies in the media have for the Constitution, democracy, freedom and liberty. But it is merely a harbinger of what they would do if given a chance and sufficient power.
Conflict in the society of man is a constant whether it involves ideas and belief systems or the acquisition of material goods and political power. Some are settled peaceably some with violence. Life is a daily fight and a contest of competing ideas and interests. This must be acknowledged and we must be prepared to fight for our ideas, belief systems and interests by all means necessary against enemies both foreign and domestic. The Media Research Center is a great weapon in this battle to defend America from her enemies, preserve our Constitution, protect our unalienable rights and freedoms, secure a civil society and promote traditional values and morality. The MRC was among the first conservative organizations to recognize the central role of popular culture in politics and established the Culture and Media Institute to promote traditional values in the public square. It recognized the importance of a dynamic private sector as the engine of economic growth, innovation and opportunity and established the Business and Media Institute to advocate for the private sector. The MRC wages daily war on the liberal media which not only slants the news to favor liberal policies and politicians but refuses to report stories which might harm the progressive agenda. This corrupt journalism has transformed the mainstream media into little more than the propaganda ministry for the progressive movement. The Media Research Center is the premier organization exposing this scandal and demanding truthful and balanced reporting of the news. Its news division, CNSNews provides honest and balanced reporting on stories the liberal media refuse to touch and great investigative journalism as well. As conservatives, we have no better ally and resource than the MRC.
As my tenure as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Media Research Center comes to an end I am grateful for the opportunity which Brent Bozell has given me to represent the MRC, meet with you, exchange ideas and learn from you. It has been an inspiring experience which leaves me hopeful and energized for the future but also with a sense of urgency for the difficult work ahead. We all recognize the dire situation which has developed in our country and which threatens its very nature. So I leave you with a call to arms and a challenge I delivered during speeches at the regional Trustees meetings earlier this year. Despite our human shortcomings, or perhaps because of them, there is one thing available to us which is denied even to God. We have the capacity for heroism. Let us resolve to take heroic action with the MRC to restore America to its founding principles and values and renew its place among nations as the beacon of freedom, opportunity and hope.
