The federal government, the university system, and mainstream media are thought to form an interlocking three-part political system of progressive ideology, and protections for progressive interests.
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Each does its part: universities form progressive theories, media reinforces and propagates them, and the government seeks to regulate and enforce them.
Global warming and racial inequality are examples.
All three institutions, as a matter of ideology, promote continuous class division, social justice activism, and economic redistribution. In progressive politics,“rich” citizens should be subject to a wealth tax, while universities look for “full-freight paying” families and benefactors to subsidize everyone else. Both are socialist in structure.
Universities are the “small d” of the Democrat party. They make constant appeals to donors, like its political counterpart canvases for campaign contributions and causes. Both operate as closed, self-serving systems, and both have a “deep state” made up of an army of bureaucrats that act as a solid, unified bloc. Media turns to them for authoritative answers, and as sources of “just” behavior, regarding nearly all subjects and controversies — including ethno-religious, racial, and class bias thought to be intellectually justified. Anti-semitism, white privilege, and excess wealth are examples.
Government, higher education and major media, however, all function strictly through institutionalism, and institutional authority.
As Harvard Law professor Vicki Jackson, the Lawrence Tribe Professor of Constitutional Law, argued in a recent lecture, it is these institutions, and these institutions above all others, that protect democracy (she didn’t say what democracy is).
But more than that — all facts, truth, and authority come from a network of just three special “knowledge” institutions: universities, federal courts and mainstream media. And she argues they must be specially protected (read, forever perpetuated).
All three could be said to make up the institutional components of a progressive-Left ideological superstructure, because all three can be organized into a single, mutually reinforcing political voice.
Universities and progressive government will celebrate individuals of course, but only insofar as they can be identified as their effective creations, and as their effective property (as former US president Barack Obama said, referring to business entrepreneurs, “You didn’t build that”). Both have disdain for actual individualism, especially the rugged type. Hence, part of the basis of “Trump derangement syndrome.” The President is too individual, too outspoken, and too institutionally irreverent.
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They also organize themselves around what, and who, they can blame. They brook no dissent, meaning they will not tolerate, entertain or accept disagreement, opposition, or accountability, and in the case of the media, will actively seek to delegitimize it, or worse. They may claim to invite or even promote widely diverse opinions, or seek “the truth,” but in reality, those opinions and facts cannot ultimately threaten the institutions’ interests or authority.
But there is another fascinating aspect of how these three institutions reinforce each other economically by justifying continual, and continually increased, spending. Money alone is represented to be the magic elixir of progressive change and social progress. The “living Constitution” lives off money.
And if the gravy train is interrupted, as President Trump threatened over university grants, then the media and the DNC will come to their aid by claiming that grave dangers will ensue; global health will be plagued without life-saving bureaucrats; and the world will fall into a new dark age. One former Obama advisor and economics professor called billions of dollars of free flowing taxpayer spending, a “protective sunscreen.” He advised Obama to “go big.” Related university research that claims to be “cutting edge” and “world-class” is also threatened without it.
In the meantime, border control, gun rights, abortion, vaccines, citizenship, voter ID, and government itself, are all cast in radical progressive interpretations. The Left, along with its university network of followers, and bolstered by the media, has no taste for facing the actual public safety, national sovereignty, religious and security factors that create social integrity—like borders, faith, and qualified citizenship.
As thousands of university students graduate this year, they have largely absorbed the progressive Left’s institutional worldview. That view rests on ultimately ignoring where wealth is actually created, and from where all social costs are financed: the private sector, individuals, and families. The Left replaces them with government, universities, and courts.
While many students are rightly proud of the hard work it took to earn a degree in a demanding subject, their cap and gown is increasingly representing an indoctrination ceremony into a government, university and media political system that may have more claims over their thinking than the subjects they studied to build their own powers of mind.
Matthew G. Andersson is a former CEO and author. He testified before the US Senate, and is a graduate of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
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