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| Mencken |
Some journalists believe it is the business of Connecticut’s media, or any media that proudly wears upon its breast a journalist’s badge of honor, to say the inconvenient truth boldly and often. A timid journalism will always avoid asking questions that make incumbent politicians uneasy, unless the politician falls on the wrong side of the ideological barricades. Connecticut’s media tends to veer left because they are pulled in that direction by a neo-progressive dark star.
Should conscientious journalists discriminate properly
between liberals, progressives and neo-progressives?
That is an example of a good
question, precisely the sort of question rarely asked or answered in public
political discussions here in deep blue Connecticut.
For reasons not often discussed,
western and eastern seaboard states have been trending left for decades. Progressivism,
much older than people think, has little to do with postmodern neo-progressivism.
Bull-Moose Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican
politician turned independent, has little in common with, say, soon to be
former Governor of California Gavin Newsom. One cannot imagine Newsom racing up
San Juan Hill along with a discreditable bunch of Roughriders. If as Governor
of his state and Mayor of San Francisco Newsom ever proposed significant spending
cuts, that would have been news indeed, because Newsome is a straight laced
neo-progressive, and neo-progressives have pledged themselves to repeated
increases in spending, mostly to satisfy state employee union lapdog administrators.
When Luther C. Steward, President
of the National Federation of Federal Employees, beseeched President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt to allow unions to strike the federal government, he was
coldly rebuffed. Roosevelt wrote to Stewart: “I want
to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions
of any organization of government employees. Upon employees in the Federal
service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and
welfare requires orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government
activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do
with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests
nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations
of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward
the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is
unthinkable and intolerable.”
End of discussion.
How times change. Both Lamont and
Connecticut’s two U.S. Senators, Dick Blumenthal and super–neo-progressive
Chris Murphy -- have achieved union celebrity status by marching in strike
lines.
Woodrow Wilson, a progressive
egghead, was closer in spirit to neo-progressives but far apart, ideologically,
from progressive precursors such as religion infused Democrat William Jennings
Bryant, who ran for president several times and each time lost -- proudly.
Henry Mencken, possibly the most
influential journalist of his day, railed against Bryant as often as possible.
Here is Mencken on the recently deceased Bryant: “Wherever the flambeau of
Chautauqua smoked and guttered, and the bilge of idealism ran in the veins, and
Baptist pastors dammed the brooks with the sanctified, and men gathered who
were weary and heavy ladened, and their wives who were full of Peruna [a patent
medicine] and as fecund as the shad (Alosa
sapidissama), there the indefatigable Jennings set up his traps and spread
his bait.”
Then too, Wilson put Eugene Debs,
a socialist with presidential ambitions, in jail. No neo-progressive Democrat
has yet suggested Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders should be jailed. There are
hosts of neo-progressive Democrats, some writing for the Times and the
Associated Press, who would rejoice – privately of course, never publically –
to see President Donald Trump spend his remaining years in the hoosegow.
When the relevant lords and ladies
of the neo-progressive movement in the United States proposed letting the FBI
dogs loose on Latin Mass Catholics, few on the left made much of a defensive
stir. One cannot imagine Mencken preserving a discreet silence on such matters.
A practical atheist and admirer of Nietzsche, Mencken was never-the-less
morally courageous. He was among the first serious journalists on the eastern
seaboard to pillory KKK mobsters and hangmen. And he would have heartily agreed
with Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s remark that anti-Catholicism was the oldest
prejudice in the United States as well as looming large in the KKK’s agenda.
In any case, there are exceedingly
important differences between liberals, progressives and neo-progressives. Journalism,
which is, among other things, the art of naming things correctly, should
responsibly point out the differences.
Why, exactly, do eastern seaboard
progressive journalists decline to defend robustly Catholics who attend Latin
Masses? Is there no one in Connecticut’s academia – stout defenders of the
First Amendment – willing to brave stern looks from their comrades in arms in
defense of the freedom of the religious expression clause of the very same
amendment that provides a wide door of liberty to freedom of expression for
journalists?
Why so timid in defense of
Constitutional protections?
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