The American public doesn’t want or need to hear...

The American public doesn’t want or need to hear “representatives” from the so-called right or left. It wants insight into what’s best for America. Yet over and over again — on the radio, on TV, in print, in the blogosphere, and all over Washington — political ideology is substituting for thought. Politicians take oaths and sign pledges. Special-interest groups abide by litmus tests and ideological labels. The media is either assertively liberal or conservative. Pundits are either on the left or the right. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has become so extreme that it’s more and more difficult for anyone to rationally “represent” its views. As Frum put in in a post on his website, FrumForum, “Under the pressure of the current crisis — intoxicated by anti-Obama feelings and incited by talk radio and Fox — Republicans have staked out an extreme position on the role of government.” What if conservative Republicans believe the sun revolves around the earth? Would someone in David Frum’s position who disagrees feel compelled to stop offering “conservative” commentaries about the celestial bodies? And would a major media outlet then be obliged to find a replacement who agrees with conservative dogma? (This isn’t such a far-fetched example when you consider what leading Republicans say about evolution or climate change.)

Robert Reich: The Triumph of Dogma, and a Sad Goodbye to David Frum. I haven’t recently mentioned how awesome Robert Reich is; Robert Reich is awesome.

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