{"id":5400,"date":"2012-01-10T12:35:10","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T17:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=5400"},"modified":"2012-01-10T12:35:10","modified_gmt":"2012-01-10T17:35:10","slug":"you-keep-using-that-word-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/5400","title":{"rendered":"You Keep Using That Word, ‘Think’…"},"content":{"rendered":"

This cracks me up<\/a>…<\/p>\n

In the current issue of the center-right policy journal, National Affairs<\/em>, former Bush domestic policy adviser Tevi Troy worries about the decline of Washington think tanks into partisan messaging operations<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stop…stop…you’re killing me. \u00a0 Seriously, on what planet were most beltway think tanks, and especially<\/em> AEI and Heritage, ever not partisan messaging operations?<\/p>\n

Yes, yes, liberal “think tanks” exist, but how many global corporations and multi-billionaires are going to fund a think tank that starts from an ideologically liberal economic position? \u00a0 Right wing and conservative “think tanks” basically rule the beltway discourse and you always know what their conclusions will be, and which party will happily benefit from them. \u00a0 Their non-partisanship is a farce. \u00a0 They are think tanks like Intelligent Design is science.<\/p>\n

There’s a rule of thumb about think tanks: If you already know what the conclusion is before you pick up the paper and read it, it is not a think tank. Rand is a think tank. \u00a0 Let me explain by this example from Wiki:<\/p>\n

In 1958, Democratic Senator Stuart Symington accused the RAND Corporation of defeatism for studying how the United States might strategically surrender to an enemy power. This led to the passage of a prohibition on the spending of tax dollars on the study of defeat or surrender of any kind. However, the senator had apparently misunderstood, as the report was a survey of past cases in which the U.S. had demanded unconditional surrender of its<\/em> enemies, asking whether or not this had been a more favorable outcome to U.S. interests than an earlier, negotiated surrender would have been.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See how that works. \u00a0 They asked a question they didn’t already know the answer to and set about to answer it. \u00a0 No ideology, just answers. AEI and Heritage, to name two, begin with the answer in the form of an ideological position (unconditional surrender is always the most favorable outcome<\/em>) and try to figure out a way to message that for the benefits of republicans.<\/p>\n

What these organizations do is tactical rhetoric, not thinking. \u00a0 Thinking is where you search for answers, not fashion attractive political battle flags. \u00a0 Thinking takes you into undiscovered places. \u00a0 That’s not allowed in organization like AEI, which Frum found out when he got the boot for not towing the line. \u00a0 These are party instruments, nothing more nothing less. \u00a0 They exist precisely to discourage thinking. \u00a0 You are told what to think. \u00a0 Or at any rate, what to say that you think.<\/p>\n

Witness the decline in American governance. \u00a0 We can’t confront the real problems that exist because our institutions of government are mired in ideologies which demand fealty over everything else. \u00a0 Facts don’t matter, only the party matters, and free thinking is treason to the party. \u00a0 And so our ability as a nation to grow and prosper into the 21st century is limited to what the ideologies in power will allow, and that isn’t much. \u00a0 We were promised a shining city on a hill. \u00a0 What we got were factories closed, wages devastated, pensions lost, entire neighborhoods in foreclosure and state and local governments teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. \u00a0 Yet the ideologies that promised us that shining city are never held to account. \u00a0 For all the think tanks in Washington, not a whole lot of thinking is actually going on.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

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This cracks me up… In the current issue of the center-right policy journal, National Affairs, former Bush domestic policy adviser Tevi Troy worries about the decline of Washington think tanks into partisan messaging operations. Stop…stop…you’re killing me. \u00a0 Seriously, on what planet were most beltway think tanks, and especially AEI and Heritage, ever not partisan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,65],"tags":[118,60,6,78],"class_list":["post-5400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-thumping-my-pulpit","tag-republican-america","tag-the-noise-machine","tag-the-right-wing-mindset","tag-the-struggle-for-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}