The LIMITS of Public Influence

Irish Voters Celebrate Gay Marriage Vote

A LOT of people seem to give the media and government (especially politicians) far more credit for “influencing public opinion,” then they deserve.

We’ve seen the Left go apoplectic over “Rush Limbaugh’s and Fox News’ influence over the public.”

They were, and ARE wrong.

Neither Limbaugh, nor FNC ever converted, nor converted people to “Conservatism.” Their message merely struck a chord that resonated with a HUGE number of Americans.

What the Left was actually more concerned with, but most were unable to articulate, was that these outlets “emboldened” Conservatives and “generated a Conservative consensus,” or at least showed how little of a “Left-wing consensus existed.”

Those are very real, but very different concerns.

The idea that media and public figures greatly influence public opinion has long been with us.

Look at the global movement for homosexual rights. Ireland (Catholic Ireland) just passed gay marriage! (http://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/cahirodoherty/Ireland-strongly-votes-YesWelcome-to-the-Rainbow-Republic.html)

“WHY is this happening,” many ask.

Some have blamed “a godless, perverted media and entertainment industry,” others have blamed “political forces,” BUT the truth is that homosexuality, along with increased friction and tension between the genders often arises at times when the human population reaches the limits of the earth’s ability to sustain it. Likewise, the more affluent a society becomes, generally the more socially liberal (permissive) it becomes.

That’s a fact.

Homosexuality isn’t a recent discovery.

It’s been around as long as...well, as long as prostitution has, and we all know how long mankind’s oldest profession has been around – probably about as long as there’ve been people.

What I’m saying (or trying to say) is that most of the ideas, good and bad, traditional and extreme have always bubbled up among the populace, first. In other words, the PEOPLE have influenced the media and the political class and NOT the other way around. Yes, often the old adage that goes, “When politicians get an idea, they usually get it wrong,” is dead on and politicians and their media cousins pervert that message because they didn’t fully understand it, but the original ideas almost always stem from the people themselves.

It would seem that the REAL changes bubble upward, well before they are disseminated downward by the media and academia.

In the case of homosexuality, I DO believe that it is more accepted during periods when mankind pushes the limits of the sustainability of the environment and is less accepted in periods when human survival is predicated upon expanding the human population.

I believe that’s the SAME with most issues.

The abolitionist movement bubbled up from private citizens long before the government and the media of that day ever took up that fight.

Why did that movement advance?

So many of us just don’t have a good understanding of history, that a lot of us seem unaware that Western Europe and America were among the first places on earth to eradicate chattel slavery. In fact, chattel slavery STILL goes on in much of the known world today (in large tracts of Asia, throughout the Arab Muslim world and in sub-Saharan Africa).

The primary reason that chattel slavery (a hallmark of agricultural societies) first ended in Western Europe and the Americas is that those areas were where the Industrial Revolution first took hold. While chattel slavery is a relatively efficient economic system for agricultural societies, chattel slavery is NOT at all an efficient economic system for Industrial societies.

In the USA, the Industrial North became more and more outraged at what it saw as the primitive and barbaric economic system of the agricultural South, so the abolitionist movement grew and garnered more and more victories. The importation of slaves to the USA was banned in 1808.

“Southern congressmen joined with the North in voting to abolish the African slave trade, an act that became effective January 1, 1808. The widespread trade of slaves within the South was not prohibited, however, and children of slaves automatically became slave themselves, thus ensuring a self-sustaining slave population in the South.”

(http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/congress-abolishes-the-african-slave-trade)

So, it seems human development, mankind’s moving FROM the agricultural societies of the past, TO the industrial societies of the modern age, was the impetus for the abolitionist movement in the West. That movement typically bubbled UP from the people and only belatedly became embraced by government (and “the political class”) and the media.

That is the case with MOST major movements. They are driven upwards by the people, before they ever take hold in government and the media.

So, if you’re looking for someone to blame over all this “creeping social permissiveness,” look no further than your friends and neighbors. The ideas bubble up from US, they do not filter downward, regardless what some egotistical folks in the media may presume.