Heritage beats the MSM at its own game
January 12, 2010 | By Amanda Reinecker
The Heritage Foundation is working hard to break the liberal monopoly on the mainstream media and ensure common-sense views are heard even in liberal bastions. Only by convincing more Americans that our principles are right can we ensure our principles prevail.
Our hard work is paying off. In just the past week, Heritage experts managed to infiltrate the notoriously left-wing New York Times op-ed page not once but twice.
First, on January 9, Heritage senior research fellow Ariel Cohen explained to Times readers the Obama administration's failure to negotiate with Russia a replacement for the expired Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. This missing follow-on treaty is a major part of the President's effort to "reset" relations with Russia and a stepping stone toward a world without nuclear weapons. But the President's goals of global nuclear disarmament may prove far too idealistic, explains Cohen:
The Russians quietly scoff at Mr. Obama's goal. While the Russian government publicly champions the U.S. nuclear disarmament effort, Russia's military and security elite deride it…Russian nuclear policy and statements clearly reveal an abiding commitment to nuclear weapons.
The Russians repeatedly violated START and they will likely violate any new treaty, argues Cohen. Instead of investing in high hopes, "the United States should pursue a 'protect and defend' strategy, which includes defensive nuclear posture, missile defenses and nuclear modernization."
Just two days later, the Times picked up yet another Heritage article. Heritage fellow and former Attorney General Edwin Meese explained the implications of the legal challenge to the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8, which upheld the traditional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. Meese explains the case's implications:
What's at stake in this case, filed in federal district court in San Francisco on behalf of two gay couples, is not just the right of California voters to reaffirm the definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman, but also whether marriage may be otherwise defined in any state…According to the plaintiffs, there is no rational basis for government to privilege marriage between a man and a woman.
Proposition 8 drew support from seven million California voters, a majority. Although the plaintiffs will do everything within their power to prove otherwise, these voters, Meese argues, "were very much within their rights, when casting their ballots, to consider their own moral and religious views about marriage -- or any other subject." Unfortunately, pre-trial rulings by Judge Vaughn Walker "have the effect of putting the sponsors of Proposition 8, and the people who voted for it, on trial." (Heritage's Chuck Donovan reports that after Meese's article was printed, the Supreme Court granted a temporary stay on one of these rulings.)
More and more people are turning to Heritage for conservative answers. The demand of conservative ideas has rarely been more pronounced than it is today. In 2009, conservatism ended the year as the dominant political philosophy in America. This is largely because we conservatives are getting our message out as never before.
In fact, in 2009 alone, Heritage experts were cited in over 2,000 print and online articles. And our experts appeared more than 1,000 times on local and national television programs.
But all of this is only a fraction of what we do. And in 2010 we need to do even more, and seize the opportunity to make the conservative comeback a mighty force in the country.
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Other Heritage work of note
- While some have labeled President Obama "community organizer-in-chief", Heritage Vice President Kim Holmes believes the nickname "imaginer-in-chief" is more suiting. He writes:
When he promises a world with "no nuclear weapons," he invites you to suspend belief regarding whether it is even possible. The real agenda may be as mundane as simply reducing the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, but that limited goal is presented as a step toward fulfilling some future dream which will never be tested by reality. When he promises an America in which "no one will die because they don't have health care" or no one is poor, he is invoking an image of a world that simply cannot exist. But this matters little because in the world of imagination, anything is possible, and truth and reality spoil the mood.
Rather than reforming America, the President has outlined a mission to fundamentally change it -- in a way only possible in our imaginations. "Imagination in this sense is fundamentally irrational. Its opposite is not thoughtlessness and stupidity, but rather reality."
- Heritage Vice President Stuart Butler has seen big-government health care plans come and go during the last three decades. But this time is different. "With legislative activity now entering the 'endgame,'" Butler says, "it's important to focus on how crucial issues might be resolved." Butler tackles all the major issues with today's health care reform legislation in a detailed Q&A session with Kaiser Health News.
» Read the full discussion.
- "The best way to create sustainable environmental policies around the world is to increase economic growth and the standard of living," writes Heritage economic policy expert Terry Miller. Volumes of historical evidence and social science data support the idea that economic freedom is good for both individual economic advancement and for the public as a whole. Policies that advance economic freedom and freer trade "unleash greater economic opportunity and increase prosperity, generating a virtuous cycle of investment, innovation, and dynamic economic growth," Miller explains.
In other news
- To cover their massive new health spending program, congressional liberals are proposing a new tax on investments. Lawmakers should remember that raising taxes on investments during a recession is a sure way to stifle economic recovery.
- The Obama administration has abandoned its misleading "jobs saved or created" metric to describe the impact of its "stimulus" spending program. They will instead refer to "jobs funded with Recovery Act dollars." Meanwhile, an Associated Press analysis finds that "stimulus" spending on transportation projects had no impact on unemployment.
- The Washington Post reports on more unintended consequences of the government's bio-fuels program: "it could end up causing more economic damage than good -- driving up the price of raw timber [and] undermining an industry that has long used sawdust and wood shavings to make affordable cabinetry."