History (and no lesser a student of history than Karl Marx) shows that when a powerful new religious, economic or military class becomes strong enough to impose its rule on a society, it sets about reshaping the law of the land. Since previous law will have favored the class being supplanted, the new ruling class consciously and instinctively feels compelled to create a legal framework that will legitimize its assumption or seizure of power and create security for its tenure. More obviously, it also seeks to introduce laws that will enrich its members.
In England, for example, the old aristocratic class made laws that protected private land ownership, enforced serfdom and restricted free trade. The Enclosure Acts, which concentrated land ownership into fewer hands and expropriated large areas of common (public) land, and the Acts of Parliament that made poaching a capital offence, are typical examples of laws being used to underpin the power of a ruling class and enrich it. Later, when the new Industrialist Class supplanted the aristocracy, many radical laws were pushed through Parliament to benefit industry. Laws that introduced the concept of limited liability for business, the Corn Laws and laws that enabled the compulsory purchase of land (in order to build canals and railroads) are examples. All of these laws were controversial in their time and some, like the Enclosure Acts and the Corn Laws, were bitterly resisted by other classes. This website does not exist to regurgitate basic economic and social history, so the above examples will suffice to put what follows into context.
Radical and Right claim that the new class that has now acceded to power in the USA and the UK (and many other nations of the world) is the Media Class. It has gained power as the result of a complex and incidental set of technological innovations by others that co-incidentally placed a certain group of people in a favored position. The single most important innovation that has created a new class has been television, though its immediate forerunner, the cinema might well be called its undeveloped foetus. Once a TV set was installed in virtually every home, those people who selected and communicated news and provided television entertainment for the general population, came into possession of a very powerful tool with which to control society.
The new class has evolved from the people who formerly worked in the relatively unrelated worlds of entertainment, news, the Arts, fashion, sports and advertising. Journalists and Hollywood people were dominant in the early stages of the creation of the new class and they imprinted their characteristics on it. These characteristics included a Leftist ideology and a Bohemian lifestyle. Readers at this point can connect the dots for themselves and work out why the Media Class has developed an agenda that is anti-Christian, anti-conservative and anti-nationalist.
In a modern democracy, a ruling class has to exert its power to change law through the electoral process, though it also has the power to influence the judiciary directly. In the USA, the Democrat Party, in a relatively short space of time, has become the willing political tool of the Media Class, though at crucial times there are invariably (always called “moderates” by the media) Republican politicians prepared to break ranks with conservatism in order to court Media Class support. In the UK, where the political context is somewhat different (e.g. no written constitution, no separate elections for national leader, currently a 3-Party system), the Labour Party has become, and the Liberal Democrat Party has always been, political entities dependent on the approval of the Media Class. Tony Blair’s uncharacteristic support for President Bush in the war on terrorism, and new Tory Leader David Cameron’s redefined Tory policies are changing the dynamics however. Recently, Blair finds himself being singled out for destruction by the BBC and its newspaper and TV comrades, whilst Cameron and his fellow Tories are suddenly receiving much better media treatment.
Many other things are different in the two countries, as one would expect. The tax-funded but unaccountable BBC (the Media Class leader with an “official” status) has no equivalent in the USA and there is no equivalent of the New York Times (which sets the daily Leftist agenda for other media outlets) amongst UK newspapers.
Since any ruling class is relatively small in numbers, it has to make alliances with other interest groups in order to drum up voter support and have a semblance of legitimacy. In both the USA and the UK, we can see durable alliances between the Media Classes and the Trade Union bureaucracies, the Public Service Unions and their members and Academia as well as activist groups like the feminists, the environmentalists and the more doctrinaire socialists. These groups all fit comfortably with the core groups in the Media Class.
The Media Class has unique economic interests, though not as many as previous ruling classes. It is concerned with intellectual property rights and especially seeks to protect and maximize copyright. Recent legislation in the USA has been very favorable on the latter. The Media Class also has a big interest in having access to international markets, but generally it has little interest in issues such as pensions, the price of gas, health care and all those things that have preoccupied those involved in the old class war politics.
The Media Class is very concerned with social/moral policy however and it is not difficult to see why. As a Class it consists overwhelmingly of those who reject the traditional rules of sexual morality, both heterosexual and homosexual. It is a Class that is composed of those who wish to feel morally liberated in order to seek pleasure, to live for the present, to create and indulge in fantasies, to use alcohol and drugs to enhance pleasure and to break all the old moral rules. Anyone who doubts the truth of this should simply monitor the daily news and gossip columns that cover the celebrities and those who surround them.
It is easy to see why traditional Christianity enrages the Media Class, conservatism offends it and nationalism (building a strong nation) frightens it. When Presidential candidate George Bush proclaimed his Christianity and appeared genuinely to mean what he said, he aroused the wrath of the Media Class and its allies and that wrath has never diminished. Some conservative writers think it is irrational, but it is not at all irrational if the Media Class is properly understood.
The people who make up the inner core of the Media Class do not want to continue to feel like outsiders now that they can increasingly exercise control over society. They want to feel “normal” and they want to create a society that reflects their tastes and legitimizes them. To do so, the Class has to change or destroy traditional Christianity in the USA (in the UK and Western Europe Christianity has largely marginalized itself), and introduce laws that will “normalize” sodomy and same-sex marriage, remove the moral and spiritual content from marriage and the traditional family, detach sexual behavior from restraints, and especially detach sexual promiscuity and perversion from consequences. It also needs to make laws that will please its supporters on the Left and ensure their loyalty. Sometimes, mere tokenism is enough to satisfy these supporters, especially the feminists and environmental activists. I suspect that the Media Class cares little about the environment, racism, the minimum wage or the loss of workers jobs to immigration, but those activists who do, need to be kept on board, so there is much media huffing and puffing at election times. Abortion and same-sex marriage, on the other hand, are litmus tests for the Media Class.
It seems to be an unalterable fact of human existence that any abandonment of the moral behavior advocated by traditional religion, has destructive consequences for both society in general and individuals. One must assume that traditional religions and philosophies incorporated the wisdom and experiences of countless centuries about human behavior and are not simply divine in origin. The Media Class is very concerned about consequences, because many of its members want to abandon moral behavior and indulge in life-styles that have historically been destructive. This is the explanation for the political elevation of the search for a cure for AIDS and for concentrating massive resources on defeating it in its African incubator. Anyone seeking Media Class endorsement has only to take up the AIDS cause and “Africa”. “Abortion on demand” is also about avoiding the consequences of promiscuous behavior and it is a litmus test issue in the struggle over Supreme Court nominations and many other public positions. There are other examples.
I am not here arguing that the AIDS virus is a punishment from God that should be ignored, or that abortion may never be justified, but pointing out that there is an explanation why publicity and demands for action for some things now take a great precedence over other things and some things have become Media Class litmus tests. I suspect that the Media Class’ knee-jerk support for massive welfare spending and its opposition to the death penalty and tough punishment is rooted in its deep-rooted dislike of consequences.
There is one other aspect of the Media Class agenda that needs to be addressed. The media’s existence depends on capturing and holding the attention of the masses through entertainment. It has been very successful in this. Since its own tastes are for ever greater excess (and how can it be otherwise once morality is jettisoned for pleasure?) it has constantly sought to extend the boundaries of what it can present to the masses. Titillation ceases to be enough and ever more explicit scenes of sex and violence have to be introduced to the audience, together with subjects that were once taboo. Professional entertainment critics approve this progression and usually refer to it as “cutting edge”, or “edgy” and the process as “pushing the envelope”. It is not hard to envisage that in the near future, anal intercourse (for both sexes), incest and other behaviors only recently regarded as perverted, will be common fare at the cinema and theater, and ultimately on the family TV screen. The next big “shocker” will probably be sex involving young teenagers and then pets. After that it is difficult for this writer to visualize what might be considered shocking, but “artistic” people are very imaginative and will think of something, unless we have all been overwhelmed by Imperialist Islamic fanatics.
It has to be said in defense of the Media Class, that there is a large audience for erotica, perversion, shock and the creation of new appetites and the release of old dormant ones. The Media Class is driven to break any remaining restraints exercised by traditional religion and it has many supporters in this endeavor. Every time the “envelope is pushed” the appetite for more is whetted and more people become anti-Christian.
Fortunately, few ruling classes in history have had things entirely their own way and some of them have been replaced within decades. Religion has also proved to be remarkably tenacious, often re-emerging in unlikely places and with renewed energy.
For the present however, those who understand that a new ruling class has taken, and is consolidating, power, will be able to best understand the political and cultural wars now taking place.