Clinton St. Quarterly, Vol. 10 No. 4 | Winter 1988-89 (Twin Cities/Minneapolis-St. Paul) /// Issue 4 of 7 /// Master# 45 of 73

As a visitor in your country—indeed, as one who does not even know your language well enough to use it in these circumstances—I feel obliged to add something to the introduction I have been given. You are entitled to know at the start from what cultural and political perspectives I see the world, since everything I will have to say here reflects a point of view quite likely different from your own. I am what may be called a conservative. This word, of course, is ambiguous, and you may have a different meaning for it from my own. Perhaps it will help us to understand each other if I say that from my point of view, Ronald Reagan is a radical. It is true enough that he continually speaks of the importance of preserving such traditional institutions and beliefs as the family, childhood, the work ethic, self-denial, and religious piety. But in fact President Reagan does not care one way or another whether any of this is preserved. I do not say that he is against preserving tradition; I say only that this is not where his interests lie. You cannot have failed to notice that he is mostly concerned to preserve a free-market economy, to encourage the development of what is new, and to keep America technologically progressive. He is what may be called a free- market extremist. All of which is to say he is devoted to capitalism. A capitalist cannot afford the pleasures of conservatism, and of necessity regards tradition as an obstacle to be overcome. How the idea originated that capitalists are conservative is something of a mystery to me. Perhaps it is explained by nothing more sinister than that capitalists are inclined to wear dark suits and matching ties. In any case, it is fairly easy to document that capitalists have been a force for radical social change since the eighteenth century, especially in the United States. This is a fact that Alexis de Tocqueville noticed when he studied American institutions in the early nineteenth century. “The American lives,” he wrote, “in a land of wonders; everything around him is in constant movement, and every movement seems an advance. Consequently, in his mind the idea of newness is closely linked with that of improvement. Nowhere does The U.S. is in the process of conducting a vast, uncontrolled social experiment which poses the question, Can a society preserve any of its traditional virtues by submitting all of its institutions to the sovereignty of technology? he see any limit placed by nature to human endeavor; in his eyes something that does not exist is just something that has not been tried.” This is the credo of capitalists the world over, and, I might add, is the source of much of the energy and ingenuity that have characterized American culture for almost two hundred years. No people have been more entranced by newness—and particularly technological newness —than Americans. That is why our most important radicals have always been capitalists, especially capitalists who have exploited the possibilities of new technologies. The names that come to mind are Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell,“Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, William Randolph Hearst, Samuel Goldwyn, Henry Luce, Alan Dumont, and Walt Disney, among many others. These capitalistradicals, inflamed by their fascination for new technologies, created the twentieth century. If you are happy about the twentieth century, you have them to thank for it. But as we all know, in every virtue there lurks a contrapuntal vice. I believe Tocqueville had this in mind in the passage I quoted. He meant to praise our ambition and vitality but at the same time to condemn our naivete and rashness. He meant, in particular, to say that a culture that exalts the new for its own sake, that encourages the radical inclination to exploit what is new and is therefore indifferent to the destruction of the old, that such a culture runs a serious risk of becoming trivial and dangerous, especially dangerous to itself. This is exactly what is happening in the United States in the latter part of the twentieth century. In today’s America, the idea of newness not only is linked to the idea of improvement but is the definition of improvement. If anyone should raise the question, What improves the human spirit?, or even the more mundane question, What improves the quality of life?, Americans are apt to offer a simple formulation: That which is new is better, that which is newest is best. The cure for such a stupid philosophy is conservatism. My version, not President Reagan’s. A true conservative, like myself, knows that technology always fosters radical social change. A true conservative also knows that it is useless to pretend that technology will not have its way with a culture. But a conservative recognizes a difference between rape Advertising agencies cannot afford to permit a culture to retain old ideas about work or religion or politics or childhood. and seduction. The rapist cares nothing for his1 victim. The seducer must accommodate himself to the will and temperament of the object of his desires. Indeed, he does not want a victim so much as an accomplice. What I am saying is that technology can rape a culture or be forced to seduce it. The aim of a genuine conservative in a technological age is to control the fury of technology, to make it behave itself, to insist that it accommodate itself to the will and temperament of a people. It is his best hope that through his efforts a modicum of charm may accompany the union of technology and culture. The United States is the most radical society in the world. It is in the process of conducting a vast, uncontrolled social experiment which poses the question, Can a society preserve any of its traditional virtues by submitting all of its institutions to the sovereignty of technology? Those of us who live in America and who are inclined to say “No” are therefore well placed to offer warnings to our European cousins—who are themselves wondering whether or not to participate fully in such an experiment. In order to give focus to my advice, I shall confine myself to the technology of television, which, at the moment, poses the most serious threat to traditional patterns of life in all industrialized nations, including your own. And I hope you will forgive me if I begin by quoting Karl Marx. Marx once wrote, “There is a specter haunting Europe.” The specter he had in mind was the rising up of the proletariat. The specter I have in mind is commercial television. Everywhere one looks in Europe—West Germany, Sweden, France, Holland, Switzerland, Denmark—the ghostly form of commercial television is making its presence felt. That it threatens the foundations of each West European nation ought to be obvious, but, one fears, the possibility has not been sufficiently discussed. In Paris alone there are seven advertiser-supported television stations, and now an eighth one has been installed in three Paris subway stations. It consists of 150 closed- circuit units, each unit carrying thirty minutes of programming: four minutes of news about the subway system, sixteen minutes’ worth of programs, and ten minutes of advertising. The ads cost $7,500 per week for each thirty-second spot. In the understatement of the year, the marketing director of the Paris subway system said, “It’s a way of changing the ambience of the subway station.” Of course, this man has confused cause and effect. If the French require television entertainment when they go from one end of town to the other, then we may say that it is not the ambience of the subway that has changed but the ambience of French culture. In Denmark, which has consistently opposed commercial television, plans have now been completed to allow advertising on the second national television channel, which begins broadcasting in 1988. As is presently the case in Austria, advertising for tobacco and alcohol will be prohibited. Also banned are ads for medicine, banks, political parties, and religious organizations, as well as commercials aimed specifically at young people. The Danes are usually a realistic and clear-headed people. But does anyone believe that the specter of Commercial television will be appeased by such compromises? Perhaps. And perhaps it will be appeased in Austria as well. But if it is not, you can lose very quickly much that you love and admire about your country. What I should like to do, then, is to frighten you by making a series of prophecies about what will occur if Austria allows its television technology to become a free-market commodity. These prophecies are largely based on the experiences of my country, which is the only nation, at present, where commercial interests dominate television. By way of preface, I want to make two points. The first is that in principle, a conservative is not obliged to be opposed to state- controlled broadcasting. One of the best-known American conservatives of this century, Herbert Hoover, our thirty-first President, was appalled at the prospect of opening up broadcasting to commercial interests. In 1923, when he was Secretary of Commerce, he expressed in the most emphatic terms his hope that radio, which he viewed as an instrument of public education, would be kept free of the marketplace. There can be no doubting that were he to see American television today, he would deplore the fact that his advice was ignored. While conservatives are rightly suspicious of state authority and therefore of state-controlled television, they need not be so foolish as to suppose that the state is the only antagonist of freedom of choice, or necessarily the worst. Which leads me to my second point. If one asks the question, Does a state-controlled television system limit freedom of expression and choice?, the answer is, obviously, Yes, it does. But it is extremely naive to believe that a free-market television system does not also limit freedom. In the United States, where television is controlled by advertising revenues, its principal function is, naturally enough, to deliver audiences to advertisers. The more popular a program is, the more money it can charge an advertiser for commercials. What is popular pays and therefore stays; what is in arrears disappears. American television limits freedom of expression and choice because its only criterion of merit and significance is popularity. And this, in turn, means that almost anything that is difficult or serious or goes against the grain of popular prejudices will not be seen. Americans are apt to offer a simple formulation: That which is new is better, that which is newest is best. 8 Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1988-89

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz