A Halt to the Left’s Long March

Don’t look now, but, out of the corner of my eye, I think I may spy a salutary pattern. For as long as I can remember, alterations to the cultural scene went in only one direction. Recently, this has changed. Having marched for years through our institutions, the American left is finally meeting some resistance. Better still: On some fronts it has lost ground. There, action is yielding reaction. NPR’s hiring of Katherine Maher signaled that it intended to remain parochial. In response, Congress defunded it. Stephen Colbert transmuted The Late Show into a de facto extension of the DNC; in return, CBS canceled it. American Eagle made a commercial for denim that inspired a ludicrous backlash among the identitarians; in reply, the company’s stock soared. The owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, made it known publicly that he was no longer interested in subsidizing a daily version of the New Republic; in riposte, the most annoying among his employees chose to leave. Taken together, these developments have not fixed the problem — in classical terms, they’re Marathon, not Salamis. They have, however, indicated what is possible, and, in politics, possibility can prove addictive.

To hear the left tell it, these shifts represent an unconscionable threat to American journalism, American culture, and even to American democracy itself. But that, of course, is so much self-serving nonsense. There is nothing written in the stars that demands that all of America’s institutions must be run — or even influenced — by a tiny sliver of the population. Nor, in a free country, is it mandatory that what has been done be preserved forever. If Congress can decide that NPR and PBS are worth funding, it can also decide that they are not. If CBS can give Stephen Colbert the reins of The Late Show, it can take them away should he prove incompetent in the role. If American Eagle — and other corporations — can choose to kowtow to the delirium of the neurotic online left, it can also tell its emissaries to pound sand. And, yes, if the Washington Post can be oriented towards the presumptions of the Democratic elite, it can just as easily be reoriented away from them.

About the Author

Charles C. W. Cooke

Charles C. W. Cooke is a senior editor at National Review and the host of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast.

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Don’t look now, but, out of the corner of my eye, I think I may spy a salutary pattern. For as long as I can remember, alterations to the cultural scene went in only one direction. Recently, this has changed. Having marched for years through our institutions, the American left is finally meeting some resistance. Better still: On some fronts it has lost ground. There, action is yielding reaction. NPR’s hiring of Katherine Maher signaled that it intended to remain parochial. In response, Congress defunded it. Stephen Colbert transmuted The Late Show into a de facto extension of the DNC; in return, CBS canceled it. American Eagle made a commercial for denim that inspired a ludicrous backlash among the identitarians; in reply, the company’s stock soared. The owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, made it known publicly that he was no longer interested in subsidizing a daily version of the New Republic; in riposte, the most annoying among his employees chose to leave. Taken together, these developments have not fixed the problem — in classical terms, they’re Marathon, not Salamis. They have, however, indicated what is possible, and, in politics, possibility can prove addictive.

To hear the left tell it, these shifts represent an unconscionable threat to American journalism, American culture, and even to American democracy itself. But that, of course, is so much self-serving nonsense. There is nothing written in the stars that demands that all of America’s institutions must be run — or even influenced — by a tiny sliver of the population. Nor, in a free country, is it mandatory that what has been done be preserved forever. If Congress can decide that NPR and PBS are worth funding, it can also decide that they are not. If CBS can give Stephen Colbert the reins of The Late Show, it can take them away should he prove incompetent in the role. If American Eagle — and other corporations — can choose to kowtow to the delirium of the neurotic online left, it can also tell its emissaries to pound sand. And, yes, if the Washington Post can be oriented towards the presumptions of the Democratic elite, it can just as easily be reoriented away from them.