Stanford
University economist Thomas Sowell argues that that the Right is made up of
many different elements that have almost nothing to do with each other besides
opposition to the Left:
What
is called "the right" are simply the various and disparate opponents
of the left. These opponents of the left may share no particular principle,
much less a common agenda, and they can range from free-market libertarians to
advocates of monarchy, theocracy, military dictatorship or innumerable other principles,
systems and agendas.
The spectrum of right-wing politics ranges from centre-right
to far right.
The 'New Right' consists of the liberal conservatives, who stress small
government, free markets, and individual initiative, and yet paradoxically
oppose equal rights for women, homosexuals, non-Christians, and
"foreigners". Inequality is viewed by the Right as either inevitable,
natural, normal, or desirable,whether it arises through traditional social
differences or from competition in market economies.
William F. Buckley Jr., who has been called
the "intellectual godfather" of the modern conservative movement in
America, and who wrote the long-time column On the Right, maintained
that conservatism, especially in Anglophone countries, supports individual liberty,
free markets,
limited
government, strong national defense, and traditional moral
values.
In
the first issue of the magazine National Review in 1955, Buckley
outlined his political beliefs:
Among our convictions:
It is the job of centralized government (in peacetime) to protect its citizens’ lives, liberty and property. All other activities of government tend to diminish freedom and hamper progress. The growth of government (the dominant social feature of this century) must be fought relentlessly. In this great social conflict of the era, we are, without reservations, on the libertarian side. The profound crisis of our era is, in essence, the conflict between the Social Engineers, who seek to adjust mankind to conform with scientific utopias, and the disciples of Truth, who defend the organic moral order. We believe that truth is neither arrived at nor illuminated by monitoring election results, binding though these are for other purposes, but by other means, including a study of human experience. On this point we are, without reservations, on the conservative side.
We
all know the big names in the media that speak for the “right”:
Rush Limbaugh, Glenn
Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Marken, and Peggy
Noonan. But there are others who may not be as well known to political "newbees". All you have to do is listen and the common themes seep out as they spout the fact and in the fiction of the right wing. Meet a few of the Right Wings most popular journalists.
David
Brooks
Brooks is a political and cultural commentator who writes for The New York Times. He worked as an editorial writer and film reviewer for the Washington Times; a reporter and later op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal; a senior editor at The Weekly Standard from its inception; a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly; and as a commentator on National Public Radio. He is now a columnist for The New York Times PBS NewsHour
He has
the thankless job of writing a conservative op-ed column in The New York Times,
which ensures that he offends both left and right alike—the former simply
because he’s conservative; the latter because he seems to water down his
conservatism to make himself palatable to liberal readers. The poor man can’t
win; but he’s still the one conservative most likely to be read by President
Obama.
Paul
Gigot
Paul Anthony Gigot is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative political commentator and the editor of the editorial pages for The Wall Street Journal. An intensely private man, Gigot is arguably the most influential conservative journalist that many Americans have not heard of. Master of his domain—the editorial page of the Journal—he puts out an unsigned daily editorial column that has all of the intellectual heft and political ingenuity that the Republicans, in their battle with the Obama administration, lack so embarrassingly. As was the case under his predecessor, Robert Bartley, Gigot’s is the only editorial column that actually sells newspapers.
James
Taranto
Taranto is an American columnist for The Wall Street Journal, editor of its online editorial page OpinionJournal.com and a member of the newspaper's editorial board. He is best known for his daily online column Best of the Web Today. The column typically includes conservative/neoliberal political, social and media commentary in the form of conventional opinion writing as well as wordplay and other recurring themes on news stories crowdsourced from readers. He also appears occasionally on Journal Editorial Report.
Prior to joining the Wall Street Journal in 1996, Taranto spent five years as an editor at City Journal. He has also worked for the Heritage Foundation and Reason magazine. Taranto left high school after his sophomore year and attended college for several years at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) but did not graduate from either.
Celebrated raucously in “movement conservative” circles, the genial Taranto writes the best conservative daily blog in America. Mischievous, humorous, and wickedly incisive, his “Best of the Web Today” is approaching the 10th anniversary of its existence, making it one of the longest-running blogs in the world
Matt
Drudge
The Drudge Report began as an e-mail sent out to a few friends. In March 1995, the Drudge Report had 1,000 e-mail subscribers; By 1997, Drudge had 85,000 subscribers to his e-mail service. Drudge's website gained in popularity in the late 1990s after a number of stories which he reported before the mainstream media. Drudge first received national attention in 1996 when he broke the news that Jack Kemp would be Republican Bob Dole's running mate in the 1996 presidential election. In 1998, Drudge gained popularity when he was the first outlet to break the news that later became the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Although
this onetime maverick is now an institution, Drudge has lost none of his zest
for gleeful provocation, particularly when it comes to news—or rumors—that
might prove embarrassing to liberal politicians. If a story is “on Drudge,” one
can be certain that it will swiftly make its way into the national
conversation.
Erick
Erickson
Punchy
and in-your-face, Erickson puts out RedState.com, which boasts that it is the
“most widely read right-of-center blog on Capitol Hill,” an assertion that few
would choose to dispute. His blog is not for the faint of heart, and is all the
more compelling for that.
Erickson is leaving CNN after three years and joining the Fox Network. An recent article by Conor Friedersdorf, staff writer for in The Atlantic gives you a view of Erickson:
Conservative pundit Erick Erickson started three years ago as an on-air political commentator at CNN. I'll never forget a segment he did with Howard Kurtz at the very beginning of his tenure. An apparent sop to liberals upset at his hiring, he submitted to questions about his history of incendiary rhetoric, apologizing in succession for the time he compared an Obama Administration official to a Nazi; the time he asked if President Obama was shagging hookers behind the media's back, referring to Michelle Obama as a "Marxist Harpy"; the time he called former Supreme Court Justice David Souter a "goat-fucking child molester" -- it was as if CNN's newest hire was hazed with a scripted scenario written by Jon Stewart for future Daily Show mockery.
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