At the Student Senate forum on freshman Sen. Benton Sawrey’s resolution endorsing the Academic Bill of Rights, one of the evening’s highlights was learning that the primary role of the media in our country is to “portray crime as a problem created by ‘non-elites'” — at least according to our University’s sociology courses. This was nothing new of course; we here at Technician have always taken our responsibility of oppressing non-elites seriously. In fact, the Viewpoint section distributes weekly staff memos with excerpts from The Bell Curve II: Social Deviance and Its Non-elite Origins, and next weekend there is even a newspaper-wide training session entitled “10 Steps to Better Persecuting Your Non-elites.”
The amusing anti-media bias was not a surprise, mostly because I have always likened the relationship between sociology courses and academics to that between movies and everyone else. They are a means of escapism, where someone’s lack of self-esteem or feelings of self-loathing can be assuaged by blaming all of society’s travails on, depending on the particular course, males or Caucasians or evangelicals or “the rich.” Those of us working for evil corporate media conglomerates, with their blind pursuit of fortunes over facts, are really just doing the bidding of our profit-obsessed puppet masters.
But with the sheer volume of overwrought harangues against wealthy corporatists, the real surprise was the vitriol reserved for lobbyists. Lobbyists don’t serve the public good, we’re told, and exist solely to corrupt our country’s virtuous office-holding public servants (sometimes referred to by their nom de guerre “politicians”). At least two of Dante’s nine circles of hell, in fact, are reserved exclusively for all those evil lobbyists and the unscrupulous fat cats who pay their salaries to subvert the “public interest.”
For the sake of argument, let’s skip past the silly idea that something like a “public interest” even exists — that a body which is itself an amalgam of individuals all pursuing individual ends can somehow mystically transform into some Marxist super-individual entity with its own discrete agenda. Let’s also stipulate, as liberals tend to do, that “the rich” do in fact run the government at all levels. So what? Government dominance by elites has been one of the few constants throughout human history; Communist countries in particular are notorious for it, as are all of the “progressive” Euro-states so admired by this country’s political left. That doesn’t make a particularly convincing indictment against our system here in the United States, only an admission that even the single best form of government conceivable by man inevitably suffers from a problem shared by all others.
But with “the rich” running the show before lobbyists existed, and “the rich” running the show after lobbyists arrived, it’s not a stretch to suspect lobbyists don’t really play a role in this evil elite dominance at all. Far from being corrupt slime worthy of vilification, the reality is that lobbyists are the great equalizers in the political process because they give common people — non-elites — the ability to compete effectively against monied interests for influence in the halls of government.
Take North Carolina agriculture. For such a vital part of our economy, farmers, nurserymen and other entrepreneurs in the industry find themselves under siege everywhere from the complex issues surrounding migrant labor to the basics like water conservation. If a local Pepsi bottling plant wants to be excluded from local drought restrictions, a member of company management can always treat a buddy on the City Council to a nice lunch and a “friendly chat.” Since agriculture employees aren’t exactly renowned for their wealth, they simply can’t match that level of access — even when most are better stewards of the environment than any bottling plant. Yet by banding together into a trade group and hiring a lobbyist to represent them, the agriculture industry can apply the same level of political pressure as their wealthier counterparts. As just one example, our own College of Agriculture & Life Sciences will soon be working with the state’s Department of Agriculture to examine the economic impact of the green industry, a study whose funding was secured through lobbying efforts.
It’s not uncommon for politicians to overreact following scandals like those rocking Congressional republicans and state-level democrats, with “Baptists and bootleggers” alike hoping to seize on a window of opportunity for their mutual benefit. But assaulting lobbyists instead of addressing their own culpability will only strengthen elite grip on government — and provide fertile ground for future corruption.
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