Leftist influence in journalism classes at western universities has given us a media that is left wing. This legion of students trained not in how to think but in what to think has resulted in our media being of a permanent left wing mindset without they themselves even knowing they are left wing. Their writing is littered with Marxist phrases and concepts they do not even recognise as such.

So I acknowledge the LW slant of the MSM makes it difficult for the perceived right to combat the left’s main strategy, their propaganda. But surely this does not mean we should give up. Not try to bring truth to the debate.

Sending out pollsters to check the mood of the people when you’ve already surrendered in the battle of ideas is just self defeating. Its the policy that John Key has followed and its why today’s National Party is the Labour party of a decade or so ago.

Of course those surveyed are going to be more positive about left wing ideas when they’re the only ideas out there. The perceived right really needs to develop a strategy to deal with the left’s propaganda and put their own ideas into the market place. Sure, its difficult, but if you don’t fight you lose, which is why today in NZ we have a Labour Party in govt calling itself the National Party.

Take for example one of the left’s most successful propaganda strategies, which is inserting the concept of “the children” into as many political debates as they can.

Meals in schools was pushed through because it was sold as showing care for children. Its really not about that at all. That was just the propaganda. Its about growing the state through teaching school kids and their parents dependency on government. Yet the right had no answer to the left’s propaganda and they yielded to it. Probably because that’s what the polls told them to do.

In Australia today the left are using “the children” to help them win the debate on illegal immigration. One of their leaders who of course occupies a position within one of our public institutions (Human Rights Commission) was caught out by writing about this strategy.

The Human Rights Commission’s report into child detention was engineered as an “advocacy tool” for policy change and focused­ on children for political effect, internal documents ­reveal. Here is some of the relative text, taken from a draft project plan-

The underlying assumption of this project (and our broader work in this area) is that faced with enough domestic and international criticism and pressure regarding its practices relating to children in immigration detention, the Australian government will reform those practices.”

“Focusing on children allows the best opportunity to engage the general public, and to reach bipart­isan political agreement on making policy and legal changes to the system of mandatory and indefin­ite detention,”

Another blatant example of this strategy is the left’s current focus on “Child” poverty. Key doesn’t counter this ploy with ideas, he merely runs polls that show him the left’s propaganda is working, so he adjusts policy in response. Gutless submission.

The right badly need to develop a counter to the left’s propaganda machine, which has been allowed to operate virtually unchallenged for some decades. Polling on what the electorate think when they’ve not been given any alternative ideas is fruitless supplication.

Of course if the party that professes to stand against the left is too intellectually crippled to actually come up with any counter ideas, then you’ve got a real problem.