After 14.5 hours in the car covering 860 miles through 9 states, I have arrived at my mother’s home in Tennessee. I left Massachusetts this morning around 9:00 am and drove straight through. I am going to be visiting here until Friday, when I will head to Washington, DC, for the weekend.

On my way down, I listened to talk radio, which is my preferred entertainment in the car. Since I was on the move the whole time, I got to listen to a number of different stations and different shows. What I heard revealed a lot about public discourse in America right now.

The talk radio that I heard was heavily slanted towards the conservative end of the spectrum. There was no point in the trip when I was unable to listen to a conservative talk show. I was usually able to pick up one or two stations during the day, or at least two different stations carrying the same show (usually Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity). At night, when AM radio propagation got better, I was able to pick up more than that, including one point when I could pick up five different conservative talk show hosts.

As a side note, propagation was quite good after sunset. While I was on I-81 in Virginia, I was able to pick up radio stations from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Cleveland, Chicago, Charlotte, and Atlanta, all within a one hour period.

By contrast, the only liberal talk show I heard was when I was in range of New York City. I was able to listen to about an hour of the Al Franken show. I may have also heard a liberal talk show host at one point in Virginia, but I only picked up the station for about ten minutes and couldn’t quite determine the host’s political leanings.

My biggest problem with this was not so much that the vast majority were conservative, although it would be nice to have a balance of opinion being presented. What I would love most of all is a nice moderate talk show, but except for NPR that won’t be happening.

Instead, the biggest problem was the low quality of the conservative talk shows. While the shows pretended to be focused on analysis, in reality they were simply providing a particular political spin on the news. Absolutely everything was geared towards shaping the opinion of their listeners. Instead of giving the audience analysis that would allow them to make up their own minds, the shows were meant to tell their listeners what to think. And they did so in a way that implied that anyone who disagreed was not a critical thinker.

In addition, there was nothing approaching journalistic standards. Any rumor could be reported as fact. Any lie could be told about those who disagreed with you. Any opposing voice who got through on the line had to be shouted down and insulted. Sean Hannity called one guy a “Clinton sycophant” just because he corrected one lie that Hannity had told about Hillary Clinton. Rush Limbaugh accused a caller of trying to confuse the issue when he pointed out that a statistic Limbaugh had quoted was wrong. After berating the guy, Limbaugh said that his point was still correct even if his statistics were wrong. In other words, Limbaugh quoted statistic to prove his point, but said his point was still correct when someone else showed that his statistic were wrong.

Listening to these talk shows is an exercise in pointing out fallacies that most of us learned to identify in freshmen logic classes. Personal attacks, hasty generalizations, post hoc ergo propter hoc, equivocation, and a host of other informal fallacies were rampant, not to mention the more egregious formal fallacies. Liberals were called liars and cowards; they were accused of wanting the government to take over everything; and they were presented as hating anyone who disagreed with them. Many of these hosts accused Democrats of hating Bush, which is ironic considering the vitriol with which these same talk show hosts offered up slurs against Clinton. What was so funny disturbing was how often the picture these talk show hosts painted of liberals was actually an accurate picture of the talk show hosts. It seems that their willingness to villainize those who disagree with them and do anything to win a political point has led them to think everyone else is willing to do that too.

Perhaps most ironic was the fact that several of the talk show hosts lamented the fact that there was no conservative voice in America. I heard this repeated by conservatives for 14.5 hours in nine different states in the supposedly liberal parts of the east coast, whereas I could only find one liberal talk show hosts. These guys have perfected the art of portraying themselves as a victimized minority, while accusing liberals of fostering a victim mentality.

I am sure this is not the best that conservatives have to offer. Conservativism is a strong, viable political philosophy. But calm debate will not get ratings, nor is it as effective in motivating crowds. If I were a conservative, it would bother me deeply that these people were the public face of my philosophy.

Is this finally what public debate has come to in America? Have people lost the ability to think critically to such an extent that these shows can be as popular as they are? Can the American public really be taking these people to be serious political voices in the public square? Even George Orwell would have had difficulty conceiving of a propaganda machine as effective as the one that currently exists on talk radio.

I don’t think it is accidental that these talk show hosts criticize colleges and universities. A good education teaches one to think critically, and critical thought is the biggest enemy to their popularity and to their ability to influence public thinking.

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