Prentiss Riddle comments on Phillip Winn’s and my blog conversation about Noam Chomsky:
I do think there’s something to the “Manufacturing Consent” thesis, as I understand it: that our media, universities and other institutions are subject to a lot more groupthink than we tend to believe, and that our institutions are set up to foster and exploit a conformity of thought that benefits certain Powers That Be. At its heart is the point that America doesn’t need a Siberia full of gulags because it’s sufficient to make a journalist or academic who crosses certain bounds seem silly or unprofessional for doing so.
