How up are you on the subject of think tanks? I have to admit, with the exception of hearing about PNAC, I was pretty naive about the existence of Right Wing think tanks until someone here on DU introduced me to the idea of them a while back. Anyway, from an article that explains what they are, here is a snip:
The Charge of the Think Tanks
"Many foreigners wish America would calm down a little. Why doesn't it rein in the dogs of war? Why doesn't it put a break on turbo-capitalism rather than revving it up? Why can't it behave more like Jimmy Carter and less like John Wayne? These questions hang over a million European dinner tables.
But America can boast an army of intellectuals whose job description is revving the country up still further. War in Iraq? These people have plans for the transformation of the entire Middle East. Capitalism run rampant? These people have a blueprint for bringing free enterprise to outer space. Welcome to the world of America's right-wing think-tanks.
Their influence is partly a matter of ideas. Two of the brainwaves of the 1990s-welfare reform and zero-tolerance policing-were incubated in conservative think-tanks. The Cato Institute has been arguing for privatising Social Security reform for years; the AEI was protesting about rogue states long before anybody had heard of Osama bin Laden. But it is also a matter of people. Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice are both Hoover veterans. Dick Cheney and his wife have a longstanding relationship with the AEI. Elaine Chao, the labour secretary, is a Heritage alumnus.
The right's real advantage lies in commitment and organisation. Many of the conservative think-tankers grew up in the 1960's and 1970's, when conventional wisdom held that government spending would solve most problems. They recruited a small army of passionate maverick dissenters, notably academics who felt marginalised at those left-leaning universities. Even now, when they are rich and powerful, there is something endearingly rabid and unhygienic about many think-tankers."more at
http://www.fcpp.org/main/publication_detail_print.php?PubID=599and from another article that enlightens about think tanks:
"Think Tanks
David Frum's trip from the think tank world to the White House and back was brief but eventful. Frum left the New York-based Manhattan Institute <http://www.manhattan-institute.org> in 2001 to join the Bush administration as a speechwriter. It was there that he coined the term "axis of evil" to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea. This became the signature phrase of President George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech and shorthand for Bush's war on terrorism.
Frum left the Bush administration for another think tank soon after -- some say as a result of a mass e-mail by his wife expressing her "wifely pride" at her husband's previously anonymous authorship of the phrase.
But his phrase lives on, as do other ideas borne of think tanks. The concept of "pre-emptive war" was pushed by another think tank, the Project for a New Century <http://www.newamericancentury.org/>, and the New York based Council on Foreign Relations <http://www.cfr.org/> was developing plans for post-war Iraq months before the first bombs hit Baghdad.
Think tanks long have been associated with issues of war and peace. But an increasing number also deal with domestic and even local issues, none more prominently than the Manhattan Institute. President Bush credits the institute with inspiring his program of "compassionate conservatism." He also calls The Dream and the Nightmare <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1893554023/ref=ase_manhattaninstitu/002-6247395-2975251>, a book written by Myron Magnet, the editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal <http://www.city-journal.org/>, the most important work he has ever read, after the Bible."more at
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/issueoftheweek/20030329/200/332Anyway, this is what we're up against. I guess what I'm thinking is that we really do need to catch up when it comes to the battle of the leftwing think tanks and rightwing think tanks. We might be getting a late start, but we do have an advantage. Our thinkers are smarter than theirs. Way smarter. That gives me hope.
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