The ideas for the book actually emerged in the early 1990's in some book reviews and oped pieces I wrote about television. Then I wrote a short essay for Dissent Magazine in 1995, which became the embryo of the book. I suggest that the left-right spectrum is still central to all political debate, and that television in many ways, as a simplifying medium, helps the right and hurts the left. We also need some agnosticism side by side with our fervent beliefs. In fact, we need more dignified conservatism in this country, and less of the vulgar, intolerant sort that we've seen lately, particularly via the electronic media.
Any true liberal believes in that kind of neutrality regarding thought and behavior.
Second, I believe in a certain kind of economic equality that basically marries the market with public control. And most of those negative connotations are based on polemics coming from the right. But worse than any criticism of liberalism is the Big Lie, the idea that it is a defunct part of the political spectrum. A lot of conservatives, as I say in the book, would like to be liberalism's pallbearers. But life isn't that simple, ideologies don't come and go like that.