Agenda Setting Theory Quotes

King immediately appreciated that Gandhi’s theory of nonviolent resistance was not a moralistic affirmation of love, as nonviolence had been in the teachings of Jesus. Instead it was a set of hardheaded tactics to prevail over an adversary by outwitting him rather than trying to annihilate him. A taboo on violence, King inferred, prevents a movement from being corrupted by thugs and firebrands who are drawn to adventure and mayhem. It preserves morale and focus among followers when the movement suffers early defeats. By removing any pretext for legitimate retaliation by the enemy, it stays on the positive side of the moral ledger in the eyes of third parties, while luring the enemy onto the negative side. For the same reason, it divides the enemy, paring away supporters who find it increasingly uncomfortable to identify themselves with one-sided violence. All the while it can press its agenda by making a nuisance of itself with sit-ins, strikes, and demonstrations.

A host of scholars – many of whom, like Deloria, have aided petitioning tribes – support the ‘small pie’ theory. They believe that government definitions of Indians and tribes are simply part of the old colonial order, set to ‘divide and conquer’ Native peoples. These scholars see these government definitions as overreliant on nonindigenous models of tribalism, blood quantum, government rolls and censuses. Many of them call upon tribes and Native peoples to undertake decolonization projects, imploring Indian leaders to pursue a new acknowledgment agenda, on that is more inclusive and less based on national imperatives and Western epistemologies of race, history, empiricism, and science. The most accepted scholarly position, which has been called the ‘liberal-inclusive’ model for identifying tribes and Indian individuals, implies that the vast majority of unrecognized Indian groups and individuals are worthy of acknowledgment. This acknowledgment is not forthcoming, they say, due to a host of factors, including federal neglect, inadequate Euro-American recordkeeping, racism, and opposition from established tribes. Scholars who take this position find it shameful that marginal, unacknowledged aboriginal peoples are languishing today. Certain individuals within this loosely defined ideological school argue that officials should rely not on the current restrictive policy, but upon self-identification, community acceptance, and state recognition.

In ‘Diagonal arguments and Cartesian closed categories’ we demystified the incompleteness theorem of Gödel and the truth-definition theory of Tarski by showing that both are consequences of some very simple algebra in the Cartesian-closed setting. It was always hard for many to comprehend how Cantor’s mathematical theorem could be re-christened as a “paradox” by Russell and how Gödel’s theorem could be so often declared to be the most significant result of the 20th century. There was always the suspicion among scientists that such extra-mathematical publicity movements concealed an agenda for re-establishing belief as a substitute for science. Now, one hundred years after Gödel’s birth, the organized attempts to harness his great mathematical work to such an agenda have become explicit.

In retrospect, The General Theory would set the intellectual agenda for Friedman’s entire career, but when it appeared, he barely noticed. As Keynes’s ideas were making landfall in American universities, Friedman offered a course through the Columbia University extension school that was a throwback to the early 1930s. Focused on individual demand curves, individual marginal utility, and individual economic decision-making, Friedman’s course, Structure of Neo-classical Economics, made no mention of business cycles, national income, or current economic conditions. Drawing on the approach pioneered by Knight and Simons, it placed the question of “how free enterprise system solves economic problem” front and center.45 At the same time, Friedman did offer an implicit critique of the fiscal revolution, particularly Hansen’s concept of secular stagnation. Picking up a theme from Knight, Friedman told his class, “Once wants are satisfied, new wants are going to be formed; the process of want formation is part of the basic drive.”46 There were two critical implications. First was that perpetual wanting would keep economies always in motion: “Impossibility of completely satisfying all wants. If the greatest want is the desire for new wants … the notion of satiety is silly.” It was more than a philosophical point. Not only was it impossible for the economy to stagnate, but it would be impossible to design a government program that would adequately satisfy wants, which tended to continually increase. Friedman drew out the second implication in another comment. “Attitude toward all policies will be affected by our ideas concerning wants,” he argued.47 In a letter to Arthur Burns, he was more direct. Reflecting on a road trip to visit Rose’s family, he wrote, “The whole West, particularly California, and more particularly Southern California, gives you the feeling that the frontier is not yet gone and makes you feel like telling the stagnationites to come out and take a look.”48 Although he worked for the New Deal, Friedman was not a New Dealer. Nor was he a Keynesian. He thoroughly rejected the ideas that would most profoundly shape economics in the years ahead.