We get the world we praise and support. If you honor and reward a behavior, you get more of it. If you don’t support what you need more of, you get less of it.
If after reading RealClear’s holiday update and appeals for tax-deductible support, you think what we do here is important and needed, join us. Get behind our success. Make our work yours by supporting what we are doing to improve conditions on the ground with an eye to a better American future. We need to grow our numbers. There is room and need for you on our team.
Big Picture: RealClear thinks the First Amendment is first for a reason.
The free exercise of viewpoint diversity is existential for a functioning democracy. But it’s under direct threat. The arrival of a new generation of voting-age citizens, proselytized by an illiberal academy and a wayward legacy media, does not bode well for the future of free speech. Surveys have shown that Gen Z is too inclined to favor censorship, and that deplatforming controversial speakers is acceptable, even beneficial, if it makes everyone feel “safe.” This is evidence of educational and commanding-heights malpractice.
What can we do to arrest and reverse this trend?
Defend the free exercise of viewpoint diversity publicly, every day. That’s what we do. At RealClear, you find viewpoint diversity’s method given daily defense and expression. It’s an approach in need of moral—and financial—support.
And one night a year, we celebrate those who demonstrate exemplary courage in the defense of it. As stated at the outset, we get more of what we praise. We need more free speech and more courageous, stand-up, and stand-out advocates.
Mark your calendar for Feb. 11 for our third annual Samizdat Prize Gala which praises such needed humans. Why dress up, show up, and overpay? Here’s why: We get bad movies because the Oscars incentivizes anti-American navel-gazing. We get one-sided journalism because the Pulitzer Prizes reward it. Our “Sami” rewards First Amendment courage that improves our shared public lives. If you think this is a good and needed thing to do, support it. Come to the event and experience it. It is an ennobling experience.
If you can’t come to Palm Beach for the dinner, still consider supporting it. We give out three prizes of $25,000 each, which is almost double the Pulitzers. It’s a big rock to push up the funding hill every year. We can use your help. It’s a great bang for the philanthropic dollar.
Back to RealClear’s everyday defense of viewpoint diversity. Those who are standing up against the march toward censorship and yelling “stop” have a home on our pages. Their fight is our fight. So, too, those who argue and act against the free exercise of viewpoint diversity are included as well. That is the RealClear way. At RealClear, we create a daily, representative dialogue that is stitched together from a media marketplace of partisan and ascendent monologues.
Our readership reflects the partisan distribution of the American Mind, yet you are not triggered by having an opposing view as your neighbor. RealClear is the exception to the tribal rule. One would believe that this would be attractive to advertisers, but not in today’s America. What the monologue cartels taketh away, will you support with a tax-deductible gift?
Next year marks RealClear’s 25th year in operation.
For the most part, the media marketplace is a crowded, cutthroat, churning business of similar actors. If one goes out of business, another rises and replaces it. No big deal. That’s not the case with RealClear. There are no competitors surrounding us that are like us. If we go, our approach and its public benefits are gone. We are unique, necessary, and in need of support. Join us and sustain us.
Advertisers—guided by outfits such as Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard that are allergic to viewpoint diversity—have stood on the sideline. While some out there hope we starve to death, the media marketplace can’t quit us. Why? All sides use us to do their jobs. What a Bloomberg terminal is to market players, RealClear is to the Fourth Estate.
If you are in the business of media and politics, you start your day on our site so you can effectively do your job. We give shapers of public opinion, policy, and law a daily snapshot and feedback loop of what is ascendent on all sides. Because we are free to use, we do not share in Bloomberg’s business model that kicks off huge revenue. However, we are a philanthropic opportunity like none other to get behind—at least until the commanding heights’ wayward, censorious, partisan ways have been defenestrated (I am a dreamer). If you like us, put your support behind where your mind goes daily to feed itself. Our philanthropic model is harder, but it’s what enables RealClear to provide a public good to the nation.
It turns out that the RealClear, viewpoint-diversity diet for the shapers of public opinion, policy, and law is also good for informed citizenship. RealClear’s reader profile stands out from all other readerships. RealClear readers know their own mind, as well as what the other side is saying and doing. You folks think in stereo. Most don’t. Yours is a needed state of mind that has important, salutary up-and-downstream effects.
A few years ago, I found myself back in the principal’s office. This time, as a taxpayer/consumer with a complaint. After my kid’s high school principal and I heard each other out, he confided that he was a fan of RealClear—particularly of RealClearHistory.
“I’m a history teacher,” he said. “Your approach allows me to expose my students to both sides of the historical debate, and to stem off a partisan parental revolt, who favor indoctrination over critical learning.” If you like one of the many RealClear sites (History, Markets, Investigations, Defense, Religion, Science) consider supporting it with a designated, tax-deductible gift.
Those in the know recognize the role that the RealClearPolitics Poll Average plays in keeping U.S. elections on the up-and-up. Without the RCP Poll Average, the commanding height of polling would have been lost long ago, and with it, election integrity, and our Republic. That is a big loss to be avoided.
Every election cycle, RealClear finds itself reputationally attacked. Not the day after, when the results are in and RealClear hits the Election Day bullseye. They do it before the election, with the campaign in full swing, despite a two-decade record of excellence unmatched in the field.
Last time, Wikipedia shadow-banned RCP from their polling page. And the New York Times did a hit job on us days before the election. Our purported fault was that we had become partisan players. Their evidence: We treat Democrat- and Republican-leaning polling outlets equally in the RCP Poll Averages. The Times, the other members of the council of favored opinion counters, use weighted averages, which is viewpoint favoritism. Their critique is farce: The RCP Poll Averages were much better than their polls. Nonetheless, articles like these are then used to justify choking off advertising and foundation support. Maintaining the integrity of our polling work is a public good that is existentially deserving of support.
In 2016, we stood up RealClearInvestigations. We hired two former Times-men to stand up a “hit ‘em where they ain’t” rival to ProPublica (which we habitually link to on our page). RCI’s charge is to curate authoritatively the investigative waterfront and investigate what they see as being studiously ignored by the legacy newsrooms. RCI cut its teeth investigating the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, which were used to justify a Banana Republic push against a duly elected President. Not the Fourth Estate’s finest moment.
Our work got us reputationally attacked and commercially dinged, whereas those who promoted the false flag operation got Pulitzers and buy ratings on their advertising. When DNI Tulsi Gabbard recently declassified the poison-root evidence of Russia-gate, RealClear’s work passed the reality test. The Pulitzer crowd and their deep-state feeders did not. RealClearInvestigations’ past and present work deserves a bigger budget.
This experiment in self-government of ours is turning 250 next Fourth of July, and America is showing its age. Our “Republic, if you can keep it” runs on free speech. The free exercise of viewpoint diversity is the oxygen of a free people and politics. Our City on the Hill shines because it is polished through the free exercise of viewpoint diversity. Without free speech, the promise of our Declaration of Independence—our IPO for a free people and politics—is meaningless.
What can one person do to make a difference? Join us. Put your shoulder and wallet behind what we are pushing uphill and for the public benefit. We are better, stronger, and more consequential together. Say yes to the invitation to join us in RCP’s 25th year—and our nation’s 250th. To make a tax-deductible donation, please click here.
Sincerely,
David DesRosiers
