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 David Gabbard & Terry Atkinson89
dangerous part of Washington, D.C. as Bellew High, one of the city’s poorest performing schools. The student populations are similar, most poor and minority. Butat the charter school, there is order. The kids are on task and doing better. 95% of thegraduates get into college. (ABC News transcript, 22:54:28)
Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) does notcorroborate Stossel’s claim that charter schools are “doing better.” NAEP datadocument that charter school students in fourth grade have consistently posted lower reading and math test scores than their public school counterparts. According to mostrecent 2005 NAEP data, public school eighth graders also scored five points higher in math and twice as high in science as students in charter schools (NAEP, 2005).Moreover, Stossel’s claims that money simply “doesn’t matter” when consid-ering the relationship between spending and student achievement are refuted by thefacts. “Of Course Money Matters: Why the Arguments to the Contrary Never Added Up,” a comprehensive review of extant research on school spending, documented a direct relationship between increased spending and higher student achievement(Rebell & Wardenski, 2004). As documented in this report, rural North CarolinaJudge Howard Manning’s comments offer a succinct and unquestionable conclu-sion to the empirical findings detailed in the 2004 review: “Only a fool would find that money does not matter in education” (North Carolina, 2000).Even if common sense were considered, Stossel’s claims that “money doesn’tmatter” simply defy logic. This notion contradicts the reality that public schoolsin areas with huge property tax coffers are those with premium student achievementscores (Hoff, 2004). The common sense notion also applies outside the publicschool setting. Affluent parents in exclusive areas of the northeast United States payin excess of $25,000 for tuition in elite private schools (CSC, 2006). Reason would suggest that such schools continue to prosper by justifying their tuition chargeswith guarantees of exceptional student academic success.“Stupid in America: How Lack of Choice Cheats Our Kids Out of a Good Education” continues with more unfounded claims than an article of this naturemight examine. Additional assertions suggest that teachers’ unions thwart studentachievement and propose the simple solution that mere competition, as provided  by school vouchers or tax credits, would cure the problems inherent in educatingall of America’s school children. In dealing with vastly complex problems such asmeeting the educational needs of a national student population that grows morediverse by the day, simple answers to complex problems are inevitably wrong.Stossel’s lame claims in this “stupid” broadcast offer substantial credence to thisnotion, leading us to ponder whether his program serves some other agenda.
The Evolution of a Larger Agenda
The following sections of our article aim to help those who support the pivotalrole of public education in promoting a critically informed and actively engaged 

 
 Stossel in America90
democratic citizenry understand what the American Federation of Teachers (2006)somewhat inaccurately describes as “The John Stossel Agenda.” We do not denythat “Stupid in America” carried an agenda, but we cannot overstate the importanceof recognizing that it does not belong to John Stossel. Stossel functions as an agentof that agenda, but he is not its source. In his role as a widely-known television personality who falsely presents himself to his audience as a journalist committed to the highest professional standards of ethics and objectivity—and even “likes tocast himself as a learned scholar” (Rose, 2000), Stossel’s services have been highlyvaluable to those driving the school voucher/choice/ privatization movement as part of a much broader agenda. As we will reveal, other Stossel reports (see FAIR,n.d.) have served different facets of that same agenda.The agenda in question pursues the pragmatic aims of two mutually reinforcingideologies: neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Automatically, we understand,some readers will recoil at the thought of a liberal and conservative ideologyreinforcing one another. Years of conditioning have taught us to think of them asinherently conflicting ideologies on opposing ends of what is an exceedinglynarrow spectrum of permissible political thought. As Noam Chomsky (1992)observes, “one of the great achievements of contemporary ideological warfare has been to debase the terms of political discourse so thoroughly that . . . [it] hasundermined the possibility even of talking sensibly about what is happening in theworld.” To overcome this debasement of the broader society’s political vocabularyand understanding, we must begin with an exacting analysis of the specific varietyof liberalism advanced by the forces of neoliberal ideology. We must ask, “Whatmakes neoliberalism liberal?”
What Makes Neoliberalism Liberal? 
In the most general of terms, the various manifestations of liberal thoughtemerged from a complex confluence of forces at work in Europe across manycenturies. The scientific revolution of the early 17
th
 Century gave birth not onlyto a concomitant technological and industrial revolution that fueled the growthof capitalism and the rise of a nascent merchant class, but also an Age of Reasonand a period of Enlightenment that provided this same merchant class with muchof the philosophical scaffolding to support their political struggles against thetraditional authority of the monarchy and church. In combination, these variousmaterial and ideological movements produced what we know as Modernity or 
 Liberal
Modernity. In epistemological terms, Modernity privileged the authorityof the individual and her/his powers of reason and rationality over the power of established institutional authorities of crown and church to determine Truth. Thisepistemological liberty helped lay the basis for the
 political liberalism
 that, asDavid Hursh (forthcoming) explains, “reconceptualized the relationship betweenthe individual and the secular and sacred state, aiming to free individuals fromstate interference and portraying individuals as rational choosers pursuing their 

 
 David Gabbard & Terry Atkinson91
self-interest, which served societal interests and promoted social progress.” Hurshadds that
Such political views soon influenced economic theories, and the idea that society could  best be served by individuals pursuing their self-interest was reflected in AdamSmith’s (1759) notion of the ‘invisible hand.’ Smith argued that the individual‘intends only his own gains, as he is in this, as in many others, led by an invisiblehand to promote an end which was no part of his intentions’ (Smith 1976/1759). For Smith, the individual pursuing their own interests in a ‘market system was the bestmechanism of the allocation of resources in a society’ and ‘brought economic gainsto each party, and ultimately to the nation as a whole.’ (Olssen et al., 2004, 88)
This, then, accounts for some of the intellectual history behind the economic brand of liberalism embraced under the ideology of neoliberalism. We now turn tothe question of what makes neoliberalism
neo.
What Makes Neoliberalism Neo? 
Philosophically speaking, we find it tempting to deny that there is anything
neo
 or new about neoliberalism. The proponents of neoliberal policies embrace thesame brand of economic liberalism as their 18
th
 and 19
th
 Century forbearers. Neoliberalism is “new” only in the sense that, as a political movement, it signalsa resurgence of economic liberalism. The economic liberals behind this movementseek to effect a reclamation of the dominance they enjoyed prior to the global crisisof capitalism in the first half the 20
th
 Century. In the United States, that crisis took the form of the Great Depression and ushered in a period of state intervention and regulation of the economy that leading industrialists and financiers—those who benefited most from the shocking inequalities of income, wealth, and political power during America’s Gilded Age—opposed widely and bitterly. Though therewere previous interventions such as the passage of the 16
th
 Amendment authorizingthe taxation of the primary source of the robber barons’ massive profits and incomes—capital gains—the various components of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s NewDeal incited their ire the most.The New Deal, we must remember, did not come about strictly as an exercisein government beneficence. Massive populist pressures stemming from the growinglabor movement demanded some form of protection from the ravages of the marketsystem. Similar and stronger movements toward state planning and interventiontook hold in Europe, leading the “captains of industry” there, particularly inGermany and Italy, to fund and otherwise support the creation of fascist states to protect and enhance corporate interests. Both Hitler and Mussolini, readers should recall, smashed the trade unions and imprisoned or assassinated many of their leaders. As Jules Archer describes in
The Plot to Seize the White House
 (1973),similar plans were set in motion in the United States, with leading industrialistssending agents to Europe to study and bring back lessons from the ascent of fascistcorporatism in Italy and Germany. General Smedley Butler, an extremely popular

 
 David Gabbard & Terry Atkinson95
Serfdom
, in which he appropriated and applied an pseudo-Darwinian argument toexplain that social history reveals a pattern of “natural selection” very similar to thatrevealed in natural history. Hayek used this argument to contend that only the“fittest” institutions survived. Older and more primitive institutions, he argued,suffered from a “collectivist” or “communal” orientation that inhibited individualliberty. Ignoring the corporate power behind Italian and German fascism, Hayek equated this “collectivist” principle with both fascism and socialism. He used thisrhetoric to attack the anti-liberal policies of John Maynard Keynes and Roosevelt’s New Deal, arguing that any form of state intervention or planning would lead societytoward fascism. Returning to his theory of social evolution, Hayek contended thathistory had proven three institutions to be of greatest value to humanity: the family,the church, and the free market.Hayek, of course, recognized that economic liberalism had fallen intodisrepute after the Great Depression. To facilitate its restoration and, thereby, toliberate the market from state control, Hayek advocated waging a war of ideasthrough the carefully planned and calculated use of think tanks such as theFoundation for Economic Education in the United States that provided a modelfor Hayek’s own Mont Pelerin Society. As Philip Kovacs and Deron Boylesexplain, “think tanks are nonprofit organizations that both produce and rely onresearch and expertise to aggressively influence the public, political leaders, and  policy” (2005, p. 2). Hayek advanced the idea of think tanks as institutions thatwould assemble and hire scholars dedicated to the resurgence of economicliberalism through a slow but steady effort to establish hegemony for neoliberalideology over the whole of society. In many regards, Hayek’s proposals appear strikingly similar to Lippmann’s advocacy for the cultivation of a “specialized class” of “responsible men” to manage people’s ideas and perceptions on theworld. Chief among those influenced by Hayek’s ideas was British millionaireAntony Fisher, who would go on to create the Institute for Economic Affairs in1955. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis,
 No single person was more important in encouraging the spread of think tanks thanSir Antony Fisher. An RAF pilot in World War II who went on to become successfulin business, Fisher sought advice from Nobel Laureate Fredrich Hayek on how tostop the spread of collectivism and encourage a resurgence of 19
th
 Century classicalliberal ideas. Don’t go into politics, Hayek advised. Focus instead on the world of ideas. (Goodman, 2005)
Hayek’s ideas also had a lasting influence on Milton Friedman, perhaps theleading American figure in the history of neoliberal economic theory. Students of education, of course, will recognize Friedman as the originator of the idea for schoolvouchers, a position obviously promoted by Stossel’s “Stupid in America.”Friedman worked closely with Hayek when the latter moved from the LondonSchool of Economics to the University of Chicago. With this move, what had once

 
 Stossel in America96 
 been known as the Austrian School of Economics became the Chicago School, and Hayek, Friedman, and others came to be known as the “Chicago Boys.”
Enter Neoconservatism
By the time Hayek came to the University of Chicago in 1950, Leo Straussalready occupied a position in its philosophy department. Though we have thus far discovered no evidence to suggest even a meeting, much less an exchange of ideas, between the two men, Strauss’ ideas have proven central to the neoliberal move-ment. In her two books (1997/2005; 1999) on his philosophy, Shadia Drury presentsStrauss as the intellectual godfather of the neoconservatives now running theadministration of President George W. Bush.Strauss’ neoconservatism begins to align with neoliberalism at the point wherehe would agree with Hayek and Lippmann that a society’s population must becontrolled through the careful management of ideas and beliefs by a specialized class.Holding great antipathy toward Modernity, Strauss claimed to have derived his ownwisdom from the Ancients, especially Plato. For Strauss, the class of men best suited to serve as the specialized class were philosophers or, in Plato’s terms, philosopher kings. Not only are the philosophers the only ones capable of discerning the truthabout the world, they are also the only ones who can bear the truth. And they, if theyare to observe their self-understood role in society, must keep that truth secret fromthe rest of the population. Ironically, that sacred truth is that there is no truth, onlysocially-constructed representations of reality. This nihilism, for Strauss, representsthe root of the human condition, and only through their wisdom can the philosophers bear that condition. Through the “gentlemen” whom the philosophers must advisein governing the republic, for the philosophers must always and only govern from behind the curtain, they dispense noble lies to the rest of the population in order tomaintain their allegiance to the state and those institutions that provide society itsstructure and order. Strauss regarded patriotic nationalism and religion, along withthe inculcation of irrational fear and hatred of enemies both foreign and domestic, ascrucial to this task. Just as he denied the existence of truth, Strauss himself also viewed morality as nothing more than a human construct, though requisite for building thesort of emotional attachments to family, church, and other institutions that would ensure the preservation of social order.Perhaps the most appealing aspect of Strauss’ thought for neoliberalism, how-ever, lies in the philosophical justification that he provides for economic elites rulingsociety. He claims to find this justification in Plato’s
 Republic
 in the dialogue betweenSocrates and Thrasymachus on the nature of justice. Conventional readings of Platowould lead us to believe that we should listen to the advice given by Socrates, butStrauss views it the other way. For Strauss, Thrasymachus provides the guidance on justice that Plato wanted the philosopher kings to receive. Justice, Thrasymachus tellsthem, arrives through whatever actions serve the interests of the powerful.To repeat an earlier passage from
The Wealth of Nations
, Adam Smith once

 
 David Gabbard & Terry Atkinson97 
observed that the chief beneficiaries of economic liberalism, “by a strange absurdityregard the character of the sovereign [the state] as but an appendix to that of themerchant, as something which ought to be made subservient to it” (Smith, p. 277).For Strauss, this is no “strange absurdity” but only the outcome of
natural right 
,wherein the superior few rule over the inferior many. Elite rule by the most successfulmerchants is not only
 just 
, but it is
 just 
 because the elite possess a natural right torule by virtue of having demonstrated, through their accumulation of wealth and  power, their natural superiority. Justice serves them in
conserving 
 their power torule. Likewise, even the noble lies serve them, for those lies aid in
conserving 
 their rule and the stability of social order. As we shall demonstrate in our final sectionon Stossel and his connections to them, the think tanks advocated by Hayek have played a vital role in fabricating and distributing noble lies on behalf of economicelites and the advancement of the neoliberal agenda to restore their class power over the state and society. We will also suggest that those same elites perceive the proper role of schools and universities as functioning toward those same ends.
The Rise of the Think Tanks
We must acknowledge that institutions such as the National Association of Manufacturers, the Hoover Institution, and the Foundation for Economic Educa-tion predated and certainly provided prototypes for Hayek’s ideas on how to bestrestore economic liberalism’s dominance over the state and society. We must also point out that the formation of the Mont Pelerin Society and Fisher’s Institute for Economic Affairs did not generate an overnight proliferation of think tanks. That proliferation did not begin until the early 1970s, when leaders in business and government confronted the massive populist movements of the 1960s. The title of Samuel L. Huntington’s entry in the 1973 report of the Trilateral Commission— “The Threat of Democracy”—perhaps best characterizes their perceptions of thehigh levels of popular activism demonstrated by the Civil Rights Movement, theanti-war movement, the environmental movement, the consumer protection move-ment, and the feminist movement among others (see Sklar, 1980). Each of thesemovements symbolized, of course, an expression of the same
 political liberalism
that gave rise to Roosevelt’s new deal—the idea that government should respond to needs and concerns of the general population, not just the “minority of theopulent” as dictated by economic liberalism.At the behest of Eugene B. Sydnor, former National Director and, then, Chair of the Education Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Lewis F. Powellwrote a secret memorandum (1971) for the Chamber which many regard as a catalystfor the proliferation of right-wing, neoliberal/neoconservative think tanks over the past 35 years. As a corporate attorney for the tobacco industry, Powell had worked diligently to protect tobacco firms from government regulation. We take nosurprise, then, in discovering that his memorandum, “The Attack on American FreeEnterprise System,” reflects the strong influence of Hayek’s ideas. The principles

 
 David Gabbard & Terry Atkinson101
Education and the Economy, sheds much on this strategy now being enforced whenhe stated: “You tie their teaching methods to standards so that in a very aggressiveway they learn to teach to the results of those tests, like a soldier. . . .The voluntarymilitary,” he added,” didn’t always get the best of human capital. But what you did was make the training so rigorous it didn’t matter” (cited in Hartocollis, 2005).Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings could not agree more: “Good educationhas always been about good testing. . . . Teaching to the test is fine and dandy, keepon” (Lucadamo, 2006) And if schools and teachers don’t teach to test well enough,if their students don’t meet standards, they expose their schools to the risk of being placed under the management of a private corporation. We should read Stossel’s“Stupid in America” as part of this strategy.
 John Stossel and the Labyrinth
John Stossel’s transformation into a neoliberal mouthpiece must perplex thosewho recall his early career in television broadcasting as a strong consumer advocatewho was willing to expose business scams and frauds. In public interviews, heexplains this transformation as an honest awakening to a new perspective:
I had an unusual ringside seat on the regulatory state as a television consumer reporter. . . . I’m a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke upto the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse. . . .Top-down central planning is never as effective as free individuals making their own choices, because free individuals will adapt to reality every second, but thecentral planners can adapt only when they get together to vote. (cited in Sigall, 2006)
In more private settings, such as during remarks following a speech before theFederalist Society, he gives a different explanation: “I got sick of it [consumer advocacy]. I also now make so much money I just lost interest in saving a buck ona can of peas” (cited in Mokhiber & Robert Weissman, 2004) Responding to kiddingfrom one of his friends and former colleagues over his change, Stossel said he “liked the idea of making real money. So I started looking at things a little differently.”Another of his colleagues remarked that “they (ABC) let him get away with a lothere”, . . . “but they don’t call him a journalist anymore” (cited in Dowie, 2001/2002).Stossel has established a consistent pattern over the years of using researchersfrom the “conservative labyrinth” of think tanks, institutes, and foundations as“experts” to support the ideological message of his reports. His reliance on JayGreene of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, whose “research” has beendiscredited by academics such as Gerald Bracey (2005, p. 3), for his arguments in“Stupid in America” offers us a recent case in point. Stossel’s associations withdiscredited, corporate-sponsored activists such as Greene date back to the 1990s.In 1997, for example, he relied on Michael Fumento, a Senior Fellow of the HudsonInstitute, to make his case against governmental environmental regulation (see

 
 Stossel in America102
Keeler & Sterling, nd). Not only does the Hudson Institute now employ Lewis“Scooter” Libby, the former former Chief of Staff and assistant for National SecurityAffairs to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and who is now under indictment by afederal grand jury for his involvement in the Valerie Plame affair, it also lists the Center for Global Food Issues as one of its many projects. Apart from having originated an“Earth Friendly, Farm Friendly” product label that the Union of Concerned Scientistsdecribes as falsely implying “sustainable food production” (see SourceWatch, n.d.A).This Center also receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in support from giantagribusinesses such as DuPont, Proctor & Gamble, ConAgra, and Monsanto. When
 Business Week 
 (Javers, 2006) revealed that Monsanto had paid Fumento to write a book favorable to its biotechnology interests, Scripps Howard News Service an-nounced that it was dropping Fumento’s column. He remains a Senior Fellow at theHudson Institute, which has also supported the work of school-voucher advocatessuch as Denis Doyle, John Chubb, Terry Moe, and Chester Finn.In 2000, the Center for Global Food Issues’ Dennis Avery supplied Stossel withhis primary source material for “The Food You Eat”—an industry-friendly attack on organic foods (see Dowie, 2001/2002B). When Stossel cited a non-existent studyto support his claim that neither conventional nor organic foods contained residuefrom pesticides, he came under heavy fire from the Organic Trade Group and theEnvironmental Working Group. Because of his flagrant violation of ABC’s edito-rial policies, the network forced Stossel to issue an on-air apology to his audience.Sensing that their media-star was in trouble, the Competitive Enterprise Institutecreated a “Save John Stossel” website (see Borowski, 2002) to help him keep his job and warn their supporters that “‘politically correct causes and special interests’”were threatening Stossel’s “‘free speech rights’” (cited in Berkowitz, 2006). In thatsame year, perhaps to bolster his damaged reputation, the American LegislativeExchange Council named Stossel the recipient of its Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism.A year later the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) would once again cometo Stossel’s aid as he was putting together a report entitled “Tampering With Nature,” which Marianne Manilov (2001) accurately described as “part of a five-year right-wing effort to discredit and defund environmental education.” Stossel’s problems with this show began when Michael Sanera, director of CEI’s Orwellian-named Center for Environmental Education Research sent an email to members of Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment that read:
A producer for John Stossel is working on a program on environmental education.He needs examples of kids who have been ‘scared green’ by schools teachingdoomsday environmentalism in the classroom. ... He has some examples, but needsmore. Would you send out a notice to your group and ask if they know of someexamples. Then contact Mr. Sanera ... Let’s try to help Mr. Stossel. He treats industryfairly in his programs. (Berkowitz, 2006)

 
 David Gabbard & Terry Atkinson103
Stossel’s troubles only deepened. As reported by SourceWatch:
Apparently neither Stossel nor CEI applied similar standards of fairness toward theschoolteachers and students they interviewed. Prior to the program’s air date in July,several California parents of children interviewed by Stossel filed a complaint withABC, stating that they had been misled about the nature of the program and the typesof leading questions their kids would be asked. Seattle teacher John Borowski alsoreported being approached by ABC producer Ted Balaker, who attempted to trick him into appearing on camera by claiming that he was making a documentary aboutEarth Day, while denying that he was working with Stossel and Sanera. (cited inBerkowitz, 2006)
Everyone who cares about the future of our schools needs to be aware of the heavyinfluence of neoliberal think tanks on Stossel’s “reporting” and the sorts of reforms promoted through programs such as “Stupid In America.” In all likelihood, he willcontinue his attacks on public schools as part of the previously-mentioned neoliberalstrategy of pressuring schools to teach to high-stakes tests or risk having their schools placed under the management of a private corporation. For neoliberals, this presentsa win-win situation. So long as teachers succeed in maintaining satisfactory test scores by teaching only to the tests—and even sometimes from scripted lesson plans aligned with the tests—they will have little opportunity to engage students in activities thatmight be destructive of their allegiance to the corporate order. If they fail to maintainsatisfactory test scores, this failure serves to rationalize handing over the managementof schools directly to private corporations. By 2014-2015, when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act comes up for full reauthorization by Congress, we canexpect to hear arguments for the complete privatization of America’s public schools.In this event, teachers will cease functioning as public servants and become corporateemployees. Stripped of what little professional autonomy they now retain, they will be made to teach a corporate-approved curriculum in accordance with a corporatemodel of instruction. Not only does the work of John Stossel give us great cause for concern over thefuture of journalistic standards, but for curriculum standards as well. With the helpof the Olin Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the KochFoundation, and the Palmer R. ChitesterFund, many of Stossel’s programs are packaged and sold to more than 200 public and private schools as curriculummaterials. According to Media Transparency,
The Palmer R. Chitester Fund is a 501-c-3 public foundation doing business as Inthe Classroom Media and Free to Choose Media. Its emphasis is on examining therelationship of economic, personal, and political freedom. In the Classroom Mediais currently distributing selected television specials by John Stossel for classroom use.Free to Choose Media has just begun work on a television biography of MiltonFriedman. Along with Milton and Rose Friedman, Mr. Chitester is the managing partner of Free To Choose Enterprise. (Media Transparency, n.d.)

 
 David Gabbard & Terry Atkinson107 
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