Can it be changed? Of course - revolutions can be undone by new revolutions. Here and there we do see stirrings of a new attitude. Some reporters actually did ferret out the truth about Bill Clinton's lying and womanizing, for instance, even though the rest of the press worked overtime trying, successfully, to support Clinton's absurd spin on his crimes. A few writers do blow the whistle on bad science; a few intellectuals are daring to violate the lockstep uniformity of the "intellectual establishment."

Rupert Murdoch's Fox News cable channel has taken a few steps toward a rough even-handedness, though without much rigor. Murdoch can do this because he can afford to; eventually, though, I'd like to see other publishers do it because they can't afford not to. (If your local cable system doesn't carry Fox News, I urge you to insist that they do. But the influence of one cable news channel is negligible in the culture of the American press, because the broadcast media are not the leaders - that role still belongs to the print media.)

The ultimate longterm solution is, of course, to take the tax-supported state universities and public schools back from the people who have kidnaped them, and put those schools back to work educating students in rigorous science and history and a giving them a thorough and fair-minded immersion in American culture seen in its own terms and not through the slant of the revolutionaries.

But all this begins by people like you and me insisting on finding out the whole story, and identifying and publically refuting the biased reporting that is making reasoned public discourse nearly impossible.