This is going to be a short diary entry, because I really want an answer to this question.
Beginning in the late 1970's, as the neocon ideology took shape among the acolytes of Milton Friedman, David Horowitz, William Kristol and others, there were dozens of new right-wing think tanks established with grant money from the multi-national coproations, their millionaire CEO's and the bankers that the neocon ideology would benefit.
The job of these think tanks was fundamental, but necessary, to the facist wave that was about to engult the country: they built the ideological under-pinnings of the movement. They deployed speakers, professors, public relations gurus. They published white papers, journals and books; they got themselves published in, interviewed by and talked about among the mainstream press. And they began, from the classroom up, enforcing ideological conformity within their movement, both shaping and enforcing the agenda first laid out in the John Birch Society, but gussied up and sounding respectable.
Those think tanks are now commonly cited as authorities in everything from war, foreign affairs, and economics to history, social issues, legislation and government. Their fellows flood the airwaves, their pretenders populate right-wing hate radio, and they are quoted ad-nauseum in the press.
It's magical, really, how the think tanks have dressed up an anti-impirical, anti-government, anti-democracy, authoritarian agenda in the respectability of intellectual inquiry, democratic elections and grabbed the levers of power in the government they hate.
It seems to me that if progressives are going to turn back this tide, we will have to emulate the foundation building, full-court press of publicity and information that the right wing has done with their propaganda and disinformation.
There are enough wealthy people with a conscience, and that could see their way clear to contribute. There are also enough huge American corporations unwilling to buy bad pulicity by turning their backs on such partiotic endeavors, no matter what the content.
Is this worth even thinking about?