What do David Petraeus' efforts to win in Iraq, Hillary Clinton's struggle to secure the presidential nomination, Alan Greenspan's attempt to the financial regulation train and Nigel Lawson plea that Europe not let overreaction destroy its economy have in common?

They are all defying a post modernist manufactured consent propagated by the media. After all, pundits and experts alike, most especially young ones, attended universities where they were taught the various ways ideologically based advocacy can not only affects the perception of reality but reality itself. That means that reporters have the power to influence the outcome of a contest by declaring it won or lost. So, they declare Iraq unwinnable, Hillary's chances of securing the nomination nil, the housing bubble caused by insufficient regulation and global warming a scientific fact.

The Achilles heel of the theory is that it works best when the declared losers graciously cooperate. Indeed, those who chose to say know better prepare for a vicious media onslaught. That does not mean sure defeat, it only makes winning more difficult as the recent Harvard study on the emboldening effects defeatist reporting has on Iraqi insurgents.

It is within this context that one should evaluate the success of the Petraeus surge and McCain's guts in supporting it; acknowledge Hillary's success in eliciting editorials on the reasons she should battle on; read respectfully Alan Greenspan's assertion that the Fed is blameless on the property bubble and heed Nigel Lawson's call to Stop this foolish overreaction to climate change