Friday, October 23, 2015
Perhaps the brown wave will stem the red tide....
Yesterday’s WSJ’s “Notable & Quotable” reports that more than half of America’s college students oppose free speech on campus – which means that more than half of America’s college students are one small step away from opposing free speech everywhere.
Reading this and some other articles I have read about immigration got me to thinking. A good many of the people who come to the US do so because of opportunity. Now while the left is working tirelessly to skew the number of people who come to the US as being from more liberal or socialist countries. Now it may be true that they will significantly change the culture of the US in the future, given the sad and scary fact from the WSJ above, people who oppose immigration because they fear that immigrants infect America with cultural attitudes hostile to freedom ought to reconsider their position. With most of America’s best and brightest already flirting with tyranny, new waves of opportunity-seeking immigrants are unlikely to make matters worse and might well supply a needed spur to protect freedom in the U.S. from its home-grown antagonists.
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Having been involved on college teaching for almost 40 years, I found this to be interesting. This rise can be attributed to the fairly recent introduction of the term "hate speech" to mean speech designed to bully, cower or intimidate. In response most private colleges and universities have passed rules banning such speech. Most states have laws forbidding such bans in public institutions. These bans have been derided as "Political Correctness" by their opponents.
ReplyDeleteWell... its kinda closing the gate after the horse has bolted, don’t you think? To my way of thinking the damage done in public institutions started all the way back in the 60’s. The 80’s and 90’s instituted ‘hate speech’ codes and the early 2000’s pressured resignations of conservative administrators... name changes, mascot changes and curriculum changes. This has pretty well solitified the liberal influence in publicly funded schools. I think that liberal funded private institutions are only formalizing what the public facilities can no longer advertise, no doubt because of conservative interlopers looking for seats in any college that has a seat. Liberalism already firmly entrenched in the vagina monologues have morphed into the diversity movement.
DeleteUntil 2011 UCLA students majoring in English had to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton arguably the cornerstones of English literature. It replaced them with a mandate that all English majors take a total of three courses in the following four areas: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing. They were dropped because they were symbols of the ‘Empire’.
In his book Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell explains how many theoretical intellectuals and academics, that by the nature of their work have a closed support networks, take their narrow but highly developed skillsets into the classroom and pontificate over things that have little relevance to the subject in which they work or in which they have adequate training. We can see this in the public arena where people such as Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman writes about such diverse issues as foreign policy, race relations, slavery, and education even though is entire educational and academic career has been surrounded by economics. While he is certainly no less entitled to his opinion than I, using his notoriety, like so many Hollywood actors to pontificate on matters as if he were an expert distorts the minds of everyone who respects him for his area of actual knowledge.... especially when he comes out with tripe like “Donald Trump is a loudmouthed racist, just like the rest of the GOP”.
I know you don’t agree but everything I read indicates that the liberal influence is ubiquitous in higher education and I am under no illusions that it sets a very significant social agenda in primary and secondary education.
I don't disagree with the truth of your conclusion as it applies to certain disciplines in the academic world. My conclusions do not apply to elementary and high school because I have never worked in those particular environments. Now, in the three different colleges where I have worked there are particular disciplines where liberal professors are in the majority including Art, Theater, Music, English and most of the other Liberal Arts. In the Sciences, Business and Economics, ROTC, Physical Education and Athletics conservatives seem to have a definite majority. By the word Science I mean the true sciences, not such disciplines as Consumer Science (formerly Home Economics) and Library Science. These are my own opinions based on years of experience, not something I heard .on TV or Talk Radio.
DeleteI can certainly see that from the perspective of someone who looks strictly at the makeup of a faculty where you would say that this group of professors is liberal and this other group is conservative therefore the makeup of the school is balanced, which is what you have seemed to have implied in the past. From my perspective, the makeup of the school is the results it supplies. Because of the reverence we seem to pay to the singular word ‘Degree’, the vast majority of people sit classes with liberal professors. It is easily discernible the number of students who are taught and degreed by these various professors.
Deletehttp://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_ctb.asp
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_318.20.asp
With respect to primary and secondary education, it is true that I have not been involved with those people for many years. Most of my thought is derived from the antidotal stories like a 6th grade girl being fitted for an IUD without her parents knowledge or consent or a copy of some common core fill-in-the-blank humanizing Islam even though we know how the left feels about separation of church and state or a boy suspended because he refused to remove a shirt worn in honor of his father killed in Afghanistan just because it depicted the American flag.
I am pretty sure that we have a self fulfilling loop here because the teachers involved in English literature, sociology, civics, art or drama all received their degrees absorbing the philosophy of liberal college professors borne out by the links above.
I am not sure if your last line was a statement of fact or to imply something else but no doubt my inquiry into this idea that education and journalism and social sciences and political science that shape the views of just about everybody in the US just might have come from an argument that I heard on a radio talk show.
No matter what an individual's political persuasion is, they can go the internet and find some extreme story that confirms their view. I attended community college part time over a long period of time, and I went to my classes at night along with other working adults. I never received or experienced the indoctrination that is claimed to be rampant everywhere.
DeleteFrom time to time, I see stories about what occurs on university campuses, and I have to admit I find it a bit ridiculous. It remains a favorite past time to blame our education system for corrupting our youth while not ever casting a glance toward the parents who send them there. Obviously, as a person born in 67, I can't speak from experience about what it was like to be on a university campus in the 60's. Near as I can tell, however, there was a massive rebellion against "the establishment", with universities being a well entrenched part of that establishment. To me, that corruption of the education system occurred from outside, and when I look at the attitudes of helicopter parents today, coupled with the general fuck you mentality that has become so pervasive in our society, I'm kinda not surprised that universities have become what they are.
I believe millions of students still find a way to get through college without becoming radicalized.
“No matter what an individual's political persuasion is, they can go the internet and find some extreme story that confirms their view.”
DeleteSome extreme stories?... How many do you need that show just how political correctness has stifled the debate is on campus 10,100 ,1000...? As far as pre college, their again we have decades of policies removing primary responsibility for social upbringing of our children away from the parent... ostensibly because parents aren’t passing on the ‘correct’ message. Just because you are amour’d with the message of the day does not make it the right one.
I sometimes shake my head in amazement at the rationalizations the left uses to promulgate their position. You, an adult, presumably with reasonably well solidified opinions, attending community college, at night, with other working adults in classes that by in large have little to do with liberal arts except perhaps for a brush with a 101 class on sociology or psychology and if you get in-depth you might even get a course in something like the politics of healthcare. You don’t live on campus, you don’t date, you don’t attend ‘rallies’ and student union meetings, you don’t live in a dorm and you could probably hear steering thoughts given in a lecture and already agree with the premise... that is, you aren’t an impressionable 19 year old. Just like teaching a 6th grader that homosexual relationships are normal.... new concept to them... in
grained proposition to you, probably because your conditioning for the subject started in your early school sex ed classes. Classes fought against by a large percentage of the population because the state was taking the roll of social engineer rather than leaving that responsibility to the parents... as I said above however... the message wasn’t what the left felt should be taught in ‘their’ society... and they of course by in large doing the educating, even if you teach a hard subject like math, many of your ‘teaching’ skills were developed in liberal arts classes. Next of course was the states’ ability to intervene in the reproductive affairs of a minor without the knowledge or consent of the parent. Don’t get me wrong... lots of things have contributed to latch key kids... and not all of them have to do with capitalism.
Yes, it was a massive rebellion against the ‘establishment’. Some justified... like our interference in Vietnam but I’m not so sure that we carried forward into our brave new world, any lesson there. The rebellious are now the establishment... perhaps, before we have no borders, no culture, no values and no language, it’s time for a new rebellion.
Your last line is interesting... ‘Radicalized’ implies immediate, gross and very recognizable change.. Liberalism is more like cancer... at first you might actually have it but tests won’t show it... then, if left unattended long enough... your terminal. Sometimes racking treatments of chemo and radiation can kill it but it certainly won’t be painless.
I guess you're right, it's really that simple. All parents want to take responsibility, but they are victims of leftists who dominate everything so harshly that parents and their children can't help but to be damaged by twisted thinking. Liberalism is a cancer? Yeah TS, clearly I'm the only one intoxicated by a social message. This is another one of those idiot phrases that people think is so meaningful. I pronounced two people dead at work yesterday who died from cancer. I'm getting as tired of hearing this analogy as I was in hearing the left keep raising analogies of Hitler in Bush's presidency.
DeleteI've watched a lot of people and their families as well as my own family deal with watching someone die from cancer. A lot of those people managed to maintain and even find a deeper sense of humanity. But, never mind, go ahead and dismiss this too.
Of course its not that simple... latch key kids 'happened' for a lot of reasons. Trade deals, Dr. Spock, the idea that individual fulfilment was more important than personally raising your children... values.. consumerism. The point is, when your family disintegrated... was it really just drinking? My dad went through a rather nasty period of drinking and it created a rather... stressful home life... but the drinking was the result and not the cause of his demons. It took some time but with my mother’s love for him and dedication her marriage, he got sober and they lived a very happy old age. One thing that never stopped (looking at it retrospectively) is that he and my mother always did their best for me, even in a drunken even if I could have run away at times.
DeleteWell, I will have a think and try to come up with a different metaphor to parallel the insidious, continual erosion of values, systems and families left in the wake of the progressive agenda. The process by which cancer grows and spreads seemed logical to me. P.S. My father died of colon cancer with multiple rounds of chemo... which failed to stop it from masticating to several other organs... He never complained though and he was a calming influence on my mother to the day he died.
You know, I don’t necessarily like being so harsh on liberals because most come from a good place but like the Christian right, they have their opinion... and just like the Christian right, you will never catch them saying that they screwed up anything and if it did get screwed up it wasn’t because their idea was bad, it was because we just didn’t pony up enough cash. At least the Christian right operates on a faith and aren’t afraid to admit it... the left really have no faith in anything except wealth distribution and controlling people’s lives. You say the I think that I have all the answers... no, I don’t necessarily but I have yet to hear someone from the left actually defend their record with regard to the nuances of social dependence and the results it has achieved over the last 50 years, why even blacks say that integration did more harm than good and why government regulation, being the only thing we have ever known, just might be doing America more harm than good.
" the left really have no faith in anything except wealth distribution and controlling people’s lives"
DeleteThis so fucking stupid and beyond arrogant. And it's trite bullshit. I mean, you start this para almost acknowledging what I just finished typing on another thread in response to your hurling of famous quotes, but then you veer off into your safe little mental happy place pontificating with authority about how much you know about what is important to people on the left. As if we live for nothing more than to wake up and figure out some new way to enslave your brilliant mind for our perverse pleasure.
I think you quite enjoy dumping on liberals in the exact same way the many on the far left enjoy dumping on conservatives, it's because it's easy and allows the mind to wrap everything up in a simple package and remain blissfully ignorant. Take the sentence I highlighted, just before that you give Christians the benefit of the doubt for operating on faith of some invisible power that is well described on paper, and then you take two steps in another direction and blast the left for doing exactly the same thing, as if, somehow, there is not centuries worth of true, grotesque, torture and murder of people in the name of a Christian God. Why don't people admit mistakes? Because of the human trait of ego and because they don't want to lose standing. It's not that complicated.
I think that's the second time you have worked that quote in there at the end about blacks secretly longing for the days when there was no integration and they were "protected" by being treated as second class citizens. You know what that reminds me of? Women wearing burquas.
" the left really have no faith in anything except wealth distribution and controlling people’s lives"
DeleteIs it trite or is it just a bitter taste of truth... name me one damn thing liberals have actually done to self empower ANYONE.. because nobody built a damn thing off their own back. They have no belief that the individual is capable of anything so if it doesn’t involve redistribution , market manipulation, pushing people into positions that they aren’t qualified for and are destine to fail and piling licenses and regulations on top of everyone and passing out trophies for 10th place... just what does the left really have faith in?
Yes, I acknowledged that things weren’t simple but most of those things I listed resulted from the denigration of family values and a general sense of moral responsibility.
Look, democrats... liberals, the left have found their political breaks only in crisis. FDR did it and I don't think he solved much of anything but he gave us the "if it’s a tax you can have anything you want" plan of governance. LBJ doubled down on welfare by depicting democrats the 'friends' of the black but that was after he worked like hell to keep the legislation down brought up by a republican administration and now with immigration. Statistically that has worked out really well. And now the DNC and this president find opportunity in opening our borders just to support their hunger for power.
See, this is why we can't communicate... I say that blacks state that they only wanted to be treated equal in the eyes of the law and given the same protections as anyone else while making their own opportunities and you twist it into ... they wanna be slaves or under separate but equal or stuck under a burka. I didn't say that and if you truly believe that what I am saying means that, you really need to get some perspective cause your missing a very important component of the racial problem today. Why do you think blacks (No Me) are saying “the problem isn’t the confederate flag... its the US flag”
No, I don’t like ‘dumping’ on liberals but they can’t ‘see’ the harm that they do and more than the religious right can see why it is hypocritical to wrap themselves in the constitution and want to legislate abortion or marriage... You know that anger that everyone is talking about lately?... Washington and the people who keep them in office are driving it.
"Look, democrats... liberals, the left have found their political breaks only in crisis." And typically right after a Republican was president presiding over economic downturn or some other failure the public was unhappy with.
DeleteYour pronouncement is trite bullshit because you wipe shit over everybody left of center. What have they done to empower people? what about countless liberal people who have volunteered their time with those less fortunate, who have become teachers, who have become police officers, etc etc. Liberals occupy all the same walks of life that others do and contribute plenty. Some even take jobs that require literally wiping the ass of people who have nothing but bitterness to spew. What you seem to be bitching about is this nefarious plot to allegedly enslave everyone, or better yet, just to enslave the most intelligent people of the human race like yourself who are smart enough to be just a step ahead by figuring out the dark plot.
This ongoing dream that Democrats are soft on immigration because it's good for votes is also getting ridiculous. Republicans claim Hispanics are much more like them in their outlook, and yet, they keep voting for Democrats. The reason we keep getting amnesty, going back the Reagan days, is because it's easy. And it's also because it has long benefitted business owners as surely as it has the illegals who can make better money here. This, again, does not seem like a complicated thing, especially considering that Republicans, the non baggers anyway, are willing to pass reform that provides for a financial shakedown of the illegal and also keeps them from having to go around the country trying to found up every last one and give them a kick in the ass as they send them across the border.
As for the blacks, I would have to agree their unending support of the Democrats and Liberals has not pulled them into an assimilation that pretty much every other ethnic group has managed to accomplish. Martin Luther King was clearly an individual who was advocation for equality, but in the eyes of those who help power at that time, he was an uppity nigger disturbing the fabric of society, and he was assassinated for it. Since then, things have taken some rough twists and turns and yes, well intentioned liberals have at times made the problem worse, and I'll go one better, white Democrats have basically boxed themselves into a corner wherein they are unable to make really any critiques of why African Americans are not acting better toward themselves at the very least.
I believe that at the far left, there is a unicorn and happy dust mentality toward the African American community that is not helpful. There is plenty of culpability that white people need to own for helping create this problem, both from the unrealistic left, and the bitter right that helped create enough hate to get King killed. It is time to start rolling back some of the affirmative action programs, just as it is time to address the ridiculous and meticulously well documented unequal application of punishment in the justice system. This won't happen, however, without leadership. Some people right of center are willing to volunteer their time helping black kids with tutoring or serving as big brothers or big sisters, if we really want to fix things, I think these programs are going to do far better good that government programs.
TS what makes you so sure that the half that want to ban free speech are members of the left. maybe just maybe they are repubs helping move the right to the ultra conservativeness of say oh Adolph Hitler.
ReplyDeleteOMG!.... you mean.... Trotsky neocon's? Besides, I thought pubs were too dumb to go to college.
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