Conservative dopers -- why do you think the SDMB leans left?

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Starving_Artist

And it’s hard to keep a straight face when listening to liberals lay claim to intellectual superiority when they’re responsible for things like “social promotion” in school, where people get passed from grade to grade automatically and without having learned anything, which can result in people graduating from high school unable to read or write at a first or second grade level.

This is a mix of silliness and something worth responding to. The interesting thing about social promotion is how mixed the evidence is on its success, compared to the success of retention. There’s some pretty interesting research on whether it’s a good idea. Complaining about silly liberals who encourage it is exactly the sort of behavior the Dope SHOULDN’T engage in–it accepts a conservative idea without examination.

Educate yourself, Starving Artist, lest you be failed :).

Or when they foster and promote social change that results in huge numbers of children born out of wedlock and adults dependent on the government for their subsistence. And most of all for the naivety and gullibility that lead to the creation of communism, which of course resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people over the last century and the repression and privation that those who survived were forced to live under.

This, on the other hand, is too silly to dignify with a response.

[Chessic_Sense]

@iiandyiiii

Are there any conservative leaning boards as good at separating facts from woo and other ignorance (for the factual discussions – not the political ones)?

Sure. They’re Wall Street oriented, though, so naturally this board would not enjoy them.

@ivylass

It’s a big reason I left for four or so years. Now I just roll my eyes at the political threads and go find fun stuff to do in Cafe Society.

Amen.

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

It’s worth noting that these folks get very little welcome here either. Nor do leftists who deny the efficacy of vaccines, or leftists who think GMOs are Frankenfood, or leftists who believe we should move to state control of the means of production.
… the Republican party, courtesy of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and others, that is less interested in facts than it’s interested in raw ideology.

@Riemann

It’s seems natural to me that a board devoted to fighting ignorance would be at odds with those who deny reality.

Funny you should bring that up. I was just listening to an NPR interview about how people think of “truth.” Some want evidence, some appeal to ideal scenarios, some believe you can create truth by force of will. The story was quite even-handed about it, as if they were all equally credible.

You see a lot of relativism on the left, sustained by a denial of facts.

[Arcite]

I agree with the people who have said upthread that, as a creation of the Chicago Reader, it started out liberal, it has been run by liberal admins, and thus it tended to stay liberal. I don’t think it gets any more complicated than that.

I would also add, and I think I’ve tried to make this point on these boards before, those who intone deeply about “this message board’s mission to fight ignorance,” as though the message board had some grand and weighty moral purpose, are a little full of themselves. “Fighting Ignorance Since 1973” is up there on the masthead because it’s on the masthead of The Straight Dope, the Chicago Reader column, which is a trivia column. It’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek. It started as a feature (and this was more relevant when it began, before you could Google almost anything) where people could write in and have those little “have you ever wondered…” curiosities satisfied. Here’s a sampling of questions that have been answered by the newspaper column, pulled from the archives:
[ul]
[li]Are bananas radioactive?[/li][li]Why aren’t walnuts killing us?[/li][li]What happened to vitamins F, G, H, I, and J?[/li][li]How many G’s does my laundry pull during the spin cycle?[/li][li]Why does the alarm clock snooze button give you nine extra minutes, not ten?[/li][/ul]
While all those are very interesting, they’re pretty much little curious matters of trivia, not representations of some grave, society-wide ignorance that Wise People have some grand moral imperative to correct. Hence the tongue-in-cheek motto, “Fighting Ignorance.”

[Johnny_Ace]

@Chessic_Sense

You see a lot of relativism on the left, sustained by a denial of facts.

You see a lot of absolutism on the right, sustained by a denial of facts.

[Johnny_Ace]

He shoots…he scores!

[Riemann]

@Arcite

…I would also add, and I think I’ve tried to make this point on these boards before, those who intone deeply about “this message board’s mission to fight ignorance,” as though the message board had some grand and weighty moral purpose, are a little full of themselves. “Fighting Ignorance Since 1973” is up there on the masthead because it’s on the masthead of The Straight Dope, the Chicago Reader column, which is a trivia column. It’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek…

Ok, ignorance fought.

So, what are you advocating? Fight ignorance on trivial matters, promote ignorance on weighty matters?

Or should we go full Oscar:

In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.
In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.

[TSBG]

@Quartz

There’s an adage which seems to hold true here: the right think the left are wrong; the left think the right are evil.

You have only to look at the long, long history of smears against the Clintons to see how wrong this is. Are they perfect? No. But the the last 25 years have been an unending series of hysterical and largely false accusations against them. Hillary jaywalked! MURDER MENA BENGHAZI WHAAAAAAA!