Lout, that answer is, quite simply, a load of bull.
Conservatives in general, myself included, want to strengthen public education for all, not just those that happen to live in good neighborhoods.
We can argue over the best methods to do so, but to state that conservatives are maliciously and intentionally harming education is a blatant falsehood.
qts:
So all academics are a all bunch of communists, is that it?
If conservatives hate academia it’s because it doesn’t buy into their black-and-white thinking and instead struggles to understand the Real World in all its complexity.
How many conservatives embrace a Biblical world wiew and how does that square with the Real World?
chappachula:
Huh? I’ve never seen the phrase “politically correct” used other than in a negative sense. I submit that it’s synonymous with “conservative”.
Shodan:
Whadaya mean, “Liberalism…their…”? Liberalism is a philosophy or an attitude, not a group of people.
On what grounds would you label such hypothetical individuals as “liberal”? I for one am flexible and open-minded on these (cherry-picked) issues.
First of all, the only people more hide-bound and inflexible than Christian fundamentalists are Muslim fundamentalists. Being hide-bound and inflexible is the opposite of being liberal, so anyone like that has no business calling himself a liberal.
Don’t confues liberalism with leftism. If your views stop evolving, you stop being liberal. When the Left becomes the establishment, liberalism opposes the Left. Remember, in Russia the conservatives were the Communists and the liberals were the right-leaning reformers under Yeltsin.
Libertarians and conservatives are two very different creatures. Libertarians believe in freedom on both social and economic matters. Conservatives hate social freedom, though they’re all for letting corporations rape the country.
Mr. Moto, I don’t think we’re talking about the running of elementary schools here. I think it’s about the tendancy of conservatives to dismiss their critics from better-educated circles (i.e. academia) as “elitists”.
**
And thus the perception that “liberals hate business.” :rolleyes:
It would be easier to steer away from these asinine generalizations if there weren’t always some knee-jerk partisan out there more than ready to reinforce the stereotypes.
Azael, I should have smilied that comment, it was typed with tongue planted in cheek. However, the underlying point is true: conservatives, as a rule, don’t care about social liberty as much as they do economic (with liberals as that reversed) while libertarians are typically hardliners on both social and economic liberty, making them completely different creatures than conservatives or liberals.
In an effort to seriously analyze this question:
The only conservatives I’ve ever dealt with that hate academia (and it’s only been a handful) tend to be of the populist streak.
There is a long-running tradition, within populism, to denounce certain institutions, that are regarded (by the populists, at any rate) as being dominated by “the elites”, as opposed to “the people”.
Ah I see. :smack:
And I do appreciate the distinction, as I am somewhat of a libertarian bent myself. After a while you start getting used to being lumped in with the conservatives by liberals and being dismissed as liberal by conservatives.
I was specifically referring to lout comments on public education, which is commonly understood in America to refer to k-12 levels.
But since we’re at it, let’s address some of these tendencies you’re referring to.
Do you have evidence that these critics of conservatives are better educated just because they’re in academia? If so, kindly provide it.
Academia has a role to play in our society, and a vital one. But these institutions and the people who make them run don’t function well without oversight, examination and criticism. Without this, the academy becomes insular and disconnected.
This examination can come from without and within, from liberals and conservatives both. There is a rich tradition of this. The classic conservative examination of the academy, God and Man at Yale, was written by William F. Buckley Jr. in the 1950’s.
I don’t think anybody here would argue that it’s a good thing that the liberal arts were freed from an unhealthy preoccupation with Classicism and Christianity in the early part of the 20th century. Why should it be so threatening if conservatives warn that a similar preoccupation with deconstructionism and feminism is holding real scholarship back?
Acedemia generally means liberal (Socialist, Communist, Progressive, whatever name they are presently hiding under)
It’s not only conservatives that have a problem with the left in universities, but so too do Libertarians and Constitutionalists. These self-proclaimed, intellectually elite espouse their radical left-wing opinions and treat those opinions as fact. Lies abound in universities across the U.S. (and world) and dissident views are met with censure, firing, failing students, and even expelling them.
The root of the problem is hypocracy. Universities are typically incubators and insulators for socialist propaganda where evidence their radical views is ignored, not open forums where alternate or even traditional views are allowed.
Most universities are essentially run as they would have Government do; absolute power for its leaders, intolerance of dissident views, while feeding off of the liberty of the individual.
MFitz
raises an eyebrow at MFitz
And what university are you going to? Berkeley (I know I typoed that somehow)? It sure as heck isn’t my college where a slightly trippy, extremely conservative creationist philosopher is on the board of Ethics and tenured. It isn’t my university where the College Republicans rule Student Government and quite a bit of public opinion. What precise University are you even speaking of? Or are you just referring to the conveniently Silent Majority?
Ladies and gentlemen, SDMB’s newest poster: Pat Buchanan! Give the people a wave Pat! Wait, no Pat, don’t just stick your hand in the air like that…
Personally, being a Strong 'Publican sympathizer, I think a lot of it comes from the desperate love affair many academics had for Soviet Russia, and somewhat later, Red China. There was some very major support and, shall I say, “blind” admiration for the Marxist totalitarian systems in many academic circles, and Conservatives utterly despise certain intellectuals for this betrayal.
Karl Marx is dead.
The argument that academics were Communists was presented by that senator from Wisconsin, McCarthy and his lackey attorney Richard M. Nixon.
The House UnAmerican Activities Committee got started that way. And they hosed down Berkley, which meant Berkeley got the reputation for being non-Conservative.
Then we had black balls.
All of this went away for almost three decades. I mean Richard Milhouse did resign in disgrace. He was not beatified by the current Pope, who would beatify just about anyone, it seems.
But now we have Homeland Security. Which is somehow reminiscent of the Reichstadt. And Agent Orange has been morphed into Security Risk Orange.
Dear Dick Chaney, please rebuild my city instead of Iraq? Please!
In my experience, people who hate academia are usually ignorami who associate higher education with authority, arrogance, or privlidge.
-Poor people who view “college boys” as spoiled rich kids on a 4 year vacation.
-Stupids who are bitter because their peak years ended at high-school graduation while the “nerds” went on to college and careers.
-And of course people who view anyone who went to a better college as an arrogant elitist.
Other than that, all I see here is the usual SDMBL bullshit where everyone who isn’t a placard waving hippy is a Neo Nazi.
While I think it’s true that academia is battered about by some conservative entertainers, it’s entirely worth pointing out for the millionth time that American foreign policy now turns almost entirely on the theories of the Neo-cons, including:
Irving Kristol, Professor of Social Thought at the NYU Graduate School of Business Administration.
Peter Rodman, Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute.
Francis Fukuyama, Professor of Public Policy at the Institute of Public Policy at George Mason University.
Jeffrey Bergner, professor of political science at Georgetown, U Penn and Michigan St.
Paul Wolfowitz, Dean and Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University.
And of course, the neoconservative bible is Thucydides’ History of the Peleponnesian War as dissected by Leo Strauss and Donald Kagan, whose son (or is it grandson?) is a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century. Most of the folks named above–or their offspring–signed the now-famous 1998 PNAC letter to President Clinton on Iraq.
In fact, you could say that this most conservative Presidential administration has its foreign policy firmly based upon the theories of a group whose roots trace directly back to Trotskyite academia.
That’s why I also chuckled when I read lekatt’s comment about reality.
:rolleyes:
“The real world of science”? Where do you think most research in the physical sciences takes place? The real world of science is academia.
Seriously, though, I think the mistrust of conservatives toward academia is that one frequently does encounter very leftist professors, especially in the liberal arts. There aren’t very many places besides academia where radicals and far leftists are accepted on a professional level. The bad thing about this is that leftist thought is effectively isolated within the culture, The good thing is that students are given some new ideas to think about.
When I started college I was fairly conservative, and I was annoyed at times when I saw the leftist slant of many assigned readings. But I told myself, “It’s another world view. I don’t have to agree with it. Learning to look at something in a new light makes me wiser.”
I’m always amazed at how naiive Americans are becoming. So many uninformed liberals believing in government authority, true democracy, global warming, the U.N., etc. etc. Ad Naudseum. Please stop watching television, people! Read! And read opinions that are against your own! THAT is education, not
Government does only a couple of things well; the rest, they screw up. Only 15 cents of every dollar that is stolen from you by government goes to what it’s supposed to. The rest is to fund an ever-expanding system.
Look at the type of people who go into politics. These are the last people who should have ANY authority. The best government is a small, localised one.
I just hope the lefties here grow out of it when they start paying taxes like most of the 60s hippies did.
MFitz
Funny, all I see is the usual SDMBC bullshit where everyone who isn’t a flag-waving American is a filthy communist. :rolleyes:
MFitz, it doesn’t count when Gordon Liddy reads the newspaper on the air.
That is where you got that 15 cents of every dollar cite, isn’t it?