I’m intrigued as to why you think that you deserve answers to a laundry list of questions, when you consistently and dogmatically refuse to engage in honest debate, and constantly change the terms of discussions to suit yourself.
Nonetheless, i’ll answer your questions honestly, in the hope that you might one day choose to reciprocate and prove yourself less on an idiot. Admittedly, tomndebb and John Mace have pretty much made the points i was going to make, but i’ll add some stuff of my own.
I deny that this statement is true, and i deny it categorically and without qualification.
Of course, you ask the question in your typical weaselly fashion. After all, no matter how many people tell you that liberals do say positive things about America, all you have to do is resort to your usual tactic of referring to your own personal experience as justification for your ignorance. “Well, i listen to the media all the time, and i never hear liberals say anything positive about America.” That argument, of course, is as irrefutable as it is dishonest.
Furthermore, you often seem to equate criticism of the United States government, or United States foreign policy, with criticism of the United States more generally. If you adopt this ridiculous position, it’s quite easy to argue, especially under the current administration, that liberals don’t have much positive to say about the United States. But, as Voyager’s question (above) suggests, one can be critical of particular policies or actions, while at the same time arguing that those action betray or undermine the positive and laudable values that are central to the American system.
Hell, it’s not only liberals who often have positive things to say about America. Even someone on the far left like Noam Chomsky (who is often characterized as an extreme anti-American) has said, on numerous occasions, that America is the freest society in the world, and that its citizens enjoy levels of freedom and opportunity unknown to people in other countries. Here, for example, is a quote from Chomsky’s book Deterring Democracy:
And here is something Chomsky said in an interview:
Admittedly, these quotes were both made in the context of Chomsky’s broader criticisms of US policies, but they still show that even someone demonized as an anti-American loony by many still has some positive things to say about America. And mainstream liberalism has been, over the past half century, extremely positive about America as a nation and a society. To suggest otherwise is to demonstrate an awful ignorance of both history and politics.
Well, that’s not really one point; it’s two, so i’ll take them separately.
Firstly, the idea that the post-secondary education system in America “is overwhelmingly liberal in its politics.”
To be quite honest, i don’t know. In the areas where i have personal experience—the humanities subjects—i’d be willing to say that liberals probably do hold a majority, perhaps a strong majority. Certainly, most of the history and other humanities professors and graduate students that i know could generally be described as liberal or leftist in their political orientations. My own experience is mainly with people working in top-100 research universities (private and public), so i’m not sure to what extent this skews my perceptions. There are plenty of colleges and universities in the country that have conservative professors in their humanities faculties, from Ivy League schools to small Southern baptist colleges. Exactly what the breakdown is, i don’t know.
Once we move beyond my disciplinary boundaries, i find it even more difficult to make an informed guess. I know there are left/liberal scientists and engineers and economists, because i sometimes read their journals and look at their websites. For example, the magazine Dollars and Sense is run largely by lefty economists, and takes positions on economics ranging from mainstream liberal to hardline Marxist. I think it might also be fair to call the Union of Concerned Scientists liberal in their political orientation, although in my experience most of their positions also have a sound scientific basis.
But these disciplines also have their fair share of political conservatives. I’m sure i don’t need to argue that economists are well-represented in conservative circles, and there are also scientists and engineers and doctors and lawyers who work in universities and colleges and who are conservative.
Is the college and university system is “overwhelmingly liberal”? I really don’t know. In some places and some disciplines, probably. In others, probably not. And in some, liberals are probably a minority. Let me ask you a question: do you have anything, besides your own conservative persecution complex, to support your assertion that the college and university system is “overwhelmingly liberal,” or do you just expect everyone to take your pronouncements at face value?
The second part of that question is whether the college and university system strives to “indoctrinate its students” into the liberal point of view.
No.
I have no doubt that there are some professors who see political indoctrination as a key part of their job, but that’s not the case for most of the people i know. As i said in a previous post, most academics take their jobs as educators seriously, and are more concerned with turning their students into scholars and thinkers than turning them into liberals.
But again, the way you ask your question poisons the well and demonstrates your one-dimensional mindset regarding these issues. You use a loaded word like “indoctrinate,” but really give us no idea of what you would consider to be indoctrination, and what you would define as non-indoctrination in a college classroom. For example, if i told you that i had my American Intellectual History class read Noam Chomsky and Kate Millet and Malcolm X last week, would you consider that indoctrination? What if i told you that, this Monday, those same students will be reading Russell Kirk, F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Allan Bloom?
As i said before, i don’t deny that teachers’ personal political viewpoints make it into the classroom. We’re human beings. But, for me, the accusation of indoctrination implies that forcing our students into a particular set of political beliefs is more important to us than educating them in history (or economics, or whatever). And that simply isn’t the case.
Also, in accusing professors of indoctrinating students into liberal beliefs, you seem to be headed in a direction that might pose problems for your ideological worldview. After all, what exactly is a liberal belief? We might argue, for example, that many liberals (modern liberals, not classical liberals) accept the need for government intervention in the economy, in the form of a welfare state. Conversely, we might argue that many conservatives are opposed to that idea of welfare state politics.
But what about when it comes to more general values and beliefs. For example, when i teach my class about slavery and about the debates in American culture leading up to the Civil War, it’s probably quite clear to them that i believe slavery to be an awful system, and that America became a better place upon the abolition of slavery. For the later period, after the war and into the twentieth century, i also make clear my dislike of things like Jim Crow laws, and the racist laws and policies enacted by many state legislatures, north and south.
Is this liberal indoctrination?
If you answer “yes,” doesn’t this imply that opposition to racism and prejudice is a specifically liberal value?
Because what we’re dealing with here is not just a question of liberal versus conservative; it’s a question of whether human values have any place in a classroom setting. I believe that they do. If all my students wanted to know were dates and Presidents and the other factual building blocks of history, they could just go to the internet. But, while my main aim is to teach them about history, i believe that any attempt to study history seriously involves asking students to think for themselves, and to engage with issues directly related to human values and politics. They don’t have to agree with me or with my politics—in fact, i’ve given some of my highest grades to a few very smart conservatives, including one who spent a summer interning in the Bush White House—but they should be willing to engage with the questions of values and politics that are raised by a serious and committed study of history.
I’ve answered your questions as honestly as i can. If you feel that the level of detail constitutes some sort of “dancing around,” and that i should have restricted myself to a yes or no response, then i’ll just have to accept that you have no concept of what rational debate and discussion are all about.
I’d accuse you of moving the goalposts to suit your needs, but that would be an understatement of the mendacity of your debating style.
First you move the goalposts.
Then you dig up the goalposts and hide them around behind the bleachers.
Then you come back and fill in the hole where the goalposts were, and, while tamping down the last of the earth with your shovel, deny that the goalposts ever existed at all and insist that this has always been a cow paddock.
Then, while your opposition wonders what the hell is going on, you put the goalposts back in place again and start shouting at him to hurry up and kick the ball already.
Of course, i have only myself to blame for indulging your dishonesty. Every time i enter into a debate with you, your conduct convinces me that you are not worth the effort of rational discussion. Yet i keep coming back. It’s a failure of will on my part, and something i’m going to try and correct in the future.