Yeah, the idea that 50% of Americans (or even college graduates) self-identify as liberal is beyond laughable. Hell, very few Democrats in Congress use that label for themselves! “Liberal” is still largely a dirty word in US politics.
They can call themselves and self-identify as artichokes, for all I care, so long as they pull the correct lever in that booth.
I’m not falling for that old “pull my lever” joke.
Unfortunately, you fail to anticipate the Starving Artist mode of argumentation.
Firstly, the little “(no cite)” disclaimer is, when coming from SA, a red flag notifying all and sundry that the following “statistics” are little more than fabrication out of whole cloth, and the only reality they resemble is the one inside SA’s obviously deluded mind.
Secondly, the fact that you have now provided evidence directly contradicting SA’s lies is irrelevant. The fact that the number of people self-identifying as liberal is nothing more than an indication of how internalized liberal ideology has become in America. You see, all those self-proclaimed moderates are actually liberals; the fact that they believe themselves to be moderates is just more evidence that liberalism is taking over America.
Now, you might argue that, since the percentage self-identifying as moderates and as liberals has changed little since the 1960s, SA’s assertion that those numbers have changed is clearly wrong, whether or not these people’s self-identification is correct. But you have again failed to appreciate the Starving Artist Mode of Logic[sup]TM[/sup]. You see, back in the 1960s, when people said they were moderates, they really were moderates. SA knows this because he knew some people back then. But now, when people say they’re moderates, they’re really liberals.
You see how easy it would be if you’d just let yourself believe whatever you wanted to be true?
Or, failing that, the polling community is full of lying liberals?
(I’m really, really trying to learn. For some reason. Probably not a good one.)
You were the one who launched the cry of dishonesty by claiming mhendo had said something explicit when mhendo had quite carefully noted that you chose examples. You then came back in your “rebuttal” and noted explicitly that you selection of examples was deliberate. Since your deliberate examples were very much those of apolitical subjects that you threw out in the middle of a political diatribe, I think it is more than fair to draw conclusions about your intent.
If you do not like that, you probably need to express yourself more clearly.
OTOH, this odd claim:
indicates that you are really pretty clueless on this topic.
40 years? Back to 1967? 10% liberal? How did you happen to arrive at those utterly absurd conclusions. The 1968 election is generally the one in which analysts indicate that the general population began the shift away from the liberalism of the New Deal and began the run up to the “Reagan Revolution” in which the majority of the electorate could be considered to have drifted firmly into a conservative stance. If you really believe that the number of “liberals” in the U.S. was at some 10% low in 1967 and has increased to 50% today, then I can only conclude that your only source of news is The New American.
50%? From The National Center for Public Policy Research:
As to the idea that in 1967, when the overwhelming majority of voters would have seen the New Deal as a good thing, trade unions were at their strongest, and the efforts of Bull Connor and Orval Faubus had made most of even those people who felt the Negores were awfully uppity support the ideals of Martin Luther King, Jr., only 10% of the nation would have considered themselves liberal–you are simply making stuff up.
Of course, a more nuanced approace would use, at minimum, a two axis (and probably a three axis) graph to plot opinions, so that a person who was fiscally conservative might still be socially liberal while a fiscal liberal might also be opposed to the idea of same sex marriage and a person who believed in a strong military might still believe that it could be (or was) improperly applied. I find most “liberal/conservative” arguments frequently miss the point of an accurate analysis of people’s attitudes.
However your 10% to 50% growth of "liberal"s in the population over the most recent 40 years is simply an absurd and indefensible claim based, I suspect, on some narrow and idiosyncratic definitions that have no basis in the real world.
My two main points, mhendo…and I’d like you to answer them specifically and without shooting verbal tendrils out in all sorts of obfuscatory directions…are that:
a.) One rarely hears anything postive about the U.S. coming from liberalism. (And I’m not asking for reasons and/or justifications, I’m simply asking if you would deny that this statement is true.)
b.) The college and university system in this country is overwhelmingly liberal in its politics and strives to indoctrinate its students into that point of view. (The same. I’m not asking for reasons and/or justifications, I’m simply asking if you would deny that this statement is true.
I know that you love to dance around and talk about anything and everything but the actual point of my posts, but I’d really appreciate knowing whether you would deny that these statements are true.
I have to leave for work now, but I’ll look forward to your answer when I return.
Equally true of liberals and conservatives. All I hear from conservatism is that the country has turned away from its ideals into a morass of debauchery as liberals are trashing religion, trying to let “those people” live like normal citizens, and coming to take our guns away. What are these positives that one assumes conservatism is saying that no one but you hears?
I would sure deny that this statement had any basis in reality.
That colleges tend to have more liberals than conservatives in the liberal arts faculties (and more conservatives than liberals in engineering) is almost certainly true. That, in a limited number of colleges, there is an overall attitude that leans left is also true.
That there is any serious effort of the schools (separate from a minority of individual instructors who may push agendas) to “indoctrinate” most students into any political philosophy is just a bogeyman creatd by the Coulters and Robertsons of the world without a basis in reality.
Most schools (and, frankly, most instructors), just want the kids to show up, pay for their classes, and go out and get good enough jobs to become alumni benefactors in ten years.
My God, what a stupid post. You really are an idiot.
One hears positive stuff about the US from “liberalism” all the time. And while I believe it has been demonstrated that college faculty leans pretty heavily toward the liberal side of the political spectrum, the idea that college kids are “indoctrinated” is out there in tinfoil hat territory.
Just curious if you consider a statement like “Torture at Abu Ghraib is awful because, for among other reasons, it violates the principles that make America great” something positive or negative about the US?
And how much did DerTrihs pay you to take the heat off him? 
Starvin’ at his finest: making an ass out of himself.
In other news, the sun will come out tomorrow
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Hmm…wonder where his new “bestest pal,” Glumfuster has gone now? Why isn’t she, and her high horse, here to defend the “cruelty of The Jackals®” that has descended on yet another defenseless victim of same? After all, no better case of The Pit’s ‘cruelty’ than piling-on, on an imbecile.
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.
It is a central tenet of the liberal faith that indoctrination is immoral as well as entirely unnecessary. A simple and cogent recitation of the facts will carry the day.
Now, your real rootin’-tootin’ Leninist lefty believes wholeheartedly in propaganda and indoctrination, he isn’t concerned about some metaphysical hogwash like “truth”, the revolution is the truth, that which serves the revolution is “true”. Liberals believe in facts. They believe that facts matter.
Now, whereas a tighty righty academic might be loathe to cite evidence to contradict his outlook, say, history…the liberal is perfectly at ease with it, he is confident that the accumulation of facts will favor his position.
My professors over the years have been both Conservative and Liberal. Some of them were Republicans, some Democrats, some members or supporters of other parties. Exactly one of them discussed politics at all during my tenures as a student. That discussion was held after school and just as part of a larger dialogue about life in general in the US. None of my professors has tried to indoctrinate students into any political party’s philosophy.
Have you considered changing your username to tsitrA gnivratS?
No. Have you?
That’s amusing, because I was a liberal in college, and became conservative when I came to the exact opposite conclusion of what you state here.
Did you actually go to university? Which one? In which courses did you receive ‘political indoctrination’ and how?
What, exactly, is so horrible about liberal philosophy?
What, exactly, is so correct and good about conservative politics as carried out by Dub & co.?
I think it’s pathetic that conservatives and atheists have such a low view of all humans that they actually believe that only brainless robots enter universities or churches, become ‘programmed’ by a vast conspiracy of, I guess, ex-CIA brainwashers or something, and then emerge parroting what they’ve learned.
Nothing is further from the truth. How many teenagers do you know, SA, who are willing to accept ‘indoctrination’? It’s a ludicrous claim. And that’s the problem. Too many atheists and conservatives have, it seems, only a passing acquaintance with facts, with truth. They live in a strange world of their own imaginings. It’s sad to see them trying so earnestly to persuade you that the big boogeymans really do exist.
As for the OP, I think his logic is a tad faulty. But again, we see that saddest of sad ‘why do you hate America’ retorts to him. A clue, foks: it’s dictatorships that don’t brook criticism of a nation and its politics. Those of you who claim to love freedom are seriously deluded if you can think that muzzling a Der Trihs expresses any sort of love of freedom. It means that you hate freedom and reject its practice. So don’t wear your American flag proudly while you refuse people their right to criticize it; because in doing what you do, it is you that defile it, not Der Trihs and his ilk.
(Bolding mine.) Wait… atheists are the ones with the magical worldview, who shy away from facts and truth? That’s really your claim?
The complaint isn’t that it’s horrible, exactly, the complaint is regarding college teachers who only give students one point of view, instead of giving both sides and teaching the students to think critically and decide for themselves. Personally, I saw some of this in college, but I think it was because I was in the social sciences. My husband, a graduate of the same university, did not have the same experience as I did.
I doubt there are more than a couple of people on this message board who would make the statement that the current president embodies conservative ideals.
It’s not a conspiracy…it’s just learning what you are taught. As I said above, when people only learn one point of view, that’s the point of view they learn. Happens on both sides of the political spectrum.
You don’t seem to know much about conservatives. Conservatives believe, much like ecludiator described liberals above, that facts will win the day…if people are given facts to work with.
Muzzling is not quite what is going on here. Asking someone to shut up because they offend you is freedom of speech, as well. Plain-spoken conservatives have been pitted here plenty, and asked to shut up, because people were offended. That’s the way it works.