I understand the rest of your post, but this has me scratching my head. You seem to be comparing apples and oranges. If your conservative pals are afraid to criticize liberal politicians, THEN liberals being unafraid to criticize Trump would be a rational comparison. But I’m guessing your conservative friends aren’t reluctant to criticize liberal politicians. Odds are, they do it all the time.
Or you could say your conservative friends are afraid to wear MAGA hats but your liberal friends aren’t afraid to wear ______. The problem there, though, is there’s no real liberal counterpart to the MAGA hat.
Maybe you should get your liberal friends and your conservative friends together to discuss ideologies. I’m guessing both sides would have plenty to say and wouldn’t be afraid to say it.
Back to the OP. The fears and propaganda about conservative students facing some sort of liberal backlash at most universities is unfounded. Over 7000 students at 120 different colleges were surveyed at the start of their freshman year and again at the start of their sophomore year:
Maybe that’s what’s really scaring conservatives: not that liberal students will harass their children, but that their children will develop a more favorable view of liberals, just as liberal students think more highly of conservative students. Finding out the people you thought were your enemy don’t fit the caricature you were presented? Sounds like a great reason to support higher ed.
Trump built his political career on birtherism and denial of climate science. Some Republican senator whose name I forgot responded to a tweet about this July being one of the hottest on record with “It’s summer.” Congressional Republicans held hearings on why conservatives aren’t getting more likes on social media, believing without evidence that Facebook and Twitter were “shadow banning” them. There is no equivalent rejection of facts on the liberal side. Yes, there are idiots everywhere, but conservatives elect their idiots to positions of power in far greater numbers. The rejection of higher education has been a part of conservative dogma since at least Goldwater. Liberals, for all their flaws, haven’t spent the last 50+ years hearing that science is a scam.
And you sound like the kind of ‘Christian’ who believes they are being persecuted because when they’re not allowed to push their religion on other people and completely fail to appreciate what actually being persecuted feels like. If a gay couple talks about ‘my husband’ or ‘my wife’, they’re bringing the political topic of gay marriage into the conversation, as well as the political topic of gays even existing in general. Of course if a straight couple does, it doens’t count as politics. If a trans person excuses themselves to go to the restroom, they’re bringing up the political topic of whether they should be allowed in public restrooms and which one, but if a cis person does then it’s not political. Same thing if they correct someone on pronouns, that’s also a political topic even though a cis person insisting on correct pronouns isn’t (or for that matter insisting on correct pronouns for a pet).
“Don’t bring politics into the discussion” is a hypocritical and oppressive stance when you also claim right for some people to simply exist and be treated with respect is open for political discussion.
I don’t believe you, BTW. I suspect that, like other people who use that rhetoric, you don’t act consistently with that belief and do some or all of opposing Planned Parenthood, supporting concentration camps on the border, opposing Black Lives Matter, opposing WIC, and opposing UHC, all of which indicate that you’re not actually opposed to killing human beings.
I’m going to disagree. I think there’s a divide between taking about your same sex spouse, or telling people your preferred pronouns, and actually discussing politics. I realize that people who fall outside gender norms are sometimes falsely accused of bringing up politics is these situations. But even people who violate gender norms get exhausted by a constant stream of politics.
I hang out with a nonbinary person who won’t let me talk politics at their house. For instance, the debates were off-limits. We don’t talk about what the law should be regarding gender at these events, either. Always talking politics is fatiguing. Sometimes you just want to hang out.
I wonder, has there been any actual academic research into this subject? Maybe by conservatives, so we can write off any political bias that Urbanredneck might object to?
Woessner tells me that, when he first went into this field of research, “I came at this expecting to find evidence of discrimination, but the data didn’t support it.” Now, years later, having published a book and over a dozen articles on the topic, he concludes that college campuses, “are not a hotbed of ideological discrimination. There are challenges for any minority in the academy, and that includes political minorities and racial minorities,” Woessner says, and those challenges can lead some conservative students to “lay low.” But there’s just no evidence that college professors—who do indeed trend liberal in many departments—routinely discriminate against conservative students.
Hmm. Weird. But why do we keep hearing so much about how awful it is for conservatives on campus? Well, here’s a hint:
Who is Campus Reform? Are they an unbiased bastion of truth, simply looking to report the facts about what’s going on on campus?
The Leadership Institute is a decades-old nonprofit that trains young conservative activists and policy leaders to sell right-wing ideals through seminars on media, fundraising, communications, and campaigning. It also operates a campus leadership program that “identifies, organizes, and trains conservative college students to promote and defend their values on campus.” The institute’s “national field program” boasts “more than 1,878 campus groups” that advocate for “limited government, the free market, traditional values, and national defense.”
The Leadership Institute also operates Campus Reform, a website where student reporters write about perceived instances of liberal bias on college campuses. Known as “Higher Education’s Internet Outrage Machine,” Campus Reform posts several poorly sourced “articles” each day alleging professorial bias against conservative students or policies. Examples of “bias” on campus from this week include: a professor who reached out to a black student about an upcoming class that would focus on slavery and white nationalism; a school supporting an “emergency fund” for immigrant students; and a school hosting a seminar on pay inequity and salary negotiation for women students. The unvetted work from Campus Reform also served as the sole evidence for Turning Point USA’s recent McCarthyist “Professor Watchlist” project, which publicly listed photos and details about specific college professors and administrators who “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Top contributors to the Leadership Institute in recent years include the anonymous conservative donor funds Donors Capital Fund and DonorsTrust, and the Charles Koch Foundation.
It’s a bit like right-wing complaints about the media. It’s not done because there’s actually strong evidence that the media has a liberal bias. It’s done because it’s been shown again and again that working the refs is an extremely viable strategy. Academia isn’t giving you the results you want? Discredit academia. Worst-case scenario, your followers stop caring about academia. Best-case scenario, academia gives more and more room to your bullshit in the name of false balance and then your followers don’t care anyways. Vox wrote an excellent article about this phenomen two years ago, when things weren’t quite as awful as they are now. A key excerpt:
The US is experiencing a deep epistemic breach, a split not just in what we value or want, but in who we trust, how we come to know things, and what we believe we know — what we believe exists, is true, has happened and is happening. The primary source of this breach, to make a long story short, is the US conservative movement’s rejection of the mainstream institutions devoted to gathering and disseminating knowledge (journalism, science, the academy) — the ones society has appointed as referees in matters of factual dispute.
In their place, the right has created its own parallel set of institutions, most notably its own media ecosystem. But the right’s institutions are not of the same kind as the ones they seek to displace. Mainstream scientists and journalists see themselves as beholden to values and standards that transcend party or faction. They try to separate truth from tribal interests and have developed various guild rules and procedures to help do that. They see themselves as neutral arbiters, even if they do not always uphold that ideal in practice.
The pretense for the conservative revolution was that mainstream institutions had failed in their role as neutral arbiters — that they had been taken over by the left, become agents of the left in referee’s clothing, as it were. But the right did not want better neutral arbiters. The institutions it built scarcely made any pretense of transcending faction; they are of and for the right. There is nominal separation of conservative media from conservative politicians, think tanks, and lobbyists, but in practice, they are all part of the conservative movement. They are prosecuting its interests; that is the ur-goal.
And yes, as Kimtsu points out, a big part of the problem is that conservatives generally believe a lot of crazy nonsense, and that academia will push back against that crazy shit. A better question might be, “Why is it so important for major right-wing influencers to have their followers believe a bunch of crazy nonsense? Why are they so eager to discredit anyone who would point out that it’s crazy?”
Not to be a dick, but I cannot help but think that this little rant about how “unproven” things like white privilege are isn’t exactly helping your case when it comes to being taken seriously. Seriously, male privilege, an unproven theory? These are concepts so well-established as to be basically unassailable. Claiming otherwise is the kind of thing that will rightfully get you laughed out of the room in sociology circles.
No, a lot of us don’t say much about politics in public at all, because we know a lot of liberals will try to use it against us if they know that we disagree with them or immediately jump to name calling (like racist). This is why a lot of liberals couldn’t accept it when Trump won. “Nobody I know voted for Trump!” Meanwhile, they don’t see how ranting constantly about how Trump is evil incarnate means that the people they know who support Trump probably won’t talk about it in front of them.
I saw people in Obama swag last time. Nobody seemed afraid to go out in public in it.
It would be great if we could have civil conversations about this stuff, but we can’t. I have had liberals flip out on me for simply politely disagreeing with their beliefs. No name calling, just expressing disagreement. Many liberals (especially younger ones) have been programmed to think that anyone who disagrees with them must be Hitler 2.0 and therefore does not even deserve to live, let alone have their opinion respected.
I like how you don’t see the irony of making snide digs like this against conservatives at the same time you are claiming that there is no merit to conservatives’ belief that the liberal establishment is against them.
This is like bragging about your amazing program to promote racial tolerance while in the same breath also making a dig against a particular racial group.
Yes, if colleges actually were open to all beliefs and people left college being respectful of those who disagree with them regardless of their own beliefs, then I would consider that wonderful. My own lived experience, both as someone who attend higher ed myself and interacts with large numbers of highly educated people, is that it doesn’t seem to be happening.
I don’t feel safe around people who wear MAGA hats, any more than I feel safe around people who wear swastika armbands - and the same is likely true for anyone who is undocumented, trans, or otherwise within the administration’s crosshairs. Best case scenario, they’re clueless about what they’re supporting. Worst-case scenario, they’re fucking neo-nazis. Can you honestly say the same thing about Obama supporters? Honestly?
Which beliefs? Please, be explicit. Is it about the marginal tax rate? I bet it’s about the marginal tax rate. :rolleyes:
(Pro tip to anyone trying to talk about political correctness or “civility in politics”: never ever ever ever let this kind of shit slide. What, exactly, can’t you talk about?)
Yes, I don’t think most people nowadays have a problem with gay people talking about their lives when it is relevant to the conversation. That is different than constantly stirring up outrage over politics.
I actually do live next door to a gay couple (even though I live in a city that is overall very Republican in a county that is overwhelmingly Republican). I don’t care that they are gay. I don’t know who they voted for (they could be Log Cabin Republicans for all I know, since they are choosing to live in a Republican suburb rather than our nearby liberal city). They don’t know who I voted for. We just go about our lives in peace. I think that is how MOST people want it to be, regardless of their political leanings.
Maybe in Iran or Saudi Arabia, people have a hard time admitting that LGBT people actually exist since they still kill gay people just for existing in those countries. I think most Americans are completely aware gay people exist. In fact, Gallup has found that most Americans vastly overestimate what percent of the population is LGBT, possibly due to how LGBT people have “outsized visibility”. Maybe, just like many people in this thread are convinced that conservatives are just being paranoid in thinking liberals are prejudiced against them, gay people are just being paranoid in thinking there are still a huge number of people who care about their sex lives.
Imagine me telling you that if you don’t support giving $500 million in taxpayer funding to the NRA to teach people about gun safety that you must not really care about stopping gun homicides. That’s what you sound like to pro-lifers when you say we need to support Planned Parenthood if we actually care about killing human beings.
If innocent black people are being shot by cops, then yes I do think that is wrong, but I also think it’s wrong that most liberals nowadays spend much more time talking about that than they do about far more widespread problems like gang violence in nonwhite neighborhoods. Gang violence kills far more nonwhite people every year and even with many years of law enforcement efforts is very hard to eradicate from poor communities.
If the border “concentration camps” are in fact rounding up immigrants and tearing them apart limb from limb (which is what is done in a D&E abortion), then yeah, I am against that too. I don’t really see it as a problem if people who choose to come here end up in camps that are not exactly the Hilton. Nobody forced them to come here.
People do die in countries with universal health care too, sometimes from things that they wouldn’t die from in the America system. “Free” healthcare systems don’t have unlimited resources and still have to draw a line somewhere in who they are willing to use their resources on.
I could go on, but that is going far beyond the scope of this thread.
My point was simply that the people who disagree with you feel just as strongly about the issues as you do and have their own reasons for seeing these issues as urgent, vital matters. However, even if the issue IS actually urgent and vital, someone who keeps carrying on about it in non-political situations is still being an asshole.
Even given that they should be in these camps, they should not be deliberately exposed to unsafe and unsanitary conditions under the pretext of getting tough. Furthermore, housing them in these places is a boondoggle for the private prison industry and the children at least would be safer and more cheaply housed with relatives. This is a simple problem with a simple solution, which is why it deserves the press it is getting.
That shoe fits both feet. I have three different relatives (close relatives, not some distant cousins I can avoid) who’ve each assembled WAY more weapons than they need to defend their homes, their families, and for that matter, their neighborhoods, and they’re the ones who like to discuss their armories around the dinner table. I can’t even ask any of them simple question about why they feel they need multiple guns (my parents were perfectly content with one shotgun in the bedroom closet) in their homes without getting a 20-minute lecture on the 2nd Amendment and why do I and all the other liberals want to take their guns. Angry old people keep writing letters to my local newspaper blaming Hillary Clinton for all sorts of things. We’re going through a tsuris in my local school district right now because a teacher wants to be addressed as Mx. rather than Mr., Ms., or Mrs., and people (who don’t have children at that school) are packing school board meetings crying, “WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN???”
Except many of them (if they’re religious) sincerely believe gay people are sinners, or (If they aren’t religious) sincerely believe it’s just a choice, and all people are born either male or female, and straight either way.
So all conservatives keep their opinions to themselves because–oh, my gosh1–others will disagree with them, sometimes vociferously? Please. I’ve been in plenty of situations where conservatives turned on the lone liberal in the room for speaking up. And yes, I’ve seen the reverse as well. But I think you’ll continue to experience confirmation bias as long as you think in terms of liberals as being “programmed.”
In fact, are you talking primarily about yourself here? Have you spoken up in defense of Trump and felt attacked when liberals responded? Did you continue to argue logically, or were you so outraged and appalled at their responses that you shut up?
It wasn’t a snide dig, but after reading your responses, I can see why you’d take it that way. I’m disappointed that you felt the need to compare it to the hypocrisy of racists. I’m assuming you thought you were responding in a snide way by taking a shot at liberals. That’s unfortunate.
Perhaps I should have added “And maybe the worst fear of liberals is that their children will realize conservatives are not the enemy” except for there aren’t many examples of that. That could be due to fewer liberal students attending predominantly conservative universities like BYU or Biola, or it could be due to the dearth of liberal propaganda on the general topic or both.
That’s too bad that you see your college experience that way. You say you’ve “interacted” with large numbers of highly educated people and your impression is that your experience is representative. The quotation marks are because “interacted” is such a vague word. You’ve gotten an impression, one that may well be colored by your own mindset–discrimination bias. Your experience is not representative, and I cited a survey earlier to support that. Perhaps you could also refer to data instead of responding with personal attacks. And if you did so in discussions IRL, you might experience fewer infuriated responses and have civil discussions with people whose political views differ from your own.
How does this work? Like has there ever been an instance where someone exercised his right to bear arms to keep congress from making a law respecting the establishment of religion?
Oh, I have no doubt that various republicans hold very firm beliefs, and have what they consider very good reasons for believing those things - otherwise, you wouldn’t have so many alt-right folks committing mass murder to push back against “white genocide”.
That said, though? Often, those reasons are really bad reasons. Often, the reason is that they’ve bought whole-heartedly into a pervasive and extremely dangerous propaganda network. Often, the reason is that they believe a bunch of crazy nonsense. Hell, a lot of what you’ve said in this thread qualifies as crazy nonsense (“We need the second amendment to protect the first”, “white privilege is unproven”, etc.), to the point where I have to wonder where you got it. Part of what happens in college is that crazy nonsense gets pushed back on - is it any wonder that there’s such a concerted push by the right to attack them?
Although thank you for providing such lovely answers to my question about what people will flip out at you about, or what you can’t have a “civil conversation” about:
I will gladly give you shit for the minimization of what’s going on in the concentration camps at our borders, and feel absolutely justified in doing so. Even without the historical parallels, what we are doing is inhumane and monstrous, and cracking jokes about it being “not exactly the hilton” when people are crammed in standing-room-only cells for days or weeks at a time and are forced to drink out of toilets while the administration tries to stop lawsuits from ensuring that children in indefinite detention have access to toothpaste and soap? That’s fucking low.
Hey, maybe you didn’t know about any of this. If that’s the case, maybe consider not cracking jokes when other people talk about concentration camps and you know next to nothing about the subject. In case you’re wondering why people have stopped taking “pro-life” or “pro-family” people even remotely seriously, this is a good hint. You seemingly do not care, even a little bit, about the fate of countless actual born children, their suffering, or their families. They came here illegally - that’s all you need to write their lives off completely, and accept whatever inhumane, disgusting punishment the state deems worthwhile.
So yeah, if you want to know why you can’t have a “civil conversation” with liberals, this might be why. I’m not going to have a friendly debate with someone who has no problem with the state running concentration camps. I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure that their viewpoints are marginalized and that they are kept as far away from the levers of political power as humanly possible, and that as many people as possible know just what they believe and why it’s heinous.
Wow, that was one very large and well researched, thought out, and edited reply. Really one of the best I’ve seen on this board. I commend your abilities.
I’m not sure how to reply. Your article states that the researchers didnt find much major bias and what was there was about the level of other minorities. Ok, I can go with that. Its there. Be aware. But it isnt the standard.
On the Campus Reform website: Yes, it’s right wing and funded by the Kochs. Their goal is to highlight events that fit into what they are trying to push. I dont think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I think it keeps everyone on their toes as long as people realize it, take it with a grain of salt, and also read alternative views. I dont think its much different than years ago when many cities had numerous newspaper which often had different viewpoints.
You mention the times even liberal newspaper columnists bring attention to liberal campus bias. Yes, that happens. But its more done on a oped page than the front page or done in a strong manner. I dont see reporters from CNN or NBC shoving microphones in liberal peoples faces and asking hard questionssuch as this back and forth on British TV over transgender athletes. I also dont think its wrong that newspapers would hire conservative writers in order to bring some balance to the newsroom.
So to summarize: I agree that the whole anti-conservative/radical liberal thing on college campuses is blown out of proportion. However things do happen from time to time and I dont feel it’s wrong for groups to bring things to the attention of the general public. Hopefully the groups targeted have a filter and listen to others. WHICH is the reason I started this thread in the first place, to get the opinions of people on campuses.
On a personal note; Believe it or not I’ve actually gotten into discussion with some of my Christian friends who were afraid to send their kids to a traditional college for fear of liberal bias and I debate them on this.
So again, thanks for taking the time for such a well written response.
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