Conservatives who loathe liberalism at universities

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_Buffalo
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Re: Conservatives who loathe liberalism at universities

Post by _Buffalo »

Morley wrote:
In reality, they may or may not even be becoming more 'liberal.'

The USA is more educated than it was during FDR's administration. It is not more liberal than it was during that administration.


Well, that was what the studies found that I referenced. They became more liberal as they progressed through college.
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_JAK
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Re: Conservatives who loathe liberalism at universities

Post by _JAK »

Post Reference 1

So, you’re criticizing “generalizations.” Within the context of these discussions some generalization is inevitable. The very term “liberal” is a generalization. It’s relative to a particular situation or connection. Your comment below implies that there are absolutes here.

Morley stated: I'm also suggesting that generalizations about 'liberalism' in the academe are not necessarily useful or accurate.

What are the absolutes? What is “accurate”?

Post Reference 2

Buffalo stated:
Well, that was what the studies found that I referenced. They (students) became more liberal as they progressed through college.


There are multiple ways to illustrate that generalization.

We live in a world of generalization. We generalize our car door will open when we apply pressure in the right way. We generalize that the car will start, run, get us to where we want to go. Of these, none is a certainty. We apply generalizations. Any number of failures may occur preventing us from our goal.

When we speak of “conservative” or “liberal,” we do so within some frame of reference. The “studies found” by Buffalo indicated a conclusion. What I observed was in support of Buffalo’s generalization.

We cannot speak of education of people without doing so in general ways in a forum such as this.

Your “suggesting” is unreasonable. Further, generalizations are useful when the intent is to exchange ideas and communicate larger concepts. They cannot be avoided.

“Conservative” is not an absolute. “Liberal” is not an absolute. Both are evaluation and judgment based on some comparison of variables inherent in a situation under consideration.

I return to my questions above: What are the absolutes? What is “accurate”?

JAK
_Morley
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Re: Conservatives who loathe liberalism at universities

Post by _Morley »

JAK wrote:Post Reference 1

So, you’re criticizing “generalizations.” Within the context of these discussions some generalization is inevitable. The very term “liberal” is a generalization. It’s relative to a particular situation or connection. Your comment below implies that there are absolutes here.

Morley stated: I'm also suggesting that generalizations about 'liberalism' in the academe are not necessarily useful or accurate.
....
My emphasis underlined. Color in original.

No, it does not.
_JAK
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Re: Conservatives who loathe liberalism at universities

Post by _JAK »

Morley wrote:
JAK wrote:Post Reference 1

So, you’re criticizing “generalizations.” Within the context of these discussions some generalization is inevitable. The very term “liberal” is a generalization. It’s relative to a particular situation or connection. Your comment below implies that there are absolutes here.

Morley stated: I'm also suggesting that generalizations about 'liberalism' in the academe are not necessarily useful or accurate.
....
My emphasis underlined. Coloring in original.

No, it does not.



What’s your objection then to detailed analysis that results in some general conclusions?

You make no refutation to my comments. You object to generalization. I clarified why some generalizations are a part of communication and understanding.

If you intend refutation of Buffalo or my additions, you’ll have to be specific.

JAK
_Morley
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Re: Conservatives who loathe liberalism at universities

Post by _Morley »

JAK wrote:
Morley wrote:
No, it does not.



What’s your objection then to detailed analysis that results in some general conclusions?

You make no refutation to my comments. You object to generalization. I clarified why some generalizations are a part of communication and understanding.

If you intend refutation of Buffalo or my additions, you’ll have to be specific.

JAK


You said nothing regarding "generalizations about 'liberalism' in the academe." I have no issues with generalizations that "are a part of communication and understanding."

At this writing, I don't intend to refute your additions, JAK.

Take care.
_Droopy
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Re: Conservatives who loathe liberalism at universities

Post by _Droopy »

Buffalo wrote:Have you ever paused to consider why almost all institutions of higher learning (and all prestigious institutions of higher learning) are so gosh durned liberal?

I'll let you mull that one over for a while.



The answer is well understood, and has to do primarily with the mass exodus of the New Left from the streets, community organizing groups, and radical campus activism into the faculty and administration of American universities themselves. This was the "Long March through the institutions" that followed the general Gramscian approach to the infiltration and subversion of the very institutions of society the Left wishes to destroy. But unlike traditional Marxism, the Cultural Marxist point is not to destroy them in any direct manner, but to become them.

The strategy has been vastly successful. Once in positions of dominance in college and university administration and tenured faculty, an aggressive freezing out and closing of hiring and tenure to any conservative/libertarian academic, if it became known that he/she was such (including the long and vaunted tradition of moral blackballing and defamation known as "political correctness) became standard practice throughout American academia. This has been far too well documented elsewhere to go over it here in any depth.

I know where Buffalo wants to go with his adolescent polemic here, but it wont hold the proverbial water. The Left, in general, has, for two centuries, defined a revolt and animus toward the classical liberal arts tradition of critical thought and dispassionate reasoning in the search for truth, or its closest approximation, depending upon the subject of study.

You may call the Left the Anointed, the Olympians, the New Class, or whatever you wish, but one could never do worse than to simply call them what they represent to the human condition, intellectually and morally.

Morlocks.
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_Droopy
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Re: Conservatives who loathe liberalism at universities

Post by _Droopy »

Quasimodo wrote:
asbestosman wrote:The question for me is, why are Americans so extremely conservative? It's perhaps ironic when one considers the history of our nation.


That's a very good question. The founders of this country were as liberal as it comes. Overthrowing a Monarchy to establish an egalitarian government.

If you read Jefferson, it's obvious he was very much against organized religion (as were many other American revolutionaries).

I understand that Ho Chi Min (revolutionary and leader of North Vietnam) stated that Thomas Jefferson was his hero.


I see that gaseous, phantasmagorical nonsense, especially when provided at its most inane, encourages further excursions in the same direction.

As expected.

The Ho Chi Minh (a blood bathed totalitarian despot) mythology isn't a dead horse worth beating at this late hour. Anyone who actually still believes the Ho Chi Minh was the South East Asian George Washington narrative is probably well past too far gone for a rational discussion in any case.

Jefferson was not in any way against organized religion in any sense that had political or constitutional meaning. He was against state religions or officially sanctioned denominations, but that is where it ended so far as the scope of government is concerned. He was also a deeply religious man, but not supportive of the dogma's and theology of his day as taught by the major Christian sects.

What should not even be necessary to belabor here (but clearly is, given the venue) is that the term "liberal" as applied to Jefferson, or the vast majority of the Founders, had precisely the opposite meaning it came to have during the last half of the 20th century.
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us

- President Ezra Taft Benson


I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

- Thomas Sowell
_Droopy
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Re: Conservatives who loathe liberalism at universities

Post by _Droopy »

MrStakhanovite wrote:There is no liberal domination in Universities. You can find certain departments that have a higher ratio of faculty that self identify as liberal, but Higher Education isn't exactly a bastion of it.


Having utterly no idea whatsoever what you're talking about is not a productive manner in which to approach serious questions such as this. The empirical, statistical, and mountainous anecdotal evidence has been in, in wave after wave of ever increasing clarity, for upwards of twenty five years, and no amount of special pleading can make stubborn facts go away. Many leftists other than yourself have been openly reveling in it for many years, while others seek (like the old media) to a game of tactical denial.
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us

- President Ezra Taft Benson


I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

- Thomas Sowell
_Droopy
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Re: Conservatives who loathe liberalism at universities

Post by _Droopy »

Same kind of rhetoric. Your statement that anyone with an intellectual mind would never identify conservative is a page right out of his play book, just replace conservative with the word liberal and you’ve got Droopy.


Wrong, as I've never made that kind of claim. Indeed, I've long maintained here and elsewhere that the Left has produced a number of great thinkers, but that they are a rarity because of the deep hold of ideology on the leftist mind. Indeed, leftism is ideology, and ideology is not philosophy, political or otherwise, in any but a peripheral manner.

Serious philosophers, many of them deeply religious, created the American revolution. Ideologists created the French revolution and the bloody pit of horror that was the 20th century. The modern Left has learned nothing from either revolution, and continues on its ideologically pure path to the dissolution of humanity.

Leftism is the definition of rigid, ideological dogmatism, and the antithesis of of the "open" mind, as it is the antithesis of the open, free society.
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us

- President Ezra Taft Benson


I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

- Thomas Sowell
_Droopy
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Re: Conservatives who loathe liberalism at universities

Post by _Droopy »

Morley wrote:
richardMdBorn wrote:.... Please name which of the founding fathers were against organized religion.
Brands' biography of Franklin (The First American) paints him as pretty irreligious.


Only in the sense of denominational Christianity and its creeds.
Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father [in Heaven] and how familiar his face is to us

- President Ezra Taft Benson


I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

- Thomas Sowell
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