Conservatives will never again have to campaign against Liberals who are sprinting down the road to self-extinction.
If Conservatives, Red-staters and those who believe in the holy directive to "multiply and replenish the Earth," are patient, they will never again have to campaign against the Left, because Liberals are sprinting down the road to self-extinction.…
Article comments
26 - zingzing
i'm waiting for it. p5l2w1.
27 - Clavos
most academics are more interested in furthering their field rather than a political agenda
Puleeze. If it's left, it's taught as gospel; if it's right, it's derided.
A.G.E.N.D.A.
28 - Clavos
Except for one place (that I'm familiar with; -- there may be others): Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, MI.
A bastion of freedom in an otherwise repressive field.
A college which goes through enormous efforts to keep itself free of the taint of federal money so it doesn't have to obey federal dicta.
29 - zingzing
"Puleeze. If it's left, it's taught as gospel; if it's right, it's derided."
did you go to college? i'm assuming you did. in your physics classes, how much politics came into play? in your english classes, i'll ask the same.
how much did politics really play at all in your college classes?
30 - zingzing
what about st. johns in annapolis? they teach their stuff through "the classics."
and what makes hillsdale such a bastion of freedom? is it that they teach from a conservative perspective (if indeed they do)? is that any better in the end? or is it just more to your liking?
if it is just more to your liking, how does that qualify as "freedom?" 500 words or less, due tuesday.
31 - zingzing
and do you think politics invades everything? or is literature literature, science science and math math sometimes? a vast majority of the time, politics means very little.
i don't see how you could stand on another political side than me when it comes to, say, huckleberry finn. 150 years ago, there could have been a political divide between two people, but nowadays? come on. it brings up political issues, but i'd think we're all on the same page now.
the internal matter of stars? where's the politics there? if there are any, would you disagree?
how the heart pumps, prohibition, bottled water and its affect upon business, the myth of atlantis, shakespeare's sonnets--where's the politics?
find a political agenda if you want. i see no reason to bring that shit into it, and, in my experience, no professor does either.
so where's your conspiracy?
32 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
Puleeze. If it's left, it's taught as gospel; if it's right, it's derided.
You've obviously never felt the drive to teach, the joy a teacher feels when the student has that "aha" moment.
All you're doing is painting teachers with a broad brush...and never once questioning your own conservative dogma that maybe, just maybe teachers - like most other people who enjoy careers providing a VITAL service - really do try to do their jobs the very best they can.
But no - to even think such a thing, that's HERESY to the Right! Why, whoever heard of someone working for the government who actually strove to maintain professional and ethical standards? Teachers are all part of that VAST left-wing conspiracy, and like all government workers (except for the military who must be worshiped by all Right-thinking citizens) teachers must be looked down upon and paid a pittance and forced to find second jobs in order to feed and shelter their families!
Oh, grow up, willya, Clavos!
33 - Clavos
whoever heard of someone working for the government who actually strove to maintain professional and ethical standards?
Who indeed, Glenn, who indeed?
Teachers are all part of that VAST left-wing conspiracy...
Actually, the original version of that remark, coined by a leftie, Hillary Rodham Clinton, while defending her husband during the Lewinsky scandal, was, "The vast right wing conspiracy."
Do I think all teachers are part of a conspiracy? No. Are they for the most part, lefties? Unquestionably, 90+% of 'em are -- to the degree that it is even difficult for a right winger to get and keep a teaching job at any level in this country these days.
Like Hollywood.
34 - Clavos
All you're doing is painting teachers with a broad brush...and never once questioning your own conservative dogma that maybe, just maybe teachers - like most other people who enjoy careers providing a VITAL service - really do try to do their jobs the very best they can.
Glenn you are more than tiresome. you always, always, always, attempt to impute more into my comments here than I have said, or even implied.
Knock it the fuck off.
I didn't say a word about whether or not teachers are trying "to do their jobs the very best they can."
That's for another discussion, and is unrelated to their political viewpoint.
35 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
You're angry about me "imputing" more into your comments than you intend, but look at this comment:
Do I think all teachers are part of a conspiracy? No. Are they for the most part, lefties? Unquestionably, 90+% of 'em are -- to the degree that it is even difficult for a right winger to get and keep a teaching job at any level in this country these days.
But when zing RIGHTLY said:
most academics are more interested in furthering their field rather than a political agenda
What did you do? "pu-leeze".
Clavos - if you get a right-winger who doesn't try to institute prayer in the classroom, doesn't try to push "intelligent design", doesn't try to say that creationism should be taught on equal footing to evolution, doesn't try to pretend that the Civil Rights Act wasn't about civil rights, tries to claim that homosexuality is all a choice and a sin against God and has nothing to do with actual biology, who think that anthropogenic global warming is a myth when the VAST majority of those scientists best qualified to speak on the matter know better (and publish MORE solid evidence every week!)...
...if he or she doesn't insert some of the flat-out stupidity that the Right has been pushing over the past several years, he or she would be welcome with open arms!
But it's hard to give righties much credit when they've got politicians who spout some of the insane crap I listed in the previous paragraph. And Ms. Palin with her wild revisions of history doesn't help!
Clavos, the Right has been on an anti-intellectual tear for decades: anti-evolution, anti-LGBT, anti-AGW (which includes you), anti-civil-rights, anti-abortion, you name it! When the Right has been so Looney-Tuned for so long, how can you possibly expect those in academia to welcome them with open arms!
When your politicians start talking mainstream sense instead of wedge-issue and anti-education nonsense, righties will be welcomed...but not before.
36 - zingzing
"Are they for the most part, lefties? Unquestionably, 90+% of 'em are -- to the degree that it is even difficult for a right winger to get and keep a teaching job at any level in this country these days."
most people don't give a shit about politics at the end of the day. and that last bit is some ridiculous, conspiracy theory nonsense. and not even close to true. when's the last time you went to school, for god's sake?
37 - Baronius
Zing - A fair qualification. A lot of people don't care about politics, but most everyone cares about ideology. That's the word we should be using.
38 - zingzing
"most everyone cares about ideology."
do they? in public schools, teachers care about standardized test scores, not ideologies. i couldn't begin to fathom the political or ideological slants of a great majority of my teachers. could you?
and i somehow made it all the way to college with pretty much zero interest in politics. (i hated bill clinton because i couldn't stand the sound of his voice.) so i never got clavos' "gospel of the left." how could that be, if it's not so much taught as preached? i'm a pretty smart guy. i know a sermon when i hear it.
39 - handyguy
It's the standard conservative worldview, zing: paranoia. "Everyone's against poor, poor pitiful us. The left has all the advantages."
It's been repeated so often that even some non-conservatives think it's true. But the right-wing media megaphone has been so loud and omnipresent during the last 3 decades, it's liberals who have a right to feel assaulted.
40 - Baronius
Handy, don't put words into my mouth.
Would you two agree that everyone thinks about rights and responsibilities? Rights and responsibilities deal with how we see ourselves in relation to the world, so they're definitely a matter of ideology, right, left, or center. It's not paranoid to notice that.
41 - zingzing
"Would you two agree that everyone thinks about rights and responsibilities?"
certainly not in those terms. you speak from an obvious position of privilege. some people (a great number of them, actually), are too busy putting food on the table, keeping a job and taking care of their kids to consider their political ideology. many teachers would fall into that category.
how long has it been since you had to worry about how you were going to make the rent or buy dinner? have you ever truly known it?
demonizing teachers as literal liberal threats to your children is a damn silly thing. it makes conservatism seem like an ideology of paranoia, suspicion and fear. this attack on education and intellectuals is ridiculous.
42 - Baronius
The worse your circumstances, the more you put your ideology in concrete terms. A little pocket money lets you ask the same questions in a more general way, with maybe less panic in your voice, but they are the same questions.
43 - Baronius
Or are we having one of those classic debates where we're not even talking about the same thing? I'm not contending that all teachers are liberal ideologues; someone else said that further upthread. I'm saying that ideology - how we view the world - affect nearly everyone's decision-making. A person who devotes himself to teaching strangers probably has a strong set of beliefs behind that decision, left, right, or center.
44 - roger nowosielski
teaching strangers?
An odd use to characterize the teacher-student nexus.
45 - zingzing
"Or are we having one of those classic debates where we're not even talking about the same thing?"
that's possible...
"A person who devotes himself to teaching strangers probably has a strong set of beliefs behind that decision, left, right, or center."
but it's not necessarily true that they actively attempt to instill those beliefs in their students. one of the major things teachers try to teach is critical thinking and thinking for one's self.
46 - Tommy Mack
This article reminds me of conservative President Richard Nixon who said, “That’s just plain poppycock.”
Tommy
47 - Baronius
Hey, Rog. Hope you're doing well.
48 - Clavos
gospel of the left
I didn't say that; don't quote me falsely, zing, it makes you into a liar, like some others on these threads.
49 - Clavos
What I said was, "It's taught as gospel..."
50 - Clavos
one of the major things teachers try to teach is critical thinking and thinking for one's self.
and they even teach you how to do it...
51 - Dan
This article, although intended as semi-satirical, hits on a lot of observational truth that would make for more interesting discussion than this tired tail chasing about leftist indoctrination in academia.
What makes some conservatives think that pathologically indoctrinated Alinskyites even care about objective reality? They don't believe in it.
52 - Clavos
Point taken, Dan...
53 - zingzing
clavos: "If it's left, it's taught as gospel..."
clavos: "I didn't say that; don't quote me falsely, zing, it makes you into a liar, like some others on these threads."
how else do you want me to take it? really. so i paraphrased, but you shouldn't take it so harshly when i put your words back into your mouth. and you know that there's little distance between what you and i said. if you want to explain the difference, go ahead. please.
"and they even teach you how to do it..."
how do you do it? how do i see through your words and predict that you're posturing? my parents certainly had something to do with it, as did my innate intelligence, but certainly, my teachers helped me to develop this ability to question as well. you need someone outside the family and yourself to make you question your family and yourself.
54 - zingzing
and i'm not a liar (in this instance). so suck it up, clavos. either stand behind your words or don't. i respect you as a person, but you'll get no guilt from me on this. i'm certainly not in the wrong.
55 - El Bicho
"The following Gallup survey includes all Americans."
Really? I didn't take part in it. And looking at the numbers the vast majority didn't either. Also, I didn't notice a breakdown by race or ethnicity on the page so not sure why you created the link as it doesn't support your position. Plus, it doesn't even take into account that how people self-identify is not necessarily how they vote.
56 - Clavos
...my teachers helped me to develop this ability to question as well.
As did mine. We question different entities, you and I.
57 - Glenn Contrarian
So Clavos - why don't you question the propaganda your own side feeds you?
58 - Clavos
I farm that out to you lefties, Glenn. You do a much better job than I could; you're all smarter than I.