I liked the article, but I feel like this article, and many artices like, only hint or brush at truly one of the largest issues for conservatives: the numbers game. Strong majorities of professors, in pretty much every college in the United States, range from liberal to marxist. There just aren't enough conservative professors to go around! How many conservative professors even exist in the United States? 500? Maybe? Seems high honestly. (And of those, perhaps a dozen are actually honest to goodness God-fearing Conservatives, and not just libertarians.) So to me, it's no wonder that universities are such a target, pretty much everyone who staffs them, everyone who teaches at them, and everyone who attends them, is liberal.
The core fiction that enables the university to work is a dedication to 'truth' and progress through discussion. Safety and freedom is part of that bargain. Universities have failed on those accounts.
That breaks down when there isn't open discussion on campus. Communists were jeered but essentially allowed on campus in the 60s and 70s, even at the height of the cold war.
The left now holds a place of orthodoxy in the universities and power structures. Whether the 'right' can break it back into an enforced balance is yet to be seen.
Until then, the central tie of an otherwise diverse institution will break down and break into fragments. Which would be a shame. The opposition needs to "live" somewhere!
I think its better to take aim at "safetyism" rather than the left or right. The last couple years have seen the right become increasingly good at weaponizing it although the left did have a head start.
> The core fiction that enables the university to work is a dedication to 'truth' and progress through discussion. . . . That breaks down when there isn't open discussion on campus.
Umberto Eco, “Ur-Fascism”: “Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.””
> The left now holds a place of orthodoxy in the universities and power structures.
Eco: “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
> Whether the 'right' can break it back into an enforced balance is yet to be seen. . . . The opposition needs to “live” somewhere!
Eco: “However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
There isn't really a valid reason to be a right wing authoritarian white supremacist except to extract wealth from working class people. The opposition can actually go shrivel up.
What even is a valid right wing take? Can't think of one in good faith.
To play devil’s advocate since I’ve been a little energetic in this thread already, I’ll go ahead and agree that they’re probably correct about single-income, two-parent homes having better outcomes for children.
I disagree that it should always be the woman staying home (or always the same parent through the children’s adolescence, or that both parents should have different genders, or) but I think the premise is sound.
They’re also objectively correct that women should, on average, be having children earlier (but wrong when they want it to be before the age of majority, or when they want to lower that age, or permit child marriage, or want to deny that couple sound sex education and medical care.)
I liked the article, but I feel like this article, and many artices like, only hint or brush at truly one of the largest issues for conservatives: the numbers game. Strong majorities of professors, in pretty much every college in the United States, range from liberal to marxist. There just aren't enough conservative professors to go around! How many conservative professors even exist in the United States? 500? Maybe? Seems high honestly. (And of those, perhaps a dozen are actually honest to goodness God-fearing Conservatives, and not just libertarians.) So to me, it's no wonder that universities are such a target, pretty much everyone who staffs them, everyone who teaches at them, and everyone who attends them, is liberal.
It's not the fault of universities that education is incongruous with certain values like fear of change and progress.
> incongruous with certain values like fear of change and progress
I essentially agree.
Though “progress” connotes improvement.
Brave New World was extremely “progressive.”
https://www.univstats.com/staffs/
There’s roughly 1.5 million post-secondary instructors in the United States, roughly half full-time.
Estimates of conservative faculty range between 7-15%. (FIRE, where the 15% figure comes from, probably overestimates due to their conservative bias.)
So approximately 50,000 to 110,000 conservative faculty. You’re off by a couple orders of magnitude.
There’s over 500 faculty working at Liberty University alone, never mind the other, larger Evangelical Christian schools.
http://archive.is/X5OLh
The core fiction that enables the university to work is a dedication to 'truth' and progress through discussion. Safety and freedom is part of that bargain. Universities have failed on those accounts.
That breaks down when there isn't open discussion on campus. Communists were jeered but essentially allowed on campus in the 60s and 70s, even at the height of the cold war.
The left now holds a place of orthodoxy in the universities and power structures. Whether the 'right' can break it back into an enforced balance is yet to be seen.
Until then, the central tie of an otherwise diverse institution will break down and break into fragments. Which would be a shame. The opposition needs to "live" somewhere!
I think its better to take aim at "safetyism" rather than the left or right. The last couple years have seen the right become increasingly good at weaponizing it although the left did have a head start.
> The core fiction that enables the university to work is a dedication to 'truth' and progress through discussion. . . . That breaks down when there isn't open discussion on campus.
Umberto Eco, “Ur-Fascism”: “Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.””
> The left now holds a place of orthodoxy in the universities and power structures.
Eco: “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
> Whether the 'right' can break it back into an enforced balance is yet to be seen. . . . The opposition needs to “live” somewhere!
Eco: “However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
There isn't really a valid reason to be a right wing authoritarian white supremacist except to extract wealth from working class people. The opposition can actually go shrivel up.
What even is a valid right wing take? Can't think of one in good faith.
To play devil’s advocate since I’ve been a little energetic in this thread already, I’ll go ahead and agree that they’re probably correct about single-income, two-parent homes having better outcomes for children.
I disagree that it should always be the woman staying home (or always the same parent through the children’s adolescence, or that both parents should have different genders, or) but I think the premise is sound.
They’re also objectively correct that women should, on average, be having children earlier (but wrong when they want it to be before the age of majority, or when they want to lower that age, or permit child marriage, or want to deny that couple sound sex education and medical care.)
* Markets should be free
* Theft should be punished
* There should be educational choice
A lot of this depends what you consider to be “right” wing.
People like you really lost the plot on nuance.