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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html?_r=0
WE progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren't conservatives. Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We're fine with people who don't look like us, as long as they think like us.
O.K., that's a little harsh. But consider George Yancey, a sociologist who is black and evangelical. "Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black," he told me. "But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close."
I've been thinking about this because on Facebook recently I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point.
"Much of the 'conservative' worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false," said Carmi. "The truth has a liberal slant," wrote Michelle. "Why stop there?" asked Steven. "How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots?"
To me, the conversation illuminated primarily liberal arrogance — the implication that conservatives don't have anything significant to add to the discussion. My Facebook followers have incredible compassion for war victims in South Sudan, for kids who have been trafficked, even for abused chickens, but no obvious empathy for conservative scholars facing discrimination.
The stakes involve not just fairness to conservatives or evangelical Christians, not just whether progressives will be true to their own values, not just the benefits that come from diversity (and diversity of thought is arguably among the most important kinds), but also the quality of education itself. When perspectives are unrepresented in discussions, when some kinds of thinkers aren't at the table, classrooms become echo chambers rather than sounding boards — and we all lose.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Monday August 29 2016, @09:53AM
You mean like how incredibly awesome it was for the poor in the US back when corporate towns and union busting was the norm?
You do know how a corporate town worked, right? Somebody built a factory/mine/whatever AND a town and then people clamored to be the ones hired to move in. Whatever the problems, and there were plenty, people were making a decision that moving there offered them a better opportunity than where they were. And I don't remember reading of razorwire and guard towers keeping people in.
As for unions, they once served a purpose but that was lost long ago as organized crime and better organized socialists took them over and made them playthings for tyrants backed by government granted monopolies.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Monday August 29 2016, @12:21PM
Uh-huh. Do you remember when Rockefeller hired a private army to set up a machine gun on a ridge overlooking a tent camp full of men, women, and children who were on strike and open fire, slaughtering scores? Because they did that at Ludlow, CO. And those miners were on private land that the union had leased, so they had left the company town in fact. Of course Rockefeller and the mercenaries were acquitted, too, lest you claim that they were punished for their crimes.
It's so egregious that to this day the Rockefellers all deserve to be dispossessed and exiled.
The utopia you reach for, where unions don't exist and Darkie knows his place, has already been tried and failed. All that we have today, with OSHA, social security, medicaid, the FDA, etc are 100 years worth of regular people trying to wrest a minimum that enables them to live from aristocrats, oligarchs, and tyrants.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday August 29 2016, @11:18PM
Yea. Rich, politically connected people ignore the law. Shocking isn't it. Remind you of anyone in the news lately? She has even planted a whole cemetery of people who threatened her rise to power. It isn't new, but one political philosophy espouses the Rule of Law that is applied to everyone as an ideal goal and other endorses lawless behavior of that sort because it holds to the Rule of (wo)Men.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Tuesday August 30 2016, @07:57PM
People were so far in debt to the company store they could not leave and had to start sending their kids to work (and go into debt) to survive. I mean, whether they made a decision once to move there (or were just born into it), certainly, they weren't able to chage their mind.
Sounds like the solution is more union membership/voting against the corrupt leaders. But I suppose you could just say "any time an asshole takes over an institution it must be destroyed."
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday August 30 2016, @09:55PM
Sounds like the solution is more union membership/voting against the corrupt leaders.
Remove the government monopoly grant and sure, go ahead and try to reform the unions. I won't ever join one but it is still a mostly free country so people are free to have a different opinion. Let the market decide. I suspect you will find that in the modern world, without the monopoly few will see the need for a union. But if there are some industries where it makes sense then more power to em.