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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: 2, Insightful) by jmorris on Monday August 29 2016, @07:51AM
But those are clear-cut examples of a civilization looking after children and families.
I only see a mind so closed it can't imagine other possibilities could exist, and when exposed forcefully enough to another idea that some reaction is required the only reaction that is usually seen is irrational hate.
Both Progressivism/Marxism and Classical Western Civ/Conservatism/whatever see poor people as a societal problem. You guys believe Medicare and TANF are the optimal solution. We believe Ben Franklin had it right when he said:
“I am for doing good to the poor, but...I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed...that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
Now one of these policy positions is obviously more successful than the other. History answers that question pretty conclusively, especially the history of the 20th Century. The facts are so clear it leads the more conspiracy minded to suspect your side's sad devotion to a dead philosophy is grounded in something other than a concern for the poor. Farming them in vast ghettos for votes comes to mind.
So tell us all again how you guys are 'reality based' again. As RAH teaches us, "One man's religion is another's belly laugh."
Or how about HBD (Human Biological Diversity), something the Alt-Right accepts but most modern 'cucked' Conservatives and all Progs reject out of hand. The only way diverse human populations who quite obviously vary in a multitude of physical characteristics and observably vary intellectually as individuals could possibly be exactly the same in every conceivable mental aspect when averaged across any racial subgroup one proposes would be Divine Intervention. Yet this very same religious belief that flies directly in the face of Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a foundational article of faith on the Left which Must Not Be Questioned. Who is acting like a religion?
And do I even need bother reposting the litany of purely science based Questions Which Must Not Be Permitted on the subject of AGW? How anyone who doesn't chant "The Science is Settled" on command is to be purged, defunded and declared "Not of the Body of Science!"
One side stands up and declares that the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution must be repealed. To preserve Free Speech is the insane justification given. I swear, Orwell probably didn't even see that coming. Hint: It ain't Conservatives, it certainly ain't Libertarians and it isn't the Alt-Right.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @08:01AM
> I only see a mind so closed it can't imagine other possibilities could exist,
You mean like how incredibly awesome it was for the poor in the US back when corporate towns and union busting was the norm?
Yeah, fantastic possibilities!
> You guys believe Medicare and TANF are the optimal solution
No. We guys believe they are a minimum baseline beyond which no one in the richest society on the planet should ever have to fall below.
(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.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 29 2016, @10:18AM
At my expense, yes, I'm aware.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.