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posted by CoolHand on Monday August 29 2016, @01:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the it-takes-all-kinds dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Tuesday August 30 2016, @07:39PM

    by Capt. Obvious (6089) on Tuesday August 30 2016, @07:39PM (#395403)

    It's not that cut and dried. For argument's sake:

    he metaphysical claims made by their religion are false.

    The metaphysical claims are non-falsifiable. If the earth was 1000's of years old, it would defy geology, evolution, etc. But it wouldn't have been by a natural process, so that seems like a wash.

    Since our society is secular and explicitly non-theistic by our very Constitution, any argument that relies on dualism or the existence of immaterial souls as a premise is automatically invalid. This collapses almost every argument against early-term abortions.

    And pretty much any argument you could make against infanticide. Any of those can be applied to early-term abortions. I mean, you have to jigger it a little bit, but I'll challenge you to make one that doesn't just hinge on a few continuous variables that could be tweaked to make that case. And double-challenge for late-term abortions

    There's a lot I could talk about but the worst and really the only thing worth focusing on is the sad situations that many liberals (I'm not one of them) have been seduced by moral and cultural relativism.

    For liberals, I would say that there more immediately worse things than cultural relativism. Factually incorrect things. The anti-GMO panic will someday lead to famine. The anti-vaccination people are going to cause massive resurgences of near-extinct diseases.

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  • (Score: 2) by julian on Tuesday August 30 2016, @08:15PM

    by julian (6003) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 30 2016, @08:15PM (#395417)

    The only antivax person I know is a conservative. That's not large enough a sample to make any conclusions. I don't know how this issue breaks down along political lines. I suppose it could be a liberal flaw and I'll acknowledge it as one if that's the case.

    As for GMO, my objections to it are not based on food safety concerns. They appear to be just as safe as "traditional" fruits and vegetables and the technology provides a lot of benefits. I object to the business practices and the patent system around the industry. It's part of my larger stance against protections for the fraud of "intellectual property" [gnu.org] in general.