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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: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 01 2016, @04:14PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 01 2016, @04:14PM (#396233) Journal
    Depends how many one-time resets it turns out to be. It started in Russia as a one-time reset of Soviet assets and went from there. Further, what's the basis of this reset and why won't these conditions repeat in a few years or months even? For example, if you're resetting because people are poor, then it won't be long before they're poor again, duplicating the conditions of the original reset.
  • (Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Friday September 09 2016, @02:20AM

    by Capt. Obvious (6089) on Friday September 09 2016, @02:20AM (#399461)

    Alternatively, if it resets whenever the supermajority of people (enough to pass an amendment) think it's too out of wack, it could encourage the richest people not to try to concentrate wealth so much. Can you imagine what it would do to the pharmaceutical prices if they knew raising the price of drugs by 700x overnight would likely result in confiscation of the factory/IP?

    You're right that chaos is bad for the economy, and it would be necessary to teach people that such power must be used super-rarely, but I see no reason why a nuclear-option like check would be horrible.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 09 2016, @02:58AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 09 2016, @02:58AM (#399473) Journal

      Alternatively, if it resets whenever the supermajority of people (enough to pass an amendment) think it's too out of wack, it could encourage the richest people not to try to concentrate wealth so much.

      Or it could encourage concentration of wealth via demagoguery which I think has already happened in Russia. Personally, I don't see the point of making a permanent failure mode because of a temporary wealth concentration. A society with economic mobility is preferable to repeated seizure of wealth without addressing the causes of the wealth inequalities that create the pretext for the seizures.

      • (Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Friday September 09 2016, @06:06PM

        by Capt. Obvious (6089) on Friday September 09 2016, @06:06PM (#399733)

        ociety with economic mobility is preferable to repeated seizure of wealth without addressing the causes of the wealth inequalities that create the pretext for the seizures.

        Hey, I think you're right. I just don't know how possible addressing the underlying causes is. Also, I don't know if mobility is terribly important. I don't really care who the richest 1% are, so much as if they control 99% of the wealth or 5% of the wealth.

        But I tend to think that most "underlying causes" deal with more regular confiscation/taxes. The primary ways I can think of off the top of my head to prevent wealth inequalities are: higher capital gains taxes, financial transaction taxes, property taxes, estate taxes, more progressive income taxes. Oh, and regulations of various sorts.

        That said, I think the idea of a nuclear option in the hands of the majority helps bring those changes into effect. Russia is not so much a democracy under demagoguery as under the control of a strongman. So it seems a bad choice. France or Sweden seem to be far more democratic, and able to achieve things. Or look at Iceland's recent (post-2009) government control over various economic levers.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 09 2016, @07:11PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 09 2016, @07:11PM (#399753) Journal
          Incidentally, another example of confiscatory regimes is Zimbabwe. They might have improved their wealth inequality (particularly on ethnic grounds), but at the expense of making everyone still in the country vastly poorer and put into place a bunch of policies that might make them one of the last countries to achieve developed world status.