http://trueslant.com/ethanepstein/2009/12/04/the-academic-left-thinks-were-stupid/
Remove ‘academic’ from the heading. It is all of the LEFT who think that anyone who does not agree with them are stupid.
They would all starve to death if they were forced to work in the real world, so I could really care less about what a bunch of damn mental patients think about me.
Their contempt is for anyone who would dare disagree with them. Were in the power of the modern American left, particularly the strangely vicious and malevolent academic left we would be the new Kampuchea. They manifest a totalitarian impulse (in the guise of altruism, egalitarianism and beneficence) that's genuinely scary.
I’d rather be stupid than insane. At least stupid can be fixed.
This is an absolutely fascinating article, albeit very short.
The Left’s contempt for ignorance and stupidity is, of course, narrowly focused. Surely those who seek to benefit from “Obama’s stash” don’t fall in the same category of ignorant rube as the Fox News watchers.
The Left is misanthropic for the same reason that any political activist is misanthropic. “The people have spoken, the bastards.” Those on the right are a bit more sanguine about these things, preferring to persuade rather than to abandon popular governance altogether. The Left has had almost a century of unpopular ideas and so they are far more invested in tricking or circumventing the people.
As to the author’s lament of academia, I am amused that he takes the social sciences (and humanities) seriously. They have become a joke and exist almost solely for the purpose of providing easy majors for lazy and dim students to get a university degree. Most of these courses are, at best, little more than a tuition-funded book club.
As far as the faculty, if they ever had any genuine passion or interest in the subject, it is likely lost. Why have a dispassionate study of humanity when you can shape it? Of course, insulting potential allies and voters is not exactly the most successful strategy (see Carnegie, Dale) but she is not exactly an expert in politics. Her reasoning that the populace should be clamoring for national health care after the flu pandemic rather than drawing the conclusion that government is ill-equipped even for a narrow task rather than taking over all of health care but she is not exactly an expert in logic.
I see the author’s observations as a kind of awakening. A liberal being mugged, as it were. As an conservative, I have substantial issues with the humanities, social sciences and politicized sciences because of their overwhelming one-sided bias. As an academic, I am troubled by the humanities, social sciences and soft sciences because of their intellectual lightness and susceptibility to manipulation via politics or other means.