Posted on 12/10/2004 6:42:34 AM PST by boris
JONATHAN CHAIT:
Why Academia Shuns Republicans
A few weeks ago, a pair of studies found that Democrats vastly outnumbered Republicans among professors at leading universities. Conservatives gleefully seized upon this to once again flagellate academia for its liberal bias.
Am I the only person who fails to understand why conservatives see this finding as vindication? After all, these studies show that some of the best-educated, most-informed people in the country overwhelmingly reject the GOP. Why is this seen as an indictment of academia, rather than as an indictment of the Republican Party?
Conservatives have a ready answer. The only reason faculties lean so far to the left is that deans, administrators and entire university cultures systematically discriminate against conservatives.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Sir:
Jonathan Chait is being disingenuous in his explanation of academic bias against conservatives. I assume he is aware of the program put forth by Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), who essentially developed a program for bringing down Western Civilization. Gramsci realized that this could not be done by force or popular vote. He grasped the idea that control of the organs of culture--the schools, the media, the arts--was key to the destruction of the West.
We have been systematically undermined for decades. While conservatives were out creating, building, achieving, doing--leftists quietly took "low profile, low pay" jobs, and waited. Soon the copy boy was Editor. The "instructor" was a full professor. The intern was a big-name producer. The left infiltrated the organs of culture like a cancer metastasizing through a body.
The results are all about us. The leftist bias now extends to schools of all levels, to media, to arts, to the "chattering classes". It can only be reversed by a patient program of counter-infiltration, or by a violent Civil War which will make the first one look like a Sunday School picnic. "Diseases desperate grown/By desperate appliance are relieved, Or not at all." I predict this outcome without joy: I hope I am long dead before it begins.
Isn't this updating "Dumbing Down Of America"...
only on a higher level of education? <>g<>
I for one never completed my doctorate because I could never stand all the bs........much happier in the real world.
That method is also right out of the Marx/Lenin playbook for bring down country's.
When university professors form a significant part of your party's electoral coalition -- you know your party is in trouble.
As far as degreed voters, at the bachelor degree level, voters lean Republican, and at the Master's level it breaks even. Go to the doctorate level and it's heavily Democrat.
"most-informed" in what? Most of political philosophy depends, not on technical expertise in a subject area, but how you believe the world works.
For example, a pacifist and non-pacifist have very different views about how to bring peace. Someone who lives in Academia is less likely to meet thugs who will kill you for fun, and so they might accept the pacifist view while a carpenter would not.
The same holds true for economics. A professor whose income is not determined by productivity may well believe in communism, but a blue-collar guy or a businessman making a payroll would not.
I've met too many well-educated people who live in a fantasy land to believe that college teachers are 'smarter' than the average citizen. About their specific area of expertise? Yes. About life? No.
I've always noted an inverse relationship between intelligence and wisdom (common sense) in the vast majority of people.
It's also a falsehood that more highly educated people are democrats just because more professors are democrats. There are plenty of highly educated people who don't teach at a university--doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. There are plenty of republicans in those ranks. Further, there are a good many highly intelligent people who didn't pursue advanced degrees, not because they were incapable of it, but because they didn't want to. There are many business owners and very successful (conservative) people out there who didn't need or want a Ph.D. and therefore didn't get one. Degrees and working for a university are not the only two indicators of intelligence.
This wasn't always true. Prior to the sixties, campuses were the bastian of conservatism. But as the leftist anti-war, anti-establishment (communist) crowd became professional students to avoid the draft, an army of PhDs was created that eventually sought employment in the only institution that would have them ... academia. When the NEA morphed from an education association to a union in 1970, the collectivist ideology within the education establishment was cemented.
Today, most conservatives aren't interested in an academic career, not only because their co-workers would nauseate them, but because they seek their prosperity (which has become a conservative-only goal) in the private sector where one is judged on his merits, not on how long he has been employed.
Excellent post, Mr. Rogers. I think you summed it up very well.
Isn't there a wise old saying? "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."
It is time to rebuild new institutions of learning.
The times they are a changin!!
"Academic Incest produces only defective offspring, however the defect does not extend to the need and ability to reproduce itself at will."
I doesn't take a degree in anything to figure out what is really going on. Just recall the old joke about how the a**hole got to be the boss of the body.....
The REALLY smart people are busy inventing things and starting businesses and mkaing money. The dregs and losers who can't survive real life (with exceptions of course)hang out at school for their entire lives.
Follow the money ! Universities, both public and private, depend financially on government spending and charitable foundation grants. Having liberals in charge of these institutions keeps the gravy train on track for academics.
Because they don't want Republicans to have the opportunity to use common sense and logic to refute their utopian propaganda.
I personally know three PhD's who left the private sector to teach, after not greatly distinguishing themselves by their work. One went to UIC, another is at Northeastern, and another is at a small college in WVa.
I am just one little R&D toad. If I can instantly, with no effort, think of three examples, then how frequently is this the case, I wonder?
Interesting that there are two posts of freepers who could have had a doctorate but wanted more to get out and work. Add one more.
When I attended a mini-mba course well after grad school, the good profs were those who taught, left to run a business and came back later to teach. Most liberal arts profs have never tasted reality.
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