You said MOONBAT
Posted on 05/30/2006 2:47:08 PM PDT by jexus
The collapse of reason By Cathy Young | May 29, 2006 AT A TIME when conservatives dominate all three branches of government and hold an increasingly large share of the Fourth Estate, the academy remains the last liberal stronghold. You would think, then, that liberal intellectuals would offer some thoughtful and productive critiques of conservative policies. But instead, argues one leading liberal intellectual, the academic left is making itself irrelevant by embracing ideological extremism and trying to purge its ranks of those who are not politically correct.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
I think reason has collapsed on top of poor Cathy's head......
WOW! talk about slanted.....amazing.....
Be very kind of what?
We do not have conservatives dominating all three branches of the government. We have a conservative toehold in the house, and the rest are mushy moderates.
LOL! Her first sentence was probably written in a drug-induced haze.
Link doesn't work, but that's probably a mercy. :)
Your link is broken.
The collapse of reason
By Cathy Young | May 29, 2006
AT A TIME when conservatives dominate all three branches of government and hold an increasingly large share of the Fourth Estate, the academy remains the last liberal stronghold. You would think, then, that liberal intellectuals would offer some thoughtful and productive critiques of conservative policies. But instead, argues one leading liberal intellectual, the academic left is making itself irrelevant by embracing ideological extremism and trying to purge its ranks of those who are not politically correct.
This claim is made by Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University , in a recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. As an example of the self-destruction of the academic left, Gitlin cites two recent books, ``The Disappearing Liberal Intellectual" by Eric Lott and ``Wars of Position: The Cultural Politics of Left and Right" by Timothy Brennan, in both of which he himself is attacked as a heretic -- among other things, for supporting Israel's right to exist.
Gitlin cites some choice nuggets from the nutty professors. For instance, Brennan, who teaches comparative literature and English at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, asserts that while ``the crimes committed in the name of communism are real," they are ``certainly no match for the atrocities launched by liberal capitalism, which, far from being officially acknowledged, are completely disavowed or excused."
Gitlin laments that, at a time when many leaders of the party in power embrace attitudes hostile to individual freedom, science, reason, and free inquiry -- the legacy of the 18th-century philosophical revolution known as the Enlightenment -- liberal intellectuals offer no meaningful alternative. He concludes that ``the academic left is nowhere today " and matters mainly to right-wing liberal-bashers who inflate its importance.
I don't agree with all of Gitlin's indictment of conservatism and conservative policies, and I am far from a fan of some ideas that he wants liberal intellectuals to promote . Yet he has a point about the rise of reactionary attitudes on the right -- attitudes that a principled liberalism should be in a position to counter. Instead, the intellectuals of the left make it all too easy for people like Fox News talk show host Bill O'Reilly to mock academics as ``pinheads" who spend most of their time in what O'Reilly likes to call ``la-la land." How can anyone, for example, take academic feminists seriously when they are discussing whether Newton's physics is a metaphor for rape or whether logic is inherently biased against women?
Indeed, long before the current wave of conservative attacks on the legacy and values of the Enlightenment, many left-wing academics were deriding reason, freedom, and tolerance as bourgeois prejudices and scholarly objectivity as a smokescreen for the white, male point of view. Instead of championing individual rights, the academic left began to promote the ``identity politics" of defining people by race, gender and sexual orientation. Some feminist professors are so afraid of appearing to champion Western values that they will balk at ``culturally insensitive" criticism of the oppression of women in much Islamic culture today.
But there is a parallel problem on the right. In the 1990s, many conservatives defended both science and Enlightenment values against attacks from the academic left. The 1994 book, ``Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science," by Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt, which championed traditional science against assaults from radical feminism, radical environmentalism, Afrocentrism, and other far-left ideologies, received positive responses from National Review and Commentary.
Yet, in a preface to the 1998 softcover edition , Gross and Levitt noted the reemergence of creationism and stated that if they were writing the book at that point, ``the `academic right' would have to join the academic left in its subtitle, and there would have to be a chapter on ` Intelligent Design Theory' " as one of the pseudo-scientific ideologies threatening science.
Today, assaults on evolution frequently find a platform in respectable conservative publications. So do attacks on secularism and the separation of church and state. As Gitlin notes, many conservatives assert that the American Republic was founded not on the principles of the Enlightenment but as a ``Christian nation."
On the right or the left, reason-based and reality-based politics are increasingly hard to find.
Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine. Her column appears regularly in the Globe.
Result? Little understanding of waht neoconservatism is all about, a movement which is based on the traditional values of our founding fathers, which she somehow equates with evolutionism against christian fundamental ist thought on creation.
If she ever ordered drinks, she would order a tequella maragarita, a white russian , a Tom Collins and a Mud Slide, mix them all together and then swear she couldn't understand anyone who likes cocktails.
She would like getting drunk though!
Typical liberal moonbat!
The author compares Creationism to postmodernism and concludes that the Right is as nutty as the Left.
Why Creationism? Why not compare the recent intellectual offerings of conservatism to the intellectual offerings on the Left? After all, Leo Strauss was a rationalist of the highest order. So was Allan Bloom. And both men have been wildly successful on the Right.
Nooooooooo way! We take it VERY seriously!
"Indeed, long before the current wave of conservative attacks on the legacy and values of the Enlightenment, many left-wing academics were deriding reason, freedom, and tolerance as bourgeois prejudices and scholarly objectivity as a smokescreen for the white, male point of view. Instead of championing individual rights, the academic left began to promote the ``identity politics" of defining people by race, gender and sexual orientation."
NOOOOOOOO!!! She is uncovering truths IMPOSSIBLE to comprehend!
The world is not ready for this... we NEED our LIES - DON'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM US!!!!
Why would anyone think that?
Oh I get it! This is the cartoon Cathy right?
You said MOONBAT
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If you look closely, you'll see evidence of Cathy farting out of her right ear. |
She seems to have the word "conservative" confused for the word "Republican". I find myself in a position somewhat reminiscent of one Ronald Reagan once found himself in.
I did not leave the Republican party. the Republican party left me.
Conservatives where? I don't see to many up there. Just being a Republican does not make you a Conservative. This article is way off on that. As a true Conservative I am tired of being blammed for the liberal politics of most Republicans these days.
"...and the rest are mushy moderates."
Or just plain liberals.
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