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Historians of Conservatism Stumped By Trump
Accuracy in Academia ^ | January 11, 2018 | Malcolm A. Kline

Posted on 01/11/2018 9:44:40 AM PST by Academiadotorg

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It never occurs to him that his success is due to the fact that he is successful.
1 posted on 01/11/2018 9:44:40 AM PST by Academiadotorg
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To: Academiadotorg

Ronald Reagan too was an anomaly for most of them.


2 posted on 01/11/2018 9:47:52 AM PST by Slyfox (Not my circus, not my monkeys)
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To: Academiadotorg

“Stumped” only because he does not fit their preconceived notions of what their sociopolitical enemies should be.


3 posted on 01/11/2018 9:51:39 AM PST by ctdonath2 (It's not "white privilege", it's "Puritan work ethic". Behavior begets consequences.)
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To: Slyfox

yes he was. Some of them acknowledged his success in a backhanded way: They claimed he was a liberal.


4 posted on 01/11/2018 9:55:00 AM PST by Academiadotorg
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To: Academiadotorg
Willamette University Professor Seth Cotlar asked. "What does it mean to empathize with people who advocate white nationalism?"

Here is an example of why open honest dialogue and debate can't happen. And it's the liberal/democrats fault, unequivocally. They start with a grotesque false premise. In this case "White Nationalism". THAT is a buzzword for racists. So what she meant was, "What does it mean to empathize with hate-filled racists?" Where does the conversation go after that?

The answer actually is they don't want conversation or to understand or to debate ideas. The question was rhetorical and thrown out there to further the propaganda and demonize their opponent. It mocks, with prejudicial condescension.

It would be like asking, "Is your wife happy now that you have stopped beating her?"

5 posted on 01/11/2018 9:56:33 AM PST by Tenacious 1 (You couldn't pay me enough to be famous for being rich or stupid!)
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To: Academiadotorg

These “professors” are f’n clueless.


6 posted on 01/11/2018 9:59:53 AM PST by Flick Lives (https://goo.gl/GxGKQh)
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To: Academiadotorg

Just because it’s White does not make it wrong.


7 posted on 01/11/2018 10:00:06 AM PST by gathersnomoss
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To: Academiadotorg
“What does it mean to empathize with people who advocate white nationalism?” The possibility that he is on the wrong track with the second question doesn’t seem to occur to him.

This reminds me of something. Has anyone noticed that TV ads no longer feature “white” families. Every couple or family scene is mixed race.

I think that is proof of leftist genocide which has spread to Hollywood and New York advertisers.

“Genocide is intentional action to destroy a people (usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group) in whole or in part.”

8 posted on 01/11/2018 10:02:58 AM PST by donna ( Liberals redefine words: gay is no longer happy; Dream is no longer American)
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To: Academiadotorg

It’s not a question of success, it’s a question of taxonomy, of which professors and suchlike are much too fond.
And describing conservatism is quite a challenge.
Russell Kirk struggled with this his whole life.
And wrote about them. Well worth a read, an education really.


9 posted on 01/11/2018 10:05:04 AM PST by buwaya
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To: Academiadotorg
~Benjamin Waterhouse, an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said of the president that "He is also not a liberal, or a populist or traditionalist or even an especially good fascist. ..

Yeah, if you want an especially good fascist, you have to look to Trump's predecessor. But good luck getting a pinhead academic to admit such.

10 posted on 01/11/2018 10:12:58 AM PST by dirtboy
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To: Academiadotorg

They can’t grasp that it is someone who is antithetical to all they believe and stand for can do so much good that even they have to admit it’s happening...


11 posted on 01/11/2018 10:14:45 AM PST by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone? I think Trump may give it back...)
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To: Academiadotorg

And it never dawns on them that their view of conservatism and conservatives is totally wrong.

Of course they wouldn’t understand President Trump’s appeal for conservatives because they are out of touch with the heart of America.

They formed their definition of what a conservative is from leftist media portrayals of conservatives as knuckle-dragging gap-toothed neanderthals who live in caves in fly-over country.

And from the wild rantings, ravings and characterizations of hate filled, unhinged, half crazy democrats.

They live cloistered in large cities, leftist enclaves and academia where they look down with curiosity, disdain and fear on those who live outside their experience.

There was a story years ago about big city elites who said they couldn’t understand how Richard Nixon got elected - because after all, they didn’t know a single person who voted for him.

We have a similar situation today with elites and President Trump.


12 posted on 01/11/2018 10:15:40 AM PST by Vlad The Inhaler (United We Stand, Divided We Fall. Remember That Diversity Is The Opposite Of Unity.)
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To: Academiadotorg

Poor confused “experts.” Conservatives, being independent, are not easy to pigeon-hole, as opposed to these Leftists, who are uniform in their cookie-cutter opinion of conservatism. These days, the university classroom is the last place you will find freedom of thought.


13 posted on 01/11/2018 10:22:56 AM PST by txrefugee
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To: Academiadotorg

Dese perfessors ain’t too sharp.


14 posted on 01/11/2018 10:24:31 AM PST by karnage
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To: Academiadotorg

Personally, I see Trump as a restoration figure acting to restore the Constitution and the plethora institutions and virtues of the moral, ethical, religious, and military TRADITIONS of the USA, and to restore economic FREEDOM, unshackle it, and DEFEND our borders and our allies borders.

All of the above has been legislated out of fashion, exchanged for increasing decadence and a promise for our demise and eventual collapse.

These morally and religiously vacuous professors support the path to demise and collapse.

We conservatives prop them up. We send our kids to them. We let them raise our kids with a curriculum that promotes group think so that over time the collective can become useful tools for destroying everything America was founded upon.


15 posted on 01/11/2018 10:25:08 AM PST by RitaOK (Viva Christo Rey! Public education & academia= the farm team for more Marxists coming, infinitum.)
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To: RitaOK

we have been rewarding bad behavior for a very long time.


16 posted on 01/11/2018 10:45:37 AM PST by Academiadotorg
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To: karnage

no dey ain’t.


17 posted on 01/11/2018 10:46:45 AM PST by Academiadotorg
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To: Academiadotorg

” this populism bleeds all over the place in American politics”

Yeah, god forbid that the population should have it’s concerns addressed seriously and should be in the driver’s seat. I’m much more fearful of a band of self appointed and self perpetuating elites thinking the “populists” should just follow along with the goals of their betters.


18 posted on 01/11/2018 10:57:22 AM PST by DesertRhino (Dog is man's best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up. ....)
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To: Academiadotorg
Anyone in academia who presents the matter as "How do we talk to them?" has already surrendered to a certain portfolio of assumptions that diverged from reality the day they were made and drive the observer into one blind alley after another. "White nationalism", for example, is a trendy neologism that is devoid of any precise definition, and it is a fairly firm tenet of scholarship that if you can't define it, you can't study it. Conveniently slippery terms turn out to be hard to grasp. Not news.

How, precisely, Trump became a "fascist" is equally mystifying to anyone who actually knows what a fascist is. And if you don't, you've no business pontificating on the study of history. One begins to suspect that the real trouble they're having is pathetically crappy scholarship. Peel down the onion layers of mystification, phony profundity, and jargon-laden academic gas and it turns you've got nothing inside. It's hard to feel sorry for anyone who is surprised by that.

This sort of data isn't difficult to obtain. This isn't, after all, going to require a canoe trip down the darkest Amazon to actually speak to these weird native Trump voters with bones in our noses. We're their next-door neighbors. If our beliefs and motivations remain an unfathomable mystery it's because these deep thinkers just aren't trying.

19 posted on 01/11/2018 11:06:07 AM PST by Billthedrill
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To: Academiadotorg

Trump is TEA Party, just undeclared.


20 posted on 01/11/2018 11:09:38 AM PST by Basket_of_Deplorables (SEDITION! Obama DOJ colluded to try overthrow the President!)
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