Socialist Professor Responds

7/8/02 | commieprof

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

but, for the life of me, I cannot understand how you could spend that much time in higher education and still think that the War between the States (Civil War) was about slavery. Lady...You need a real history class!!!!!

While most of her post is drivel, the fact of the matter is that the Civil War was almost entirely about slavery.  And that is according to the southern viewpoint of the time too (The southern secessionist documents are quite clear on this point).  Ironically, the northern viewpoint was not abolitionist.  It was unionist (the same viewpoint which prevailed in VA until after South Carolina started the Civil War).

[Area51]

http://www.utexas.edu/coc/cms/faculty/DCloud/politicalwritings/TalkingPointsonAbortion.htm Talking Points on Abortion Rights
1/17/02

1. Over my year shere at UT, I’ve come out on these steps on many occasions. I’ve come out as a lesbian, as a socialist, as someone who opposes the war in Afghanistan and supports the rights of University staff. Today I’m coming out again--as someone liberated by the right to safe, legal, and accessible abortion....

[Caesar Soze]

Yes, it was the Mujahedin, forerunners of AlQuaeda, not the Taliban, who garned the support of the U.S. during the Cold War.

Some Mujahedin became Al Qaeda, not all. To say that the Mujahedin were the forerunners of Al Qaeda is at best syntactically dubious, at worst intellectually dishonest.

His vision of a bottom-up, democratic socialism (not State socialism) is the tradition I stand in.

I hope you don't oppress prepositions like that in your formal writing. In any case, I must admit I am not terribly familiar with Trotskij's doctrine -- democracy is a form of government, and any government that exists within a land of fixed borders, has a permanent population, and is capable of international relations is, by definition, a state. For socialism to exist democratically, it must be enforced -- and socialism on the national scale must be enforced -- by a state, correct? Where does Trotskij's reasoning deviate from mine?

(Please forgive the un-Western spelling of 'Trotskij.' I just learned the Cyrillic spelling today, and my closer transliteration will help me remember it.)

[Right Wing Professor]

What you're looking at, those three abstracts, is almost the totality of the doctor's professional work, excluding a few book reviews and letters-to-the-editor that she has authored. And excluding her dissertation, which I just don't have the stomach to go and dig up at the moment.

Par for the course in the field of 'Communications Studies', I'm afraid. One of our Comm. Studies faculty wrote a 250 page thesis on 'A Different World', a spinoff sitcom from the Cosby show. Hard to believe this passes for scholarship. This same faculty member writes largely illiterate columns on 'racial issues' for the local lefty fish-wrap. Apparently, sentences with a subject and verb are oppressive, or something.

A few years back I came up with 'Harbison's laws of academe'. I don't remeber them all, but a couple were

• Any field that goes by the name (blank)-studies is the domain of charlatans.
• The easiest way to tell a science major from a humanities major is to see if the student can write in complete sentences. The science major usually can, the humanities major usually can't.
• The lower the objective content a discipline has, the more likely its faculty are leftist.

Things have gotten so much worse recently, I'm considering replacing 'major' by 'professor' in rule 2.

[John O]

Right of conquest?

Kind of shorthand for my own idea of how the world should work. If you attack me and I manage to defeat you and take your land, that land is now mine because you attacked me. You don't even get whining rights to it. Likewise Mexico, Cuba, Japan etc should all belong to the US because they (or the nations that owned them) attacked us and lost. If the world would start enforcing this it would pretty much end war. If you attack and lose, you lose your nation.

GSA(P)

[John O]

Perhaps the fact that this thread establishes in her own words that she came out as a lesbian had something to do with it.

[an amused spectator]

actually I do not favor gun control. In a crisis, I don't want the police and the state to be the only ones with guns.

Is this a common sentiment in your milieu, or does it get lonely defending this position at the Academy?

As a follow-up, do you believe that the 2nd Amendment refers to a collective right of the States, or does it protect the individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms (one of the Rights free men and women are born with)?

It will be interesting to see your answer.

[general_re]

Par for the course in the field of 'Communications Studies', I'm afraid. One of our Comm. Studies faculty wrote a 250 page thesis on 'A Different World', a spinoff sitcom from the Cosby show. Hard to believe this passes for scholarship. This same faculty member writes largely illiterate columns on 'racial issues' for the local lefty fish-wrap. Apparently, sentences with a subject and verb are oppressive, or something.

Exactly what we'd expect from an oppressive, phallocentric, man of "science" such as you, privileging the European male experience over other equally valid narratives as you do, don't you? Admit it, sexist, capitalist, pig-dog ;)

It's not grammar that's oppressive - well, it is, if you've seen anything from the MLA over the last twenty years - but rather plain facts that are oppressive, I think. The world is not how a certain segment of academia wishes it to be, so they must wish away some of its more inconvenient aspects.

Ah, well. I think it was Plato who remarked at what an awful lot of money the Sophists seemed to be making back in the day - plus ça change, right? ;)

[Right Wing Professor]

Exactly what we'd expect from an oppressive, phallocentric, man of "science" such as you, privileging the European male experience over other equally valid narratives as you do, don't you? Admit it, sexist, capitalist, pig-dog ;)

Admit it? Hell, I'm proud of it!

Seriously, though, I'm delighted to look at whatever there is of value from other cultures that European males have ignored. Trouble is, I just don't run into very much of it. And when European males really do take what's valuable from other cultures (gunpowder, for example), we get accused of being colonialist.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, so let's just let the natives/feminists/commies revert back to mud huts, female genital mutilation and preventable sexually treansmitted diseases, and come back in 200 years when they've killed each other off.

[Dan(9698)]

"You don't look lesbian "

Actually, she does.

[Madame Dufarge]

that your arguments didn't hold up

What arguments? Wouldn't that involve give and take?

She paraphrased Das Kapital and left.

I'm sure she conducts her "classes" in the same manner.

[general_re]

Seriously, though, I'm delighted to look at whatever there is of value from other cultures that European males have ignored. Trouble is, I just don't run into very much of it.

I think it was Saul Bellow who said "Show me the Proust of the Papuans, and I'll read it," and who was, of course, instantly attacked for his "racism"...

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, so let's just let the natives/feminists/commies revert back to mud huts, female genital mutilation and preventable sexually treansmitted diseases, and come back in 200 years when they've killed each other off.

Sayyyy, I like the way you think. That must go over well at faculty meetings ;)

[Allrightnow]

Ms. Cloud, I apologize for any threats of harm you may have received from my counterparts on Free Republic. Most of us are proponents of the Constitution and respect your right to dissent (regardless of how little we agree with it), so long as you attempt to effect change through democratic process. I personally respect your right to try to achieve this within the United States and do not suggest that you relocate to a foreign nation that would not allow you the right to speak your mind.

I do however wonder what solution you might offer to the wasp nest hanging here? You are right when you suggest that our way of life offers no hope to people living under the thumb of dictators. We have made attempts (albeit proportioned toward self interest) to correct this by removing some of the curruption from these nations. The result is typically that the dictator or government we extricate is replaced by another equally vile dictator or government and we wind up in a game of semantics, accusing our incumbent party at home of ineffective policy. The real reason that nothing changes is that the socitial structure of these afflicted nations consistently promotes despots to power and nothing short of occupation, measured in generations not months, will change this manner of thinking.

We have tried throwing money at the situation and know that most charitable institutions pocket the lions share of the support and that direct government aid rarely makes it to the intended recipients. We have also seen at home what happens when you hand people what they need to survive; they fail to learn how to provide for themselves or loose the initiative to change their circumstances.

While we are at it, Socialism and Communism don't seem to be valid solutions so long as human behavior remains unchanged. We can see what happened with the USSR and like it or not, China is slowly moving in the direction of the "Glasnost" environment. Do you think that there will be any tangible deviation from the outcome of the same situation in the Soviet Union? People are inherently greedy Professor, this may not appeal to your sense of fairness but it is the truth and it is not about to change. We want more for ourselves and our families. More possessions, more luxury, more security, and believe it or not, for others not to suffer out of our own want of magnanimity. People are willing to strive to better their situation but if you remove all hope of prosperity, people will not work to obtain it. This is why Communism usually winds up as Totalitarianism and Dictatorship. You need force to compel people to work because otherwise there is no motivation to do so.

And why do you think people go to work in Nike factories overseas when the pay is poor and the working conditions even worse. Could it be because it still provides a better lifestyle than they were accustomed to? Is it possible that the reason they begin complaining about it is that they still want more for themselves? You are quick to point out that you want to fight avarice but in doing so is it possible that you are supporting envy?

[The KG9 Kid]

"... When four percent of the world's population controls more than 60% of the world's wealth [...] it is impossible for me to remain uncritical..."

You should dedicate yourself to improving your critical thinking.

The 'wealth' you cite is created by the same minority of people.

It's not as if an evil gang of capitalists is stealing resources from an previously-untapped African mine full of Microsoft Office XP CD-ROMs, is it? Are they conspiring with third-world dictators to rob his subjects of their natural deposits of k.d. lang albums?

What use has a Kenyan Masai tribesman for a $2.8 million Sun StorEdge 9980 System except to smash the magneto-optical storage discs inside it into tiny bits to fashion necklaces for his whole tribe?

It really is insulting to use an alarmist and thoroughly-unexamined economic non-sequitur in attempting to seed guilt on people that have nothing to feel guilty about in the first place.

Have you ever considered putting down the signs and sloganeering and getting your hands dirty doing the hard work to help the people that you claim to champion?

By the looks of it, you rarely get your fat ass off the couch except to wolf down another box of Dove bars -- yet another overpriced capitalist item that a Masai tribesman doesn't need.

[Madame Dufarge]

There is a greater difference between a democracy and a republic than socialism and Stalinism.

Bingo.

[Madame Dufarge]

Oops.

[spqrzilla9]

Resources aren't scarce. There is enough food produced every year to feed everyone 54 times over--most of it is dumped in the ocean because it wouldn't get a profit on the market. That's our system's sick set of priorities.

Its so much easier to argue by making up "facts" out of whole cloth isn't it? Reality is so inconvenient to socialists.

[InvisibleChurch]

you're right, "argument" should read "bilge"

thanks :)

[nickcarraway]

Please answer me a question: If you are a communist of the Karl Marx persuasion should you really be so active? According to Marx, there is no way to ``speed up'' the dialectical process. Each economic stage rises and declines in it's own time, according to Marx. There is no way humans can have an impact. If, according to Marx, capitalism will decay when it reaches that stage, and not before, why would someone try do the impossible, try to influence the process? Either you won't have any effect at all, or possibly you could prolong the capitalist stage.

[tet68]

Today I’m coming out again--as someone liberated by the right to safe, legal, and accessible abortion....

And lesbians need this because?