Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire • Hacker News Board

Re: Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire

#31

Post by edw519 » Thu, Jul 03, 2008, 7:14 PM UTC

xlnt wrote: post #29

edw519 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the argument of the protesters, not mine. Sorry. If only I could write prose as well as I could code. :-)

If that was their argument, and it's a political argument, then they were "playing politics". That's all.

In restrospect, it's easy for us to sit on our butts and call it "playing politics". But for many of them, it was literally a matter of life or death. Going to college or fleeing to Canada were their only options (unless you shot your toe off). Makes red states/blue states seem kinda lame, huh?

Re: Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire

#32

Post by xlnt » Thu, Jul 03, 2008, 7:29 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #31

xlnt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that was their argument, and it's a political argument, then they were "playing politics". That's all.

In restrospect, it's easy for us to sit on our butts and call it "playing politics". But for many of them, it was literally a matter of life or death. Going to college or fleeing to Canada were their only options (unless you shot your toe off). Makes red states/blue states seem kinda lame, huh?

If you don't want to be a soldier, that isn't playing politics. But as you said, that wasn't the position of most protestors.

If you say the war is immoral, illegal, or unwinnable, that is getting involved politics.

Re: Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire

#33

Post by rkts » Thu, Jul 03, 2008, 7:43 PM UTC

hugh wrote: post #15

vaksel wrote: post #8

I think the problem is you have liberals but not actual conservatives. The conservatives we currently have, care more about gay marriage than keeping the government small and having a balanced budget.

An overgeneralization, of course. It's just that those are the ones you hear most about in the media. One could speculate that left-wing media sources are more comfortable portraying the crazy conservatives than the sensible ones (just as Fox News is more comfortable portraying the crazy leftists than the sensible ones).

So, just to be clear: you're saying that anyone who cares more about gay marriage than the government's budget is crazy?

Re: Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire

#34

Post by davidw » Thu, Jul 03, 2008, 8:12 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #13

edw519 wrote: post #11

This article completely misses the point. Instead of citing outlying cases, maybe it should have dealt with the elephant in the living room: Vietnam College students in the 60's weren't "playing politics". They were protesting an illegal, immoral, and unwinnable war. Hell, half the men on campus were there so they wouldn't have to go to Vietnam. I imagine today's generation of professors would feel a little different…

Professors have always been more liberal and left-leaning than the general population. This goes back further than a hundred years in my reckoning. For instance in the 20s and 30s there was a large percentage of academics who thought communism was the best choice for western civilization. Vietnam has little to do with it. Interesting (to me) is the tendency for left-leaning progressives to continue to live and fight…

> This goes back further than a hundred years in my reckoning.

Galileo apparently said that some of his best years were those at the University of Padova:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Padua#History

... which, as the article says, had more freedom and less influence from the Catholic church.

However: this strikes me as not really being hacker news.

(PS, check out this guy, who came out of Padova:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin )

Re: Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire

#35

Post by william42 » Thu, Jul 03, 2008, 8:47 PM UTC

vaksel wrote: post #8

I think the problem is you have liberals but not actual conservatives. The conservatives we currently have, care more about gay marriage than keeping the government small and having a balanced budget.

The problem is that people who call themselves "moderates" and people who call themselves "liberals" tend to have the exact same positions, and people don't realize that.

Re: Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire

#36

Post by hugh » Thu, Jul 03, 2008, 9:29 PM UTC

rkts wrote: post #33

hugh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An overgeneralization, of course. It's just that those are the ones you hear most about in the media. One could speculate that left-wing media sources are more comfortable portraying the crazy conservatives than the sensible ones (just as Fox News is more comfortable portraying the crazy leftists than the sensible ones).

So, just to be clear: you're saying that anyone who cares more about gay marriage than the government's budget is crazy?

I don't think I'm willing to be trapped into an "anyone who thinks X is crazy" kind of statement.

Re: Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire

#37

Post by gaius » Thu, Jul 03, 2008, 9:43 PM UTC

rkts wrote: post #33

hugh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An overgeneralization, of course. It's just that those are the ones you hear most about in the media. One could speculate that left-wing media sources are more comfortable portraying the crazy conservatives than the sensible ones (just as Fox News is more comfortable portraying the crazy leftists than the sensible ones).

So, just to be clear: you're saying that anyone who cares more about gay marriage than the government's budget is crazy?

You have to understand where we're coming from on this. The present-day law on gay marriage was changed due to the wording of the original law, written in a time when gay marriage wasn't even being considered, which happened to say something like "two persons" rather than "a man and a woman".

The Republic will not fall because Adam marries Steve. What consenting adults get up to on private property is no-one's business but their own, certainly not the Governments. But it is under threat when law is made through legal chicanery rather than the democratic process. That is why Conservatives are up in arms about gay marriage.

Re: Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire

#38

Post by rkts » Thu, Jul 03, 2008, 10:28 PM UTC

hugh wrote: post #36

rkts wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, just to be clear: you're saying that anyone who cares more about gay marriage than the government's budget is crazy?

I don't think I'm willing to be trapped into an "anyone who thinks X is crazy" kind of statement.

Ok, but the point is, if you're willing to call people "crazy" because of their political opinions, I doubt that you're as committed to intellectual diversity as you claim to be.

Re: Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire

#39

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 03, 2008, 10:29 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #11

This article completely misses the point. Instead of citing outlying cases, maybe it should have dealt with the elephant in the living room: Vietnam College students in the 60's weren't "playing politics". They were protesting an illegal, immoral, and unwinnable war. Hell, half the men on campus were there so they wouldn't have to go to Vietnam. I imagine today's generation of professors would feel a little different…

[deleted]

Re: Campuses getting less political as '60s professors retire

#40

Post by rkts » Thu, Jul 03, 2008, 10:36 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #37

rkts wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, just to be clear: you're saying that anyone who cares more about gay marriage than the government's budget is crazy?

You have to understand where we're coming from on this. The present-day law on gay marriage was changed due to the wording of the original law, written in a time when gay marriage wasn't even being considered, which happened to say something like "two persons" rather than "a man and a woman". The Republic will not fall because Adam marries Steve. What consenting adults get up to on private property is no-one's busine…

Do you have any data to support that claim? The conservatives I know oppose gay marriage because they consider it immoral, not because of some abstract stuff about the democratic process.