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Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

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Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another snippet from President Clinton: "I have long opposed governmental recognition of same-gender marriages and this legislation is consistent with that position." http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/scotts/ftp/wpaf2mc/clinton....

That's a general social trend, not unique to the left. Steadily increasing numbers of Republicans also support gay marriage, currently around 40%. ( http://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay... )

The same source shows a roughly similar shift on immigration, with older people being less keen and the average opinion changing as they age out:

http://www.people-press.org/2017/10/05/4-race-immigration-an...

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can, but the notion that ignorance can triumph by force is not the fault of the universities. What is their alternative? To pander to people who believe that Islamic terrorists are a greater threat to them than the ladder in their garage, that being gay is a conscious moral choice, and that tax cuts stimulate economic growth? Conservative backlash against science and mathematics is a consequence of the increasing…

>To pander to people who believe that Islamic terrorists are a greater threat to them than the ladder in their garage A poor straw man argument, and it's telling that you need untruthful hyperbole to make your point.

That's not a strawman either.

Hyperbole is a valid rhetorical device. The point is that fear is used to drive conservatism, in many cases irrational fear.

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#83

As the American right-wing moves further right and further way from participating in consensus reality, it should be no surprise they are increasingly less welcome in spaces dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. If you reject not only the politics of your opponents, but the value of fact itself, why should they listen to or accommodate you? https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16588964/a...

Perhaps it is the American right-wing moving further right, but I am more inclined to believe the American left is moving farther left: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/why-ame... Take for example this speech by Bill Clinton in 1995: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4654597/bill-clinton-illegal-... : "That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record…

In the 90s, the Democrats were trying to enact a single-payer health care system, and the Republican response to it was similar to what we now know as the ACA. Now, the Democrats fight for the Republican plan and the Republicans want to do away with it altogether.

Democrats in the late 60s wanted a national gun registry and ban handguns for anyone who can't demonstrate a need, with household self-protection not considered sufficient need. Any existing guns that didn't qualify would be confiscated. Republicans only wanted to ban things like assault weapons, ownership by felons, and carrying loaded weapons in public. Now, Democrats struggle to ban assault weapons, and Republicans oppose almost all forms of gun control.

FDR enacted a top marginal income tax rate of 94%. Republicans wanted taxes reduced, after the war, to a level that would pay for postwar government spending. Now, the top marginal income tax rate is 39.6%, with Democrats proposing little tweaks like increasing it a bit or increasing the payroll tax cap, and Republicans wanting to slash tax rates (I saw one the other day saying that we should aim for 1-2%) and not caring in the least about the increased deficits this would bring.

Seems to me that the American left is moving sharply right, to the point where the Democratic Party would be considered centrist or mildly right-wing by most standards, while the American right is also moving sharply right and is teetering on the precipice of going all-in on racist nationalism.

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's way overstating it -- people may jump to conclusions that don't match objective reality, but the string of suspicious meetings, consistent omissions from security clearance forms and testomonies, peculiar behaviors by advisors and campaign managers, are all things that did happen in reality. Things like 3 million illegal aliens voted in California, or Barack Obama was born in Kenya, or John Podesta running a s…

If something being suspicious is cause to believe it, then we can believe that the Clintons had something to do with the large number of politically convenient accidents and suicides surrounding them. Objective reality doesn't seem to be enough to cast a shadow on the Clintons. How many people on the left know much about the scandal surrounding the Uranium One deal that Hillary Clinton approved, after taking large am…

> If something being suspicious is cause to believe it,

That's not what I said at all, I was talking about the reality of the suspicious acts, not the reality of their implications. But the immediate refocus to the Clintons, when nobody was talking about them, is plenty illuminating about where this will go if we keep discussing.

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#85

Just as an anecdote, met a recent state school grad who said he arrived on campus as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, tried to get into campus activism, and his fellow activists and teachers scared him so much that he's now not sure where he stands politically. Obviously I can't verify this, but for example he had a professor who actively taught that nations are a completely artificial social construct, and as such all im…

>France was brought up as a particular example. Also, this view point was not up for classroom debate -- you would get a bad grade if you deviated from this in homework essays.

Where I went to school there were classes that counted for a good number of gen-eds but didn't have onerous pre-reqs. They were all terrible classes were like this. It was like they were daring all the engineering students to take a class on extremist feminism and not argue.

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's way overstating it -- people may jump to conclusions that don't match objective reality, but the string of suspicious meetings, consistent omissions from security clearance forms and testomonies, peculiar behaviors by advisors and campaign managers, are all things that did happen in reality. Things like 3 million illegal aliens voted in California, or Barack Obama was born in Kenya, or John Podesta running a s…

If something being suspicious is cause to believe it, then we can believe that the Clintons had something to do with the large number of politically convenient accidents and suicides surrounding them. Objective reality doesn't seem to be enough to cast a shadow on the Clintons. How many people on the left know much about the scandal surrounding the Uranium One deal that Hillary Clinton approved, after taking large am…

It's suspicious enough for a formal investigation. Hopefully the investigation is allowed to run it's course so that we can learn what happened. At this point you can neither say there is no connection nor that there is one.

That there are a very large number of very suspicious circumstances is fact. It also appears to be fact that Russia did try to meddle in the election. I don't see any problems with these claims.

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#87

As the American right-wing moves further right and further way from participating in consensus reality, it should be no surprise they are increasingly less welcome in spaces dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. If you reject not only the politics of your opponents, but the value of fact itself, why should they listen to or accommodate you? https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16588964/a...

> +As the American right-wing moves further right and further way from participating in consensus reality, it should be no surprise they are increasingly less welcome in spaces dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge.

The two clauses in this sentence are contradictory. You are claiming that conservatives are stupid because they reject the herd mentality.

Think about that.

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#88

Just as an anecdote, met a recent state school grad who said he arrived on campus as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, tried to get into campus activism, and his fellow activists and teachers scared him so much that he's now not sure where he stands politically. Obviously I can't verify this, but for example he had a professor who actively taught that nations are a completely artificial social construct, and as such all im…

Nations are artificial constructs, I’m not sure how anyone could argue against that. Immigration controls are part of a “got mine, screw you” tribalism mentality that, in contrast, is quite natural. Even chimps in the wild have been observed to take anti immigration stances.

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As the American right-wing moves further right and further way from participating in consensus reality, it should be no surprise they are increasingly less welcome in spaces dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. The problem is the gap between consensus reality and objective reality. A lot of what the American left has been preaching recently (the Russia-Trump story, for instance) has no basis in objective reality,…

That's way overstating it -- people may jump to conclusions that don't match objective reality, but the string of suspicious meetings, consistent omissions from security clearance forms and testomonies, peculiar behaviors by advisors and campaign managers, are all things that did happen in reality. Things like 3 million illegal aliens voted in California, or Barack Obama was born in Kenya, or John Podesta running a s…

On the other hand, the consensus reality that Russia hacked/stole the US election, and indeed the state of social division in the US itself, by purchasing a monetarily insignificant amount of low quality ads on Facebook, and unleashing a few thousand "trolls" on the internet, is quite strong among the left, mainstream media, democratic party, and liberal universities.

This in the face of multiple billions in ads and propaganda spent by left leaning organizations, and millions of citizens on both sides doing the work of "trolls" for free just by being themselves on the internet, often egged on by an inflammatory click-baity domestic media machine.

But no it was all Russia and Putin. The absurdity of this "consensus-reality" is quite astonishing really.

Re: Elite colleges are making it easy for conservatives to dislike them

#90
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously I can't verify this, but for example he had a professor who actively taught that nations are a completely artificial social construct, and as such all immigration policies of any sort are illegitimate and harmful. But that's a very mainstream position in economics, with much stronger arguments behind it than ideological purity. And it's typically supported by libertarians more than progressives, since the…

But that's a very mainstream position in economics, with much stronger arguments behind it than ideological purity. What mainstream economists believe all immigration policies are illegitimate and harmful? Not being snarky. That would be considered a fairly ideological stance in most other fields. I've never heard that expressed in political science (some overlap with economics) from anyone but people on HN and Reddi…

It's essentially a weird labor market protectionism policy, and really no economist argues protectionism is good.
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