Category: Leftism and Political Correctness

Once Again on Liberal Bias in Academe with Some Remarks on Indoctrination

A reader e-mails (my responses in blue):

I had a question regarding your blog post, From the Mail Pouch: Of Comments and Liberal Bias.  Does the intention to indoctrinate follow from the fact that academia has more registered Democrats than Republicans? 

No, it doesn't follow, but neither did I say that it followed.

Obviously, group think and unconscious bias can and does happen when you get like-minded people altogether. 

Yes indeed.

Continue reading “Once Again on Liberal Bias in Academe with Some Remarks on Indoctrination”

From the Mail Pouch: Of Comments and Liberal Bias

A regular reader writes:

First, I've been enjoying your blog greatly since you disabled comments. Thank you for daring to do that. (I say dare because nowadays comments are all the rage, and are used as traffic boosters – usually to the detriment of a site.)

I knew my traffic would take a nose dive were I to disallow comments, but I don't blog for mere traffic.  Back in January and February, when I was discussing the ideas of Ayn Rand with comments allowed, there were days when my page view count was up around 2000.  Right now I am averaging about 670 page views per day.  The high numbers in January and February were in part due to the subject matter: Rand's ideas fascinate  adolescents of all ages.  But the quality of comments was so bad that it gave me yet another  reason to shut them off.

Second, a question. I know you're a philosophy professor who openly identifies as conservative. Is it your experience that universities are typically liberal-biased? As in, they intend to promote liberal views, indoctrinate students into liberal ideas, etc.

That is indeed my experience, but, quite apart from my experience, it is a fact that cannot be denied.  Conservatives are in the minority especially in the humanities and social sciences.  For example,  in the 2004 election, one survey showed that 87.6% of the social sciences professors queried voted for Kerry, while only 6.2% voted for Bush.  In the humanities, the numbers were 83.7% for Kerry and 15% for Bush.  

Third – assuming your answer to the previous is yes, even a qualified yes – do you think there is any moral difficulty with sending a child, particularly one who isn't intellectually prepared to defend him/herself from such indoctrination, to a university?

Curious of your views as a (seemingly rare) conservative philosopher.

Two quick points.  First, not all colleges and universities exhibit the same degree of liberal bias, and of course there are a few schools with the opposite bias.  So whether there is a moral problem or not will depend on where you send your child.  Second, much depends on the subject in which the student intends to major.  There is little or no liberal bias in the schools of business, engineering, and medicine.  Mathematics, computer science, physics and chemistry are also not amenable to ideological deformation.  (Of course, this won't prevent a liberal professor of these subjects  from airing his political and social views in the classroom.) But with the life sciences ideology begins to find a foothold.  (Would a Dawkins-type biology professor be able to keep his mouth shut about religion or be objective about global warming or race and IQ questions?)  When we get to the social sciences and humanities, however, we enter leftist-occupied territory.

The Gun-Totin’ Obama Protester Was Black!

If a black man exercises his Second Amendment rights, is he really black?  For liberals, the answer, apparently, is in the negative.  For them, apparently, the only real black is a liberal black.  Take a gander at this video clip.  You will see an Obama protester with a semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, a pistol on his hip, and an ammo clip in his pocket.   But the shot has been edited so that we cannot see that he is black.  And you liberals have the chutzpah to tell me that the MSM does not tilt to the Left?  To depict the man's color  would not fit in with the leftist party line that opposition to Obama's policies has its origin in racism.

In this clip you can see that the man is indeed black.

Here are two points that need to be made again and again in opposition to the willful moral and intellectual obtuseness of liberals and leftists.

1. Dissent is not hate.  To dissent from a person's ideas and policies is not to hate the person.

2. As a corollary to #1, to dissent from the ideas and policies of a black man is not to hate the man. A fortiori, it is not to hate the man because he is black.

 

Does the Left Own Dylan?

Not according to Sean Curnyn of RightWingBob.com.  (Via Paul J. Cella) 

Dylan is an artist not an ideologue, arguably America's greatest troubadour.  For a taste of Left-Right polarity in Dylan's work already in the 1960s compare Subterranean Homesick Blues with Father of Night.  The Weatherman faction of the SDS got its name from the line, "It don't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" from the former.  It is worth noting that Dylan's farewell to ideology came early, in 1964, in My Back Pages, thus a year before "Subterranean Homesick Blues."  If you can't stand Dylan's voice, give a listen to this high-powered version of "My Back Pages" featuring Roger McGuinn, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Neil Young, et al.

"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

Political Correctness in the U.K.

Is there no limit to PeeCee idiocy?  Apparently not.  Liberals will throw themselves into the arms of any incoherence.  See this Times of London piece.  'Ethnic minority' is to be blacklisted as offensive.  The same of course goes for 'blacklisted.'  But if you are offended by these words and phrases, then your stupidity offends me!  And you should be offended by it too. You should deeply regret that you have let yourself sink into this bog of nonsense.

Stateside, the totalitarian thrust of the Obama administration will bring in its train even more PC.  So get ready for ever deeper assaults on common sense.  Just remember what I told you: PC derives from the CP.  See my Dorothy Healey on Political Correctness for documentation.  And while you're at it, take a gander at Of Black Holes and Political Correctness: If You Take Offense, Is that my Fault?

Do you value liberty? Do you value free speech?  Then speak out against the liberal-left assault on common sense and the English language. 

The Fiscal Irresponsibility of Liberals in the United States of Ponzi

Paul Krugman as case in point, here:

There’s been some hysteria about the administration’s new estimate that the cumulative deficit will be $9 trillion over the next decade. Don’t get me wrong: this is bad. But it’s being treated as an inconceivable sum, far beyond anything that could possibly be handled. And it isn’t.

What you have to bear in mind is that the economy — and hence the federal tax base — is enormous, too.

Please note the typical leftist tactic of imputing mental instability to those who dissent from liberal-left ideas: you are 'hysterical' if you question the wisdom of running massive debt and thinking that we can spend our way out of it.  To take a second example, if you point out the very real threat of radical Islam, the leftist will call you an 'Islamaphobe' which of course implies that your concern is not rational but simply an irrational fear.  Examples can be multiplied.  Oppose the morality of homosexual practices and you are a 'homophobe.'  Obama treats criticism of his socialized medicine proposals as fear-mongering.  This shows what little respect liberals and leftists have for their fellow citizens.  It is a  sign of  profound disrespect for one's interlocutor when one treats his thoughts and utterances as mere symptoms of an underlying psychological malaise.  But that's the Left for you.  They are elitists.  They don't respect you, but they want to control you.

Note also Krugman's point about the size of the federal tax base.  The Feds have plenty of opportunity to fleece the taxpayer.  And that is what they will do.

Now read something from an economist with his head screwed on properly, Nouriel Roubini, The United States of Ponzi:

A government that will issue trillions of dollars of new debt to pay for this severe recession and socialize private losses may risk becoming a Ponzi government if–in the medium term–it does not return to fiscal discipline and debt sustainability.

A country that has–for over 25 years–spent more than income and thus run an endless string of current account deficit–and has thus become the largest net foreign debtor in the world (with net foreign liabilities that are likely to be over $3 trillion by the end of this year)–is also a Ponzi country that may eventually default on its foreign debt if it does not, over time, tighten its belt and start running smaller current account deficits and actual trade surpluses.

Leftists and Guns

Leftists who fear a 'fascist theocracy' in the USA ought to consider joining with their conservative brethren in support of Second Amendment rights. That way, when the 'fascist theocrats' kick down their doors at 3 AM to haul them off to church services, the leftists will be well equipped to defend their liberty. Was it not their own Chairman Mao who said that "Power comes out of the barrel of a gun"?

There is a serious point here. ACLU extremists will torture the First Amendment to mean anything they want it to mean while nary a peep will you hear from them in defense of the Second Amendment — when it is the Second that backs up the First and all the rest.

There is an old saying: "If liberals interpreted the Second Amendment the way they interpret the First, gun ownership would be mandatory."

Companion post: The ACLU on the Second Amendment

Does the Left Own Dissent?

Battles in the ‘culture war’ are often fought and sometimes won on linguistic ground. Linguistic hijacking is a tried-and-true tactic, one sometimes found on the Right, but more often on the Left: a term whose natural habitat is some neutral semantic space is hijacked and piloted toward a Left Coast semantic subspace.

An example is ‘dissent,' a word in which leftists fancy they have a proprietary interest.  It has two senses, one broad, the other narrow. In its broad usage, to dissent is to withhold assent, or else to differ in opinion. These are not the same, since if I withhold assent from your opinion about X, it does not follow that I hold a different opinion about X: I may suspend judgment by holding no opinion about X.

Continue reading “Does the Left Own Dissent?”

Roots of Leftist Viciousness in Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals

One reason that leftists are vicious is that they take to heart Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals  #13:

RULE 13: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

Study Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals if you want to understand the tactics of the Obama administration.

David Horowitz will appear on the Glenn Beck show on 24 August to explain Alinsky's tactics.  See Alinsky, Beck, Satan, and Me.  Excerpt (emphasis added):

So Alinsky begins by telling readers what a radical is. He is not a reformer of the system but its would-be destroyer. This is something that conservatives have a very hard time understanding. Conservatives in my experience are all together too decent, too civilized to match up adequately, at least in the initital stages of the battle, with their adversaries. They are too prone to give them the benefit of the doubt. Radicals can't really want to destroy a society that is democratic and liberal and has brought wealth and prosperity to so many. Oh yes they can. That is in fact the essence of what it means to be a radical — to be willing to destroy the values, structures and institutions that sustain the society we live in. Marx himself famously cited Alinsky's first rebel (using another of his names — Mephistopheles): "Everything that exists deserves to perish."

This is why ACORN activists for example have such contempt for the election process, why they are so willing to commit fraud. Because just as Lucifer didn't believe in God's kingdom, so the radicals who run ACORN don't believe in the democratic system. To them it's a fraud — an instrument of the ruling class, or as Alinsky prefers to call it, the Haves. If the electoral system doesn't serve all of us, but is only an instrument of the Haves then election fraud is justified, is a means of creating a system that serves the Have-Nots — social justice. Until conservatives begin to understand exactly how dishonest radicals are — dishonest in their core — it is going to be very hard to defend the system that is under attack. For radicals the noble end — creating a new heaven on earth — justifies any means. And if one actually believed it was possible to create heaven on earth who would not willingly destroy any system hitherto created by human beings?

 

The Race Card, the McCarthy Card, and ‘Death Panels’

There are two cards no leftist leaves home without: the race card and the McCarthy card.  The Henry Gates case was a particularly egregious recent example of the playing of the former.  For a recent example of an uncommonly  sleazy deployment of the latter, see Richard Cohen 's attack on Sarah Palin in which he mounts the lunatic thesis that "Palinism" is "an updated version of McCarthyism."

An excellent antidote to Cohen's delusional tripe is provided by Thomas Sowell in Whose Medical Decisions?  Excerpt:

As for a "death panel," no politician would ever use that phrase when trying to get a piece of legislation passed. "End of life" care under the "guidance" of "some independent group" sounds so much nicer– and these are the terms President Obama used in an interview with the New York Times back on April 14th.

He said, "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out there." He added: "It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. That is why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance."

But when you select people like Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel to give "independent" guidance, you have already chosen a policy through your choice of advisors, who simply provide political cover. The net result can be exactly the same as if those providing that guidance were openly called "death panels."

The ACLU on the Second Amendment

Aclu_tshirt-p235462473170398647q6xn_400 The following is verbatim from the ACLU website:

The Second Amendment provides: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

ACLU POSITION
Given the reference to "a well regulated Militia" and "the security of a free State," the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right. For seven decades, the Supreme Court's 1939 decision in United States v. Miller was widely understood to have endorsed that view.

The Supreme Court has now ruled otherwise. In striking down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in D.C. v. Heller held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, whether or not associated with a state militia.

The ACLU disagrees with the Supreme Court's conclusion about the nature of the right protected by the Second Amendment. We do not, however, take a position on gun control itself. In our view, neither the possession of guns nor the regulation of guns raises a civil liberties issue.

Two main points. First, the concluding sentence of the quotation, which I have bolded, is so preposterous as to take the breath away. Whether or not there is a right to keep and bear arms is plainly a civil liberties issue.  I would have thought that this would require no argument. Apparently I was wrong: liberals of the ACLU stripe are so preternaturally stupid as to be blind to the obvious.  You will see this if you understand what a civil liberty is.  Here are some definitions:

  • one's freedom to exercise one's rights as guaranteed under the laws of the country
  • fundamental individual right protected by law and expressed as immunity from unwarranted governmental interference
    wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
  • Civil liberties are freedoms that protect an individual from the government of the nation in which they reside. Civil liberties set limits for government so that it cannot abuse its power and interfere unduly with the lives of its citizens.
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_liberty

    Even if you think of the right to keep and bear arms as a collective right — a right an individual has in virtue of belonging to a militia– it is still a civil liberty by the first and third definitions.

    But, and here is my second point, one cannot correctly infer that the right in question is a collective right from the wording of the Second Amendment.  Carefully read the Second Amendment, quoted above, and note that the subordinate clause provides a reason, which is not the same as the only reason, for the right in question not to be infringed.  One cannot therefore validly infer from the formulation of the Second Amendment that it refers only to a collective right.  ""A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" gives one reason for the protection of gun rights.  This is consistent with there being other reasons.  Three other reasons come readily to mind.  There  is the need for the means of self-defense of oneself and one's family from the criminal element.  There is the need for the means of defense against wild animals. (Would you backpack in grizzly country without any protection?  You might end up bear scat like the benighted Timothy Treadwell.)   And there is the need for the means of defense against a usurpatious government.

    • Political Correctness Watch

    Yale University Press bans images of Muhammad in academic book.  What wimps these liberals be! And there is no wimp like an academic wimp.

    Cynthia Tucker: 45-65% Of Townhall Protesters Are Racists.    'Racist' is the all-purpose semantic bludgeon of choice among liberals.  Disagree with a liberal on practically anything and you are a racist!

    Is 'Socialist' Code for 'Nigger'?  One of the most despicable characteristics of present-day liberals and leftists is their refusal to take anything a conservative says at face value.  Warped by the hermeneutics of suspicion, the liberal/leftist cannot credit the plainest and sincerest asseverations of the conservative.  So if the conservative points out the obvious fact that Obama's health care proposals are socialist in nature, then he must really be doing something else, namely, expressing his hatred of Obama.  You see, libs and lefties do not want to discuss the issues, they want to win by intimidation, by slandering the people who disagree with them and calling them racists.  This is why there can be no discussion with these people.  You cannot have a discussion with someone who interprets your opposition to radical Islam as a phobia, or your opposition to socialism as racist.

    The Conservative Disadvantage

    We conservatives are at a certain disadvantage as compared to our leftist brethren. We don’t seek the meaning of our lives in the political sphere but in the private arena: in hobbies, sports, our jobs and professions, in ourselves, our families, friends, neighborhoods, communities, clubs and churches; in foot races and chess tournaments; in the particular pleasures of the quotidian round in all of their scandalous particularity.

    We don't look to politics for meaning. Above all, we conservatives do not seek any transcendent meaning in the political sphere. We either deny that there is such a thing, or we seek it in religion, or in philosophy, or in meditation, or in such sorry substitutes as occultism. A conservative who denies that there is ‘pie in the sky’ will certainly not seek ‘pie in the future.’ He will not, like the leftist, look to a human future for redemption.  He understands human nature, its real possibilities, and its real limits.  He is impervious to utopian illusions.  He will accept no ersatz soteriology.