Comments on: Conservative Worries “Overwrought”… or not?

By: bobby b

bobby b — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:24:47 +0000

“The very possibility of a “collectivism-individualism” range of thinking is ignored and suppressed.”
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It’s always been my assumption (perhaps wrongly) that the “right-left” continuum encompasses several philosophical systems that tend towards compatible treatment.

Thus, in my mind, the “capitalist-socialist” continuum resides nicely along the same line as does the “individual-group” continuum, and as does the “small government-large government” continuum. Plotting someone’s belief system on one of these three axes should yield a position that accurately represents their positions on the other axes.

The one supposed fellow-traveler system that has always been assumed to coexist so nicely with these other “conservative” bedrocks – the prudish, puritanical concern that everyone else acknowledge and obey my own version of a gawd, or some such other “unquestionably correct” moral system – should actually produce a result antipodal to the conservative philosophy.

And yet, here we are. Coalitional realities reign, sometimes leading us to absurd places.

By: willis

willis — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:45:56 +0000

Another problem is that far-left extremists believe themselves to be mainstream moderates.

By: Robert Speirs

Robert Speirs — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:33:20 +0000

I agree with the previous commenter. The single most harmful item of indoctrination is the insistence on a “right-left” or “conservative-liberal” spectrum as the only correct way of categorizing political views. The very possibility of a “collectivism-individualism” range of thinking is ignored and suppressed. Fundamentalist religions, whether Baptist or Muslim, and “hard-left” groupthink both endanger individual rights and enshrine the expansion of government power.

By: Chester White

Chester White — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:14:23 +0000

“if you immerse yourself in a society in which your peers and friends and classmates and professors all tend to the left, and who all associate the less-charity-oriented right as being driven only by selfishness instead of a recognition that we all need incentive, your own perception can creep towards that view.”

This is where having a pair comes in.

By: ianamo

ianamo — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:45:20 +0000

Chris,

I see someone needs to read Kirk’s classic “Libertarians: Chirping Sectaries.”

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:58:06 +0000

Since when does favoring legalization of marijuana amount to moving “noticeably to the left”? Social conservatism isn’t conservative. It’s just a different kind of leftism.

By: Matt J. Duffy

Matt J. Duffy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:16:08 +0000

Great points. A PhD student, I’m exposed to nothing but liberal orthodoxy that’s presented as though it represents the only clear, level-headed way of looking at the world.

By: bobby b

bobby b — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:05:45 +0000

I’m fifty-two, so my college time is long gone, but I entered a very, very, (very!) liberal private college as a moderate-to-conservative, and left as a moderate-to-conservative.

But I also realize now that I left as a moderate-to-conservative who felt a bit guilty and unclean about publicly espousing my economic beliefs. You can know, intellectually, that a free market is far more efficient, and promotes far more growth and production and innovation, than a market in which politicians provide the input, but if you immerse yourself in a society in which your peers and friends and classmates and professors all tend to the left, and who all associate the less-charity-oriented right as being driven only by selfishness instead of a recognition that we all need incentive, your own perception can creep towards that view.

So, I wonder if anyone has tested to see whether conservative students undergoing liberal academia don’t become less open about their politics, less willing to publicly push for their underlying principles, or simply more willing to cede the public discourse to people who yell that, obviously and of course, we should be feeding next year’s seed corn to the starving children!

By: Stan

Stan — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:56:14 +0000

I can’t believe the professors citing the self-identification numbers could be so stupid (or dishonest). The whole point of indoctrination is to affect attitudes without the recognition of the indoctrinated. Of course the student who considers himself moderate will continue to label himself as such.

This was incredibly sloppy reasoning to base a study upon. Do people get degrees for this kind of garbage?

By: ronnor

ronnor — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:54:27 +0000

Maybe this is the reason they are trying to start indoctrination in the lower grades like Bill Ayers and his friends have been doing in Chicago. I think that Patricia Cohen might have been a student of Professor Ayers and has learned the message of propaganda dissemination well. After what the New York Times and other liberal/progressive/neocom newspapers have done in this last election cycle, why would you believe anything they spout as ‘truth’. We’re living in 1984 now, we have the Department of Truth for real, I believe nothing in the “progressive press.”