Do Facts Matter to Liberals?
If you are not familiar with the organization FIRE, you should be, for they are very much champions of free speech on college campuses, something that is sorely lacking these days. It seems that a biased Wikipedia editor has stated that they are a right-wing front group (if they were a left-wing front group like so much of the MSM, George Soros, etc. etc., I would assume this would be satisfactory). FIRE president Greg Lukianoff has a few choice words for Wikipedia editor Simon DeDeo (via Instapundit):
Good advice, but since when do those liberals blinded by ideology listen to facts? DeDeo is just taking a page straight out of the work of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals
--rather than look at facts, try to marginalize your opponent by calling names. It's time we quit falling for such psychologically manipulative tactics and started rewarding critical thinking skills. Educational institutions used to teach these skills, now they teach that posturing the correct political stance is more important than the truth. How tolerant is that?
FIRE's experience has been that you are more likely to get in trouble on campus if you are socially conservative, make un-PC jokes, or do or say something deemed "insensitive." Liberals also run afoul of campus bureaucrats, and when they do, they too are punished utilizing the language of "tolerance" and "diversity." You can disagree with this assessment, you can do your best to disprove it, but if after reviewing case after case every year, you aren't convinced that there is a problem on campus, you should ask yourself if you are honestly looking at the facts, or if you are blinded by your own ideology.
Good advice, but since when do those liberals blinded by ideology listen to facts? DeDeo is just taking a page straight out of the work of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals
--rather than look at facts, try to marginalize your opponent by calling names. It's time we quit falling for such psychologically manipulative tactics and started rewarding critical thinking skills. Educational institutions used to teach these skills, now they teach that posturing the correct political stance is more important than the truth. How tolerant is that?
posted by Helen at 10:25 AM
46 Comments:
Excellent post Dr Helen. I tend to cast my critical eye very wide. For me, rather than "...when do those liberals blinded by ideology listen to facts?" I'd say "When does anyone blinded by ideology listen to facts?". The answer, of course, is never.
Teaching critical thinking in schools is a fantastic idea. Sadly I'm not convinced it has ever been a tradition in US public schools. I'm 42 and, thinking back, I don't ever remember any lessons that resemble exercises in critical thinking until I was in my second year of college.
I take every opportunity to drill my kids in critical analysis.
HMT,
Good point. I agree that it is not just liberals who are blinded by ideology--those on the far right (and libertarians) can be the same way. The difference is that in our schools and universities, those with liberal views rarely suffer much for their views which are seen as the mainstream and if they do, they often get a slap on the wrist as opposed to something more drastic. In addition, it is quite hypocritical that liberals talk up free speech, tolerance etc. and yet, do not adhere to these "principals" if their target is a non-liberal. I think the problem is seen more with the left than the right at this point. Not saying that might not change, but it is certainly true right now in respect to such settings as universities and colleges.
Liberals, like all people on the left, have this view of how things would be if {insert form of "oppression" here} were not the case. It is only because of some sinister, possibly even nefarious, force suppressing the realization of the liberal Nevernever land that everything they believe to be true is not currently true. Once the forces opposing the left are eliminated will the world of eternal harmony will simply spring into being.
When they do get their way but things do not turn out as they expected, then that is simply more evidence that the forces of oppression are still in the world, pulling everyone's strings (except the liberal's of course) and MUST BE STOPPED!
This is why history is of no substantial importance to leftists. It can be no guide. It is only important to the extent that it is a celebration of themselves and their victories over the oppression of the world.
On the other hand, it does explain why said critical thinking skills are oddly lacking in most education these days. Wouldn't want to be hoist by their own petard or anything.
I'm guessing critical thinking was abandoned in the schools at about the same time as teaching according to the trivium and quadrivium was abandoned. The university canon wars would have been the final nail in the coffin. You can still get a classical education for your children but you'll pay dearly for it or you'll do it yourself.
A conservative student quickly learns how to navigate the university waters. And how to take a B when you write a paper in favor of dismantling the UN. Not everything is fair or needs to be. Life is hard, get a helmet.
The problem with critical thinking is that people who form opinions and perspectives by using it are marginalized.
Critical thinking is no longer taught or applied because it is too difficult to indoctrinate people who can for their own opinions based on research and facts versus ideological lore.
Ideology is now factual. They name streets after ideologues;
One Way and Dead End.
I'd put the lack of critical thinking in K-12 squarely on standardized testing. No Child Left Behind is only the most recent incarnation of the education brain-drain in the US. There's definitely no overt liberal (or conservative) bias in the schools where my kids go. The teachers are too busy pumping the kids with the info they need to pass the standardized tests. That's not a bash at the teachers, it's just what they have to do.
Heck, I live in the south. The majority of the teachers in my kids schools are evangelical right. Trust me, that's not an environment that fosters critical thinking.
It's not my kids I'm worried about. They get the additional education they need from my wife and I. It's the kids that don't get extra education at home that will make up the majority of the US.
They'll end up as "liberal" or "conservative" because that's what Mom and Dad were, or because that's what "Joe that real smart guy at work thinks".
I think it is attachment and the ability to think while upset or challenged rather than critical thinking per se. Big government socialists and government dependents are searching to find a "mother" big enough to calm their brains.
Our ability to self soothe and think while upset comes from our orbitofrontal cortex. This part of the brain develops from 20 weeks gestation to nine or twelve months after we are born and is mediated by our attachment history. For a horrifying example of how it can go totally wrong, look at the videos of the babies made by Spitz in Eastern European orphanages. It is heartbreaking and some of it is on youtube.
In adults, the disrupted attachment leads to narcissistic, dependent, antisocial, and borderline personality problems. Without a consistent and capable caregiver, we lack the development necessary to think when someone says something upsetting.
So the folks with disrupted attachment who want the nanny state CANNOT think when they are challenged. Their amgdala hijacks their brain, and they do what they must, attack and/or panic.
Once you watch them enough, it becomes very obvious. People with secure attachments can calm themselves and think while upset and go on to be productive citizens who find the thought of the nanny state repugnent and threatening, but we can say why we find it that way because we can think when we are upset.
The science is strong and compelling. Of course, not all liberals have disrupted attachment histories, but people who cannot accept disagreement without becoming irrational most likely are suffering from attachment neglect and the subsequent brain damage.
Trey
Many of today's professors are intellectual descendents not of the scholars of the past, but of the clergymen of an Established church. Their search is not for truth, but for conformity to a predefined set of precepts.
It has been my experience that liberals tend to view things from an emotionally based point of view, while conservatives and libertarians tend to use a logic or reason to form their opinions. It is very hard to break through that emotion-based thinking, because it isn't really thinking, it is feeling. And feelings have no reason ... or logic.
And I think I just blew a brain fuse with that ... but ya'll know what I am saying ... right? Right?
lissakay wrote: "It is very hard to break through that emotion-based thinking, because it isn't really thinking, it is feeling."
And because the part of the brain that mediates strong emotions and integrates them with the prefrontal cortex and logic is substantially under-developed in people with a poor attachment history.
Say people whose mother was a teenager, or who did not have a father to help out and reduce maternal stress, or who were put in inadequate day care for the first year of their life.
It is frightening once you get the picture.
Trey
Is it even possible for your average conservative to say something that doesn't invoke liberals and their shortcomings? Would this flavor of conservatism even exist on its own if liberalism weren't there to serve as a counterpoint? Sure, you can make yourself look taller by cutting off someone else's head but its messy.
It would be great to drop into a discussion happening among "conservatives" that was about conservatism. Unfortunately, most conservatives are so obsessed with liberals there's not time for scholarly discussion.
Zelda,
"..most conservatives are so obsessed with liberals there's not time for scholarly discussion."
Don't you mean equal time? Because most institutions of "scholarship" are too afraid, angry, biased or just plain intolerant to allow equal time for conservative or other views. The reason conservatives discuss these issues is because they are not represented on college campuses or in other areas such as the MSM fairly or sometimes at all. This was the point of my post and kind of the point of the FIRE president. Don't like it? There are many other blogs out there where you might feel more comfortable.
So they discuss these issues in the comments section of blogs in hopes of what?
"Equal time" sounds like a liberal mantra to me. Maybe you should put forth an "Equal Time Amendment". You could call it, "The Fairness Doctrine".
Or, conservatives could spend their time firming up what it even means to be a conservative in this era and start building something meaningful around it.
"Don't like it? There are many other blogs out there where you might feel more comfortable."
Point taken.
zelda --
"So they discuss these issues in the comments section of blogs in hopes of what?"
Um, finding out what others think, perhaps?
"...conservatives could spend their time firming up what it even means to be a conservative..."
That would presume a uniformity of exactly what it does take to be a conservative. As an atheist conservative, I obviously do not subscribe to such a uniformity.
I'm also an atheist conservative and I don't think firming up what it means to be conservative means having to identify strongly with a religion or even against religion. But it sure seems that way now. Or at least, that's how its popularly perceived and all the belly-aching about liberals isn't going to change that. But, I've been shown the door and I'm overstaying my welcome. Best.
zelda:
I agree with alot of what your saying, but you're asking conservatives to "man up" and take the oppression in stride. Liberal students just get a free ride. This is horrible oppression. Let's take an analogy, would you say that in the 1930s Jews in Germany should "man up" to their oppression? Honestly I don't get where you are coming from.
Zelda,
I think that's the problem, you are not communicating what you mean very well and/or perhaps I am not understanding where you are coming from and this is leading to confusion. Your comments often don't make sense to me and seem snide and insincere. Perhaps I am misreading them or perhaps that is your intention.
I'm also an atheist conservative and I don't think firming up what it means to be conservative means having to identify strongly with a religion or even against religion. But it sure seems that way now. Or at least, that's how its popularly perceived and all the belly-aching about liberals isn't going to change that.
I haven't encountered any criticism of conservatives because they are atheist, but liberal media outlets sure like to play up the religious right. Send Derb at NRO an email and ask him if he feels oppressed by religious conservatives.
zelda --
Like matthew, I've encountered no such reaction from most conservatives. Like liberals, conservatives have their fringe loudmouths (Pat R) and they get the most air time. Not the standard conservative.
Fascinating. As a liberal blogger, I almost wrote a very similar post about conservatives. But, paradoxically, I hedged because I wanted to question my own assumptions and try to objectively determine whether or not liberals engaged in the same kind of anti-intellectual argumentation that I've observed on the other side.
According to my anecdotal observation, what might be considered an average liberal blog is about as reasonable as an "elite" conservative blog. In general, less likely to engage in ad hominems and more likely to respond directly to an argument (citing evidence with hyperlink) rather than deflecting or throwing up a strawman. The average conservative blog (determined by tendency for crosslinking) seems more similar to the fringe liberal blogs. More conspiracy theory-oriented, less likely to use hard evidence, etc.
I was thinking of doing a more formal study. But now that I see I can make a bunch of assertions without referring to actual facts, maybe I won't bother.
slag --
More conspiracy theory-oriented, less likely to use hard evidence, etc.
You mean, like that post? Out of nowhere and ad hominem?
Slag- I am impressed by your "scholarship". NOT !!!!
The conclusions you seem to have drawn- care to elaborate the hows and the whys?
FIRE is naturally going to seem like a right wing organization because the majority of people it has to defend are conservatives. If that doesn't say something about the alleged tolerance of the political left, then I don't know what could.
As the great Burt Prelutsky said, they too often confuse shouting opponents down with free speech, and opponents dismissing them as morons as censorship.
Slag, zelda, if you are hanging around, here is a good introductory article on amygdala hijacking. The follow up part adds the most recent research involving the orbitofrontal cortex.
http://www.neilslade.com/Papers/wisdomclicking.html
The role of attachment in developing the orbitofrontal cortex is a good place to go next, just google it and read.
Not to confuse the discussion with hard data or anything! 8)
Trey
OK, this is serious overkill, and I realize I am likely flogging an expired equine, but this article is the real stuff. Long, but really worth the read in order to understand how attachment history affects brain development which in turn affects behavior in a discussion.
Trey
Sigh. Here is the promised link.
http://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/index.php?category=distance_learning&sub_cat=browse_by_topic&type=clinical&id=Discoveries%20from%20the%20Black%20Box&page=1
Next I will post an article about why my ADD and dyslexia are so embarassing.
Trey
Well, fell asleep watching the evening news and now I'm wide awake at 3:00 AM.
Trey, although not dyslexic (but I do thank the stars for spell check) I have enough ADD for any three people to share. I quit reading long novels years ago because as I'd reach the bottom of a page I'd realize I had no idea what I just read, but my mind had been around the world.
Among a million other things I could say about it, I can easily meander a short story into a very long one. I do like the hyper-focus part though. I can head into the woodworking shop on a Friday evening and not come out until Sunday afternoon. But I've built an entire table in the meantime - although I've used much more wood than someone without ADD may have used. However, if doing something I simply do not enjoy, the outcome is doomed from the start - if it ever gets finished at all.
More on point, it seems facts don't matter to Hillary.
FIRE is naturally going to seem like a right wing organization because the majority of people it has to defend are conservatives.
Do people think the ACLU is controlled by racist pedophiles?
matthew --
Since you are a person, do you?
br wrote: "I do like the hyper-focus part though."
Me too! It sometimes annoys my wife though! And I like that I cannot carry a grudge with a wheelbarrow, and how every new day feels new, and how I can think logically in pressure situations.
But I do NOT like losing my keys so much, losing EVERYTHING so much, it being so hard to do things I do not enjoy, when I get scattered and people cannot follow me, when I have to ask people I care about to repeat something because I was visiting lala land.
But all things considered, I have decided that those of us with ADD are alternatively attentioned!
Trey
Zelda - so you think you're so intellectually above us that you leave in a huff? Maybe you should try reading "How to win friends and influence people".
I think the internet has helped me to become more critical of issues - watching the back and forth of various arguments. I've also noticed that conservatives are usually not afraid to say something unpopular and it allows you to see an issue from a different perspective.
Thanks for sharing the letter. I enjoy Wikipedia but it definitely has a liberal slant. Fire is a great organization too, we need to start fighting against the tyranny so common at colleges. It is nice that they try to be as non-partisan as they can while strictly obeying the First Amendment.
@Matthew: "Do people think the ACLU is controlled by racist pedophiles?"
Of course not. But they have become little more than a left wing interest group.
For racism, see Benjamin Wright. Had those comments come from President Bush's pastor, the Internet would have been clogged with all the traffic and blog servers would have reached capacity for all the condemnations.
For pedophiles, see NAMBLA. I was disapponted to see speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi march with their president.
Everyone who understands the history of the ACLU knows that their dirty little secret is communism, not pedophilia!
Trey
This comment has been removed by the author.
TMink: "Everyone who understands the history of the ACLU knows that their dirty little secret is communism, not pedophilia!"
Seems there is a left wing advocacy group for every abomination, under the guise of "women's rights," "racial equality," "gay rights," etc.
Seems we need to cease this idiocy of confusing support for a good cause with support for groups that claim to advocate on the cause's behalf.
Trey:
Humor with the keys! I don't know how, but I manage to always know where my keys and wallet are, but my cell phone and check book can never be found. I have to call the phone to find it. Actually, it's a blessing for it to disappear for a couple days. Peace and quiet!
Among various things with ADD, there seems to be the empty vessel type and the full vessel type. The empty vessel type always has their radar on, looking for something to fill their active mind, or similar. They are always chasing rabbits. I think I'm perhaps a full vessel type (go ahead, put ONE MORE thing on my desk). To the "novice", they appear the same, but are "driven to distraction" (great book!) by totally different criteria.
Another fellow in my office is ADD. He and I understand each other, and fill in for each other. We both have to "get up and move around" many times during the day.
So we cover for each other when one has to do his walk about. I hate sitting behind a desk, and love it when I need to hit the road for a customer presentation or a project. I could have been a pioneer no problem back in those days.
Interesting metaphor with the full/empty vessel idea. I understand the point. I wonder if the empty vessel folks are seeking outside stimuli and the full vessels have plenty of internal stimuli. It is different from with or without hyperactivity I believe. This is the third time in a few days that I have heard that title, so I really gotta get it!
Always good talking to you my friend.
Trey
Slag: Fascinating. As a liberal blogger, I almost wrote a very similar post about conservatives. But, paradoxically, I hedged because I wanted to question my own assumptions and try to objectively determine whether or not liberals engaged in the same kind of anti-intellectual argumentation that I've observed on the other side.
I don't believe you, but thanks for playing along.
br549: I quit reading long novels years ago because as I'd reach the bottom of a page I'd realize I had no idea what I just read, but my mind had been around the world.
I enjoy reading, but sometimes I don't remember details or don't comprehend the passage correctly. Sometimes when I am taking a bath I forget if I washed an arm because my mind wanders to other things. It's interesting how my memory works because some things I can remember forever and other things I forget really quickly. I like to keep things organized and I also tend to stick to a routine, although I don't get upset if I do things out of order.
Trust: Roger Nash Balwin was a pacifist. In the 1930s Baldwin and the ACLU became linked to the Popular Front movement, which was engendered by Stalin to strengthen the Communist Party by allowing it to make common cause with socialists and other leftist groups. Baldwin himself made two trips to the Soviet Union, and in 1928 published a book entitled Liberty Under the Soviets, which contained effusive praise for the USSR.
I've noticed many, though certainly not all, conservative bloggers have a huge chip on their shoulders about intellectual acumen.
A favorite theme seems to be that their ideas aren't popular in the news media or academia.
Why does it not occur to conservatives that their failure to promote their ideas in academia and media might have something to do with flaws in those ideas?
You never hear that, though. Instead, I just see endless whining. Ohhh, the media are against us. Ohhh, the universities are against us.
Why can't conservatives accept responsibility for their failure to promote their ideas?
I actually believe that conservatives do an excellent job of promoting their ideas and, for the most part, the mainstream media is skews conservative on economics and geopolitics and liberal on social issues, arts and culture.
By the way, I make he same criticism of liberals who bellyache about the media being against them.
Wingnuts on both sides think the media is biased because THEY have a distorted view of where they center is. They spend their days and nights marinating in right-wing or left-wing commentary, rhetoric and polemic, so, surprise surprise, straight news comes off as "biased."
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