"I am not a Conservative..."
Yes, but I am, at least I am a right-leaning libertarian which is adequately different from liberal dogma that it counts as Conservative. Actually, anyone who does not toe the liberal line is considered a Conservative by some of these open-minded academics. Anyway, I went to yet another panel at the law conference I am attending in Florida and this time it was on the Fourth Amendment (search and seizure). One of the law professors was discussing an example of the Fourth Amendment and used a case which must have been rather conservative in its final decision.
He had to let the audience know, "I am not a Conservative" before discussing the decision, I guess just to make sure his colleagues knew he was in "their tribe." Another panelist was discussing another court case and had to make sure that everyone knew "this was not exactly a Conservative court" though apparently, they had reached a "conservative" decision.
I looked around the room at the law professors in the audience and wondered if any of them were conservative. I wondered what they thought of how these professors said the word conservative, as if they were saying something almost sinful. But most of all, I wondered what kind of hostile environment these paragons of diversity were creating for their students who do not have the safety of tenure to help them navigate the negative image these professors seemed to have of the conservatives who (gasp) may be attending their classes. Or worse yet, I wonder how many conservatives avoid the academic world altogether because of the hostility toward their political views. Law schools are better than most in allowing for different politics but if this is the most tolerant of the academic world, how intolerant are other graduate schools and their professors? I shudder to think about it.
He had to let the audience know, "I am not a Conservative" before discussing the decision, I guess just to make sure his colleagues knew he was in "their tribe." Another panelist was discussing another court case and had to make sure that everyone knew "this was not exactly a Conservative court" though apparently, they had reached a "conservative" decision.
I looked around the room at the law professors in the audience and wondered if any of them were conservative. I wondered what they thought of how these professors said the word conservative, as if they were saying something almost sinful. But most of all, I wondered what kind of hostile environment these paragons of diversity were creating for their students who do not have the safety of tenure to help them navigate the negative image these professors seemed to have of the conservatives who (gasp) may be attending their classes. Or worse yet, I wonder how many conservatives avoid the academic world altogether because of the hostility toward their political views. Law schools are better than most in allowing for different politics but if this is the most tolerant of the academic world, how intolerant are other graduate schools and their professors? I shudder to think about it.
Labels: political correctness
posted by Helen at 5:22 PM
39 Comments:
Helen,
"I am not a Conservative"
this is the 'mans' way of saying "I am a liberal conformist". Men do not have to tell you their politics. It's obvious when they talk.
"How intolerant are other graduate schools and their professors? I shudder to think about it."
Um. You don't know? Never heard of the Duke Lacrosse Three? Many of their professors condemned them despite them being innocent. Marc Rudov has consistently asked universities to go speak to tell the young men the very real dangers of false rape allegations. He claims he has been consistently denied. Any 'thought' right of Mao Tse Tung is not allowed. One of Obamas staff, I don't recall her name, recently named Mao Tse Tung as one of her 'heros' because he 'got things done' at a school graduation. Yes. I believe the reported number was 70M dead. He really did get things done!
In universities/grad schools conformism and far left collectivist thinking is pervasive and any dissenting voice is conveniently gotten rid of. Many 'radical thinking' (ie conservative) young men find themselves on false rape allegations and tried by a 'tribunal' of the university as well as going through the police process. Young men are being denied their education to dumb them down.
I see a LOT of young men, 23-30, in my work. The UK educated ones are terribly 'dumbed down'. A young man of 28 (yes, with a degree and 5 years experience) recently told me "the facts of the matter are not relevant, all that matters is your opinion and how you feel about it". I asked him if he understood what he has said and he claimed yes. I then asked him if he understood how 'scary' that was and he said he could see no reason why that was 'scary'. So I asked him what his favourite TV show was. 'The Simpsons'. That is the 'new age man'. As dumbed down as a rock. An 'under achiever and proud of it'. Now. What do you think the unis are doing?
Did you know I have had law school graduates as well as practicing solicitors (ie. MINE) try and tell me legislation was superior to common law? When I prove to them it's not using THEIR Blacks Law dictionary do they say 'mea cupla'? Nope. They know they are lying. The 'law' is something I just spent about 600 hours learning a great deal about.
Yes, but I am, at least I am a right-leaning libertarian which is adequately different from liberal dogma that it counts as Conservative.
This is a good point. I've put up a couple of posts on a recent debate on the origins of liberalism that comes to an at least similar conclusion: The origins of contemporary liberalism and The problem with conservatism.
Helen,
You are absolutely right to shudder when thinking about the rest of graduate schools. I'm currently a Graduate Student in Physics at a reasonably well-known program and generally feel the need to keep my mouth shut regarding my Objectivist philosophic opinions. In fact, my adviser went so far as to declare how excited he was that the United States had finally turned the corner after the 2008 elections...during group meeting no less! From the look on his face and the way he spoke about it, I was certain that he believed that we all agreed with him completely.
To give some sense of the imbalance of political philosophy in such programs, I had a professor estimate (during a physics class!) that 9 out of 10 of his colleagues were of the liberal mindset. Given my experience in the years since that class, though, I think that ratio is a trifle...conservative.
Helen - you probably know about graduate schools in psychology. There was a heavy liberal bias in the clinical psych program at U.T. when I used to hang out there 40 years ago. It's hard to believe it would be any better now.
As I have said before, half way through an engineering degree I would love to get, I am not sure I can, in good conscience, continue. Beyond the school being tough enough, to have to deal with idiots and their idiotic notions and prejudice every day adds heavily to the difficulty. It is like climbing a mountain with some wienie who's wife probably wears his pants for him (maybe literally, many of them are just as freaky socially as politically) kicking my teeth just because he is an idiot.
So, one might say there might be a political element to at least one person really having to examine the worth of going on due to politics in "academia". I haven't checked to local college, though I have heard it is slightly more conservative here than the one I went to last. Who knows though.
The only schools that offer some hope of being conservative, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, are engineering colleges. Those where the faculty are regularly in contact with industry, particularly if they come and go between industry and academia, tend to be quite conservative. This is not true for schools where the faculty have little or no exposure to actual industry.
The contact with industry, with the constant demands for schedules, the need to produce an acceptable product at an acceptable price, the concerns for safety, etc. all of these things make engineers, and engineering faculty very conservative people. The focus is on what is possible, what will work, what can actually be accomplished as opposed to imaginary theory of what would be nice. The continuing effects of economic reality are extremely important in all of this, something of which people in liberal arts and humanities often seem to be unaware.
Dr D. brings up a good point.
It is only under the removal from, or refusal to witness, reality that allows the liberal mindset to fester.
Take these liberal idiots and place them next to someone who does work that really matters* and you'll watch those workers laugh at the ridiculous ideas that the liberals have. You'll watch the liberals shrink away from the harsh dose of reality they will face.
* Work that matters is work which our survival depends on. People who make food. People who process and clean water. People who are the boots on the ground in the military protecting our borders.
It is my sincere belief that society starts to sicken when the average person forgets where their food comes from.
It is my sincere belief that society starts to sicken when the average person forgets where their food comes from.
Unfortunately, the average person in the U.S. has no clue.
Demonspawn,
correct...one class of 'work that matters' is work that sustains and protects life. Take a look. The people who are in the army, police forces, agriculture, building industry, electricity, water, transportation, steelmaking? Pretty much ALL the important jobs (read dangerous) in those industries are done by men. I loved the video of a female police officer holding a male police officers helmet as he crashed down a door. That's about how usefull women are as police officers. They make good helmet holders. LOL!!
The other sort of 'work that matters' is where a mistake might cost you your life. I used to work in a steelworks. There used to be one or two deaths a year. But when my gf at the time was on 'work experience' in the LIBRARY we managed to kill three guys in two weeks. She was shocked. Apparently she didn't know men got killed at work. So I took her down to the factory that I worked on the computer systems for. We produced all the flat plate steel consumed in Australia for things like pipelines, oil rigs, ship building etc. Her response was 'If I went to sleep and woke up here I would have thought I had died in my sleep and been bad in my life'. LOL! She never went where I worked on the coke ovens!
Women were, of course, completely absent from the dangerous areas of the steel works. We used to have the 'token women' sitting in the offices doing their nails and make up all day.
So...while working in the steelworks I was doing uni work. I barely learned anything useful at uni. It was pretty much a waste of time. I set records for non-attendence and getting good marks. Men should go into the workforce in the real world and learn their trade in the 'master-apprentice' relationship, in my opinion.
Helen,
a question that these so called 'liberals' never stop to ask about their 'progressive agenda' is this.
Progessing to what?
And they never ask who benefits from that 'progress'? They never stop to think about who is whipping up the 'progressive hysteria'. They never stop to ask 'is all progress good for us'? One thing I have noticed is that almost no-one asks questions any more. No-one is questioning 'the authorities'. No one askes 'Why is it so?' and 'Who benefits?'.
'Progressive' is the euphemism for "progressing the world to be a technotronic totalitarian surveilence society" that is going to make 1984 look like a picnic. Today we live in a society so surveiled Stalin would be licking his lips at the prospect. It is pushed by 'liberals' and 'progressives' to have ever more 'guvment protection'. Protection from who, exactly? These mythical 'terrorists'? That's a complete joke.
This is what passes for 'thinking' in 'liberal women'...one of whom is now prime minister of australia. Is it any wonder I rescinded my consent to be governed by bat-shit insane women like this?
http://whatmenthinkofwomen.blogspot.com/2010/07/julia-gillard-sexist-wolf-in-sheeps.html
"The AUS declared 1983 to be the International Year of the Lesbian.
It also adopted a policy on prostitution which said, in part: "Prostitution takes many forms and is not only the exchange of money for sex. Prostitution in marriage is the transaction of sex in return for love, security and house-keeping." (Quoted by Helen Trinca, The Australian, April 6, 1984, p.7)."
Yep. If a woman makes love or has sex with her husband just because he gives her love and security in return and she does the housework while he goes to work. That's prostitution according to the group Julia Gillard was president of apparently.
I wonder how many women actually LIKE being called whores just for making love or having sex with their husbands?
I wonder where in the US the majority of the people posting her live. I live in the Carolinas and I went to school here as well. There is no shortage of conservatives coming out of our universities, even the liberal ones.
As for engineers being more conservative than other professions, that's absurd. I'm an engineer and would likely be labeled a liberal by most here, even though I'm not. I'm a left leaning Libertarian. To paraphrase our host (whom I respect very much) "adequately different from conservative dogma that it counts as liberal". The engineers I interact with (many) seem to be be a pretty nice bell curve ranging from wing-nut rightie through rabid leftie.
When congress makes student loans dischargable, many of these profs will be flipping burgers the next year.
Well, whose fault is this? The conservatives. They are such women.
A suggestion: the next time this happens, get up, (off your lazy, faux polite conservative ass), and ask - "Well, what are you, then?". Don't give up till you get an answer. Make a HUGE scene. Make them call security.
Repeat as often as necessary.
I gave up on graduate school. I was trying for a meager degree really, a library science master's.
I landed a job with a branch of the CIA in a small library, and I naively attended a convention in D.C. on small libraries. I was in the atrium of the building and heard a roar of laughter from one of the conference rooms which had hundreds of librarians inside. I asked what was so funny, and apparently it was the speaker's sophomoric joke about Rush Limbaugh.
I quit my job and delusions of living peacefully with librarians, and became a network administrator.
Xiaoding, good point.
Just a few people speaking up and being disruptive would shatter the illusion that no one of differing opinions exists.
How long would the behavior persist if someone stood up and said, "That is d*mn rude, and I'm sitting here in the audience and apparently I'm supposed to just take the insult politely. That feels abusive to me."
"I am not a Conservative."
Kind of the craven opposite of "I am Sparticus."
Synova,
"Just a few people speaking up and being disruptive would shatter the illusion that no one of differing opinions exists."
That's so funny. Do you have any idea how many places I've been banned from for doing just that? Leftists, which are predominantly women, (and men who keep their testicles in their wifes purse like Obama) can't tolerate a dissenting opinion...especially when it is back up by facts and evidence. They are dumbed down 'group think' robots.
shouldn't that be "tow" the line.
Please erase my comment once you correct this.
From what I know about the history of the term conservative, I’m under the impression progressives popularized it… for pretty much this type of use (i.e., anything ‘bad’ and/or not ‘progressive). One of the major stepping stones towards its adoption was a progressive with doubts wrote a book called ‘rethinking conservatism’.
A couple examples or points:
Outside of a few countries, what we call conservatives in the US, UK, and Canada (but not Australia) is called ‘liberal’. While what we call liberal, is called social democrat, socialist, or leftist. So, instead of being a neo con (scumbag) I get called a neo liberal (scumbag) by most people outside the US. ;)
When I’m on left wing history sites reading biographies of famous leftists, this abuse of the term often comes up. About article about a random socialist who held some now un PC thought (such as being a racist) will say something like ‘so and so was a good progressive except for some conservative thoughts on such and such’… It’s just meant to be a term for anything bad. Then we wonder why the left hates their opponents so much.
The history of the use of the term ‘right wing’ in the US is very similar. It was popularized by the left. Really, very few ‘right wing’ Americans would fit in with actual right wingers in Europe. It also just means ‘bad’ when used by leftists.
Modern liberalism is groupthink. Any dissenting idea is "conservative" simply because there are no dissenting ideas in modern liberalism.
I don't understand how they can call themselves open minded. It really is very depressing to me.
SH,
"but not Australia".
In Australia the 'Liberal Party' is the supposed right leaning 'Conservatives'. It just shows you how they like to abuse the language to mess people up. Politicians are now regularly using such 'double-speak' that only those who know how to decode the 'doublespeak' really understand what they are saying. And when you do? It's real scary.
I've started to "come out" in social situations. In a friendly manner (well, except that time I baited the Greenpeace Activist, but he was really annoying. Him: Don't you care about the polar bears?! Me: Why should I care about an animal that would eat me? That was wrong. Very, very wrong...also unsafe, I'm a petite woman and he was a large man who turned out to have an anger management problem).
Seriously, half these people don't know any "conservatives" (or know they know us), and they don't know what we believe, or even that we're not a monolithic group who all believe one thing on all issues.
I've rarely been rejected for talking about the Laffer Curve, or explaining that Bjorn Lomborg is NOT a global warming denier, or pointing out in the lesser Drias (sp?) that the CO2 concentration went up higher much faster than it has lately and that the coral survived (check the stromata data -- much more accurate that the ice sample data).
In fact...I've converted people to the "dark side".
I wouldn't do it during class, or during a lecture, but after class in the hallways, or after the lecture during coffee break. That is the time to speak up!
...if we do, sooner or later these annoying "I'm not a conservative but..." statements will end.
@globalman Indeed. Feminists and their critiques never seem to notice on-the-job death rates.
@omegabit No, it's "toe the line". She's right. Probably derives from lining up for military inspection.
@HMT
As for engineers being more conservative than other professions, that's absurd. ... The engineers I interact with (many) seem to be be a pretty nice bell curve ranging from wing-nut rightie through rabid leftie.
I think you misunderstand, for you argue their point for them. Engineers do range -- probably in a Gaussian distribution -- across the political spectrum. Physics professors, as someone pointed out, are at least 90% liberal. Hardly a normal distribution.
Thus, engineers range across the political spectrum, but are also more conservative, on average (and median), than (say) physics professors. Or history, or sociology, and so on.
HolmesIV,
when your first job is in a steelworks with 21,000 MEN (and a small handful of women secretaries) working there? And you notice there are NO OLD MEN out of that 21,000? THEN you realise what it is to be a man in this world. Short lived.
It took me about 6 months to realise there were no old men about the place. So I naively asked where they all were. After all the steelworks had been going for a long time. The older guys (40s) just looked at me strange and told me 'they are all dead'.
Do todays women acknowledge that pretty much every building in Australia, the railway tracks, the reinforcement rods for the roads, the airports, the electricity towers, was ALL constructed with the steel made by my company? Do they acknowledge the sacrifice that thousands upon thousand of men made by dying prematurely to make that steel and build those things? No. They don't. Well Guess what? I saw those guys working. I saw the conditions they worked in.
No woman knows what a hard days work is. They talk of the family home being 'the comfortable concentration camp' and doing the vaccuming is 'work'! LOL!!! What a joke!!! I can tell you this. Working on a coke oven or on the floor of an open hearth furnace? Working in a coal mine! (I've been in one of them too) THAT is work. I worked on coke ovens. Very dangerous job. It taught me good and proper to study computing like crazy.
Funny how people are so often afraid to discuss an idea on its own merits. Why would anyone feel the need to add a disclaimer concerning their soci0-political views0 when beginning a discussion? Cowardice.
Your previous post asked what is courage. This is an excellent example of the lack of it. The speaker feels the need to garner as much approval and support from the audience before discussing an idea which may be the least bit controversial.
Outside of a few countries, what we call conservatives in the US, UK, and Canada (but not Australia) is called ‘liberal’. While what we call liberal, is called social democrat, socialist, or leftist. So,
This is because of the old superficial truism "Americans never took to socialism".
When socialism rose to prominence, it was able to take root on the Continental soil under its own flag; the latter never really took to the Enlightenment notion of individual rights. However, America did, to a much greater degree than Europe, enough that otherwise apolitical Americans could detect the tyranny inherent in socialism, and so found it viscerally revolting.
Unfortunately, a gut feeling is not the equivalent of a conscious grasp of fact. To enter America, the Left had to find an opening. They did, in the philosophically ungrounded, and therefore undefended, American liberalism. Leftist ideas infiltrated this country via its penchant for European intellectual fads in the Reconstruction era, and signalled their arrival in the mainstream with the first American leftists: the so-called Progressives. When "liberal" Herbert Croly first derided the "night watchman" concept of government -- what had heretofore been understood as a *liberal* principle of government -- the end of genuine liberalism in America began.
From Herbert Croly on forward, the Left co-opted liberalism from within, jettisoning its Enlightenment elements in favor of socialist ones, all while retaining the label. The rise of the hippies in the 1960's signalled the completion of this process.
That is why liberalism still refers to the shadow of Enlightenment ideas elsewhere, but means socialism here. Sadly, that old truism nowadays only refers to openly identified socialism.
Seerak,
um...are you not aware that the USA has been as 'socialist' as russia since 1933? With the introduction of your central bank in 1913, the bankruptcy of the USA in 1933 and the introduction of 'social welfare' the USA became a totally socialist country. Then they spray painted a thin veneer of 'capitalism' over the top which is enough to fool most people.
G. Edward Griffins 600+ page book called 'The Creature from Jeckyll Island' gives an excellent treatise on this topic. You might also wish to watch the three hour movie called 'the money masters' made in 1997 I believe.
The USA today runs all 10 fundamental tennants of the 'communist manifesto'. The USA today is as 'communist' as russia ever was. Many people who know what is going on are calling it the USSA. Ditto for the E-SS-U.
I am considered a conservative by liberals. But there is a problem in my saying "I am a conservative" because at that point my argument will not be with liberals, but with conservatives.
Well, I'm currently in grad school, and I've managed to sidestep the whole thing by doing an online course (master's in education teacher prep program, to prepare non-teachers for teaching). Yes, I'm going into the belly of the beast, prepared to start sowing seeds of discord among some unlucky middle- or high-school faculty and student body.
Anyway, while I can definitely see the signs of liberal slant in the reading assignments and the projects we do (not to mention the message board posts) it's much easier to take when you have as long as you need to remind yourself of what you're dealing with before you say/write/do something you'll regret.
I'm actually enjoying the program immensely, and don't really see why anybody would go to a brick-and-mortar school anymore, unless they were looking to party.
Law schools are better than most in allowing for different politics
They are? That's certainly not Stephen Bainbridge's experience.
As I have said before, half way through an engineering degree I would love to get, I am not sure I can, in good conscience, continue.
Hang in there. Real engineers as a group are heavily into the libertarian/conservative mind set. And more libertarian than conservative.
Once you get into the real world you will feel right at home.
So is there any question left, in anyone's mind, about why the left wants guns banned?
Is there any question left, in anyone's mind, about whether or not each individual citizen should, have guns in their own home?
Respectfully, I must disagree with your statement that "[l]aw schools are better than most in allowing for different politics." Law schools make undergraduate school efforts at leftist inculcation look amateurish. In fact, Obama's Justice Department is a mirror of most law schools today. The academic emphasis is on using the courts for "social justice" goals. When I was in law school, my school actually sponsored a "Grief Support Group" for those disturbed by the Rodnay King verdict. The leftist leanings of law schools are particularly disturbing given the disproportionate influence of attorneys on political policy in our society today.
My guess is that it also has something to do with the general leanings of the area of the country in which you live.
I've lived in the "Bible belt" for the past 25 years. Very conservative. Given guest lectures as Law Schools (2). Very conservative mindset. Completed a grad degree in Experimental Psych (not clinical). Very conservative mindset. Worked in systems engineering for over two decades. Very conservative colleagues.
Now -- try and label me. Equality-feminist (for 35 years!), but not gender-feminist. Proudly voted for Reagan twice and wish we could have another president like him. Proudly voted for Ron Paul in the last election. I was the first woman hired in many of my work domains - including those that initially refused to hire me because they thought I wasn't physically up to the labor. I was.
Straight (not even sorta bi-), but very very open-minded toward people of all sexual orientations. Strongly support gay marriage. Have spent hours of my personal time and my own money to lobby for change in the family code in my state to make divorce more equitable for fathers (more shared parenting, less onerous child support). Would rather read the New Yorker than listen to Glenn Beck (actually, I'd rather have my fingernails pulled out than listen to Glenn Beck).
If being "conservative" means get the federal government out of my life, let me solve my own problems and keep more of my hard-earned money, then call me a conservative all day long. If being "conservative" means I have to wave the Bible around (oh yeah, did I mention I'm an atheist -- but I'll wholeheartedly support anyone's right to worship their god in the manner of their beliefs), and hate gays and Mexicans, and shut my mind down, or go home and be a SAHM... ain't gonna happen.
I liked being a Republican a lot better before Jerry Falwell got ahold of my party. I think the Republicans would do well to consider opening up their ranks to more "conservatives" like me. We bring a lot of passion to the forum.
Just a heads up for you Dr. Helen - 2 of the comments dated August 4th from apparently far eastern readers, each have a link to sites you may not want to link to.
I have a small blog of my own, which was strangely attracting a number of oriental readers apparently - strange until I clicked on the links.
As an Objectivist/South Park conservative, I have no problem with the sites per se, although I do no want to actively promote them on my site. Check them out yourself.
Xiaoding,
Making a scene might or might not work. I have found a better technique is to ask a question as if you are just curious about what the speaker is saying or asking a question that is so broad, it is difficult to answer.
For example, I was once in a seminar where the speaker ( a forensic psychologist) stated that women were rarely violent and went on to speak about men. Sensing that he knew little about women and violence, I repeatedly raised my hand to point out and ask about female violence. "Given that women in studies have been shown to engage in over half of the reciprocal violence in a relationship, how do you come to the conclusion that women are not violent?" The speaker finally admitted that "female violence was not his area of expertise." I smiled, sat back and watched the audience's confidence in his talk dwindle.
As a graduate student for psychiatric nurse practitioner, I am the lone conservative in my class. In a health care policy class we had to present on the new health care bill; I was the only one against it.
Nursing preaches cultural diversity or the new speak is cultural competence, but don’t be diverse by being a Christian or a Conservative. Thank God I’m old enough to be a fighter; I can’t imagine how a younger person would be able to tolerate the abuse.
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