Category Archives: Politics: US

A study shows that a selected segment of the most highly educated and intelligent people, folks gifted with jobs that allow them to think deeply about the world, tend overwhelmingly to reject the Republican party. Is the rejection of the GOP by professors at California's two leading universities just maybe a sign that Republican ideas don't stand up to sustained scrutiny? No, it seems that this hypothesis isn't even on the table. Instead, it's presumptively a 'Conspiracy of Intellectual Orthodoxy'—if you're a Republican anyway. Seems to me the data is in fact utterly silent as to causes, meaning we should ask ourselves what is more likely.

(Incidentally, given the authors' tendentious manner of introducing the results, the study relied on should be viewed as presumptively suspect. Anyone who introduces a study of faculty living in California by comparing their political party registrations to the national electoral vote is someone who doesn't understand comparing like with like or who is consciously trying to bamboozle with statistics. I understand that the California state party registration patterns are not as skewed as the ones asserted for Berkeley and Standford, but if we're going to do serious work, let's do it seriously, and compare to people similarly situated geographically and by educational and financial status.)

Update: See also Intellectual Diversity at Stanford for more shocking news about narrow-mindedness ruling the halls of academe:

…my preliminary research has discovered some even more shocking facts. I have found that only 1% of Stanford professors believe in telepathy (defined as “communication between minds without using the traditional five senses”), compared with 36% of the general population. And less than half a percent believe “people on this earth are sometimes possessed by the devil”, compared with 49% of those outside the ivory tower. And while 25% of Americans believe in astrology (“the position of the stars and planets can affect people’s lives”), I could only find one Stanford professor who would agree. (All numbers are from mainstream polls, as reported by Sokal.)

This dreadful lack of intellectual diversity is a serious threat to our nation’s youth, who are quietly being propagandized by anti-astrology radicals instead of educated with different points of view. Were I to discover that there were no blacks on the Stanford faculty, the Politically Correct community would be all up in arms. But they have no problem squeezing out prospective faculty members whose views they disagree with.

I have no particular reason to think he'd be a good Senator, should he ever choose to run, but Al Franken does have a way with words:

They don't get it. We love America in a different way. You see, they love America the way a four-year-old loves her mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a four-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad, and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world.

From Chapter Five of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.

(via The Liquid List)

David Neiwert, aka Orcinus has been turning over rocks and finding ugly things crawl out. The latest example in a depressingly long series of posts is hinterlands of Idaho and Montana, where it seems “eliminationist” rhetoric is getting a strong foothold.

I've been talking for some time about the course that eliminationist rhetoric on the right would eventually take by the force of its own nature: pretty soon we'd go from talking about liberals as traitors to overtly wishing for violence to be visited upon them and discussing locking them up, followed in due course by such violence and incarceration becoming a reality.

Well, it is now becoming a commonly spoken sentiment on the right to wish for violence against liberals and to simultaneously suggest they and all “traitors” (including Muslim Americans) should be locked away. We're firmly into Phase II now.

I would like to assure you — and myself — that Mr. Neiwert is some sort of alarmist crank, and that the attitudes he describes cannot spread.

But I can't do that.

Lots of people I know are forwarding me emails about various forms of protest centering on the high cost of the planned Bush inauguration.

I think these complaints, while very well-meaning, and fairly well-taken, are not going to have much traction.

There's no doubt that the inauguration preparations are over the top. The idea of closing off a huge part of downtown DC, not to mention the idea of trying first to stick one of the poorest cities in the US with the bill, then deciding to raid the Homeland Security piggyback to pay so-called security costs (which include building bleachers), is ugly.

But the fact is that the country likes a party. Carter didn't win many points for turning down the heat and wearing a sweater. Reagan won points for reigning regally. Bush isn't regal, but unless it's true that 9/11 changed more than the way in which we justify pointless wars and blank checks to federal contractors, I expect relatively few people will get on board this bandwagon…and those cheering the party will see it largely as sour grapes.

So, sorry friends, good luck, and thanks for thinking of me, but I'm going to keep worrying about casualties in Iraq (soldiers, civilians, our money, their infrastructure, our claims to decency, and counting), the fight over social security, and the environment — which has me increasingly worried about both pollution and systemic, tragedy of the commons, issues such as overfishing and global warming. Oh, and nuclear proliferation. And gerrymandering. And election mismanagement and irregularities. And protecting anonymity and free speech. And, sigh, about twenty other things.

I am doing my bit to advance The Plan.

They don't call it 'the third rail of politics' for no reason, after all….