5 ms·

Just as an anecdote, met a recent state school grad who said he arrived on campus as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, tried to get into campus activism, and his fell

Just as an anecdote, met a recent state school grad who said he arrived on campus as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, tried to get into campus activism, and his fellow activists and teachers scared him so much that he's now not sure where he stands politically. Obviously I can't verify this, but for example he had a professor who actively taught that nations are a completely artificial social construct, and as such all immigration policies of any sort are illegitimate and harmful. France was brought up as a particular example. Also, this view point was not up for classroom debate -- you would get a bad grade if you deviated from this in homework essays. I think true liberalism is not just having a general set of 'progressive' values, but also being open to dissenting opinions and facing them honestly and openly. That doesn't mean agreeing with those opinions, but it does mean being exposed to them and debating them. What we see on campuses today doesn't sound like liberalism to me, but a reactionary movement that aims to protect an orthodoxy composed of generally liberal viewpoints not by engaging in debate, but by preemptively shaming and denouncing anyone who disagrees. Even if you believe liberal viewpoints are generally correct, nobody has a total monopoly on Truth.

jrjririr828283 9y ago
That’s a lot of description about campuses in general based upon one anecdote As a counter anecdote, a small campus I worked at in rural Pacific Northwest, a liberal bastion right? This campus was swarming with traditional values students who want to strike down gay marriage and cut all taxes And I found them much less open to being reasoned with than extreme liberals who think nation states are social constructs (since they don’t exist in physics, they kind of are human social constructs? Not judging them, just pointing out a potential point of reference for viewing them that seems valid)
- SamReidHughes 9y ago
  If something's morally wrong, you can't "reason" for or against it. Like, God says so, end of discussion. The only way to attack that stance is to break their faith.
klank 9y ago
> nations are a completely artificial social construct But if nations aren't simply social constructs, what are they? Is it the word "artificial" that is so surprising? Maybe I have more fringe beliefs than I thought I did.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- CJefferson 9y ago
  I think you have to continue to the second part of that sentence.
- defen 9y ago
  > if nations aren't simply social constructs, what are they? A Schelling point for coordinated actions by large groups of people, organized around ethnic, cultural, and/or linguistic grounds?
  - klank 9y ago
    Had to look up "Schelling point", so apologies if I'm not fully grasping what you mean by it. However, "organized around ethnic, cultural, and/or linguistic grounds" seems like another way of saying "social construct". If you were to compare and contrast what you suggest with a social construct how would they be different?
    - defen 9y ago
      Too often I see people argue "X is a social construct" as a way of arguing that X "doesn't exist", or that people who believe in it have a kind of false consciousness. I'm trying to show why people believe in it. Yes, it's a social construct; but that doesn't mean it's worthless - "money" is also a social construct: it only has value because other people think it has value. The nation appears to be the largest stable unit of organization humans are capable of, at present at least. The history of the world has shown that Empires don't last too long these days.
- 9y ago
amarkov 9y ago
> Obviously I can't verify this, but for example he had a professor who actively taught that nations are a completely artificial social construct, and as such all immigration policies of any sort are illegitimate and harmful. But that's a very mainstream position in economics, with much stronger arguments behind it than ideological purity. And it's typically supported by libertarians more than progressives, since the arguments are weakened by strong government-provided social services. This is what I worry about, when I hear people complain that their views aren't tolerated on campus. Are they really being shut down by intolerant professors who won't accept dissent? Or are they dismissing ideas they don't immediately find reasonable as far-left propaganda and refusing to listen?
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  But that's a very mainstream position in economics, with much stronger arguments behind it than ideological purity. What mainstream economists believe all immigration policies are illegitimate and harmful? Not being snarky. That would be considered a fairly ideological stance in most other fields. I've never heard that expressed in political science (some overlap with economics) from anyone but people on HN and Reddit.
  - michaelbuckbee 9y ago
    Yeah, it's just impossible to know how biased this interpretation or the initial statements from the professor were. Lots of things like these are discussed in the same way as physics professors say: "Imagine an infinite frictionless plane" - that it's a model for thinking about concepts and not a policy plan. Imagine a completely borderless world where the only goal is literally economic efficiency - capital and labor are able to migrate freely anywhere and anything less is harmful in a strictly economic sense. Practically, that's a bad idea for lots of reasons (like it might be economically efficient for someone to murder me, but I'd find it rather inconvenient) - so maybe some rules about passage of criminals and you can go on from there.
  - camgunz 9y ago
    It's essentially a weird labor market protectionism policy, and really no economist argues protectionism is good.
pavlov 9y ago
At least in the case of France, the point seems valid, and it's perhaps opposite of what you're assuming. The modern French nation is actually a left-wing construct -- an intentional product of the French Revolution. The Kingdom of France was not really a unified nation-state as we understand them today. There were multiple languages and a rich spectrum of local identities. French subjects were not necessarily French-speaking: their native tongue could just as well be Provençal, Italian or something else, and the King didn't really care. The Revolution triggered local counter-revolutions of people who didn't necessarily think themselves as French in the sense that the new government in Paris wanted them to. (The War in the Vendée was a particularly bloody local war even by Revolution standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vendée https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vendée) To counter the insurgencies and establish their new order, the Revolutionary authorities set about to explicitly design what a French citizen should be. The predominance of the French language was one element of this.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Napoleon (whose political views were across the board, but fairly right-wing) had more say about establishing the French state than any of the revolutionaries that had power before him. The Code Napoleon, for example.
matthewowen 9y ago
Liberal != left. The hard left (for want of a better term) don't describe themselves as liberals and are generally critical of liberalism. Liberal is largely a term of the soft left / centrists.
irhd 9y ago
> Obviously I can't verify this, but you'll post it anyway, because that's always the case with these stories. > I think true liberalism is not just having a general set of 'progressive' values, but also being open to dissenting opinions and facing them honestly and openly. I don't agree with, for example, shouting down Jordan Peterson over his original argument. I also don't agree that we need to give any platform or voice to the multitude of people intent on spreading hateful, violent, ideas.
jeffrom 9y ago
Perhaps a more reasonable explanation is that the student signed up for a class which covered political theories including a critique of national borders, and the student dismissed it, and therefore got a bad grade. Anecdotally, I was a political science major and there are always a few loud people who came to argue and not learn.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>France was brought up as a particular example. Also, this view point was not up for classroom debate -- you would get a bad grade if you deviated from this in homework essays. Where I went to school there were classes that counted for a good number of gen-eds but didn't have onerous pre-reqs. They were all terrible classes were like this. It was like they were daring all the engineering students to take a class on extremist feminism and not argue.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Nations are artificial constructs, I’m not sure how anyone could argue against that. Immigration controls are part of a “got mine, screw you” tribalism mentality that, in contrast, is quite natural. Even chimps in the wild have been observed to take anti immigration stances.
AndrewDucker 9y ago
What else could nations be other than an artificial construct. I'm baffled as to what else they could be.

jrjririr828283 9y ago

That’s a lot of description about campuses in general based upon one anecdote As a counter anecdote, a small campus I worked at in rural Pacific Northwest, a liberal bastion right? This campus was swarming with traditional values students who want to strike down gay marriage and cut all taxes And I found them much less open to being reasoned with than extreme liberals who think nation states are social constructs (since they don’t exist in physics, they kind of are human social constructs? Not judging them, just pointing out a potential point of reference for viewing them that seems valid)

SamReidHughes 9y ago
If something's morally wrong, you can't "reason" for or against it. Like, God says so, end of discussion. The only way to attack that stance is to break their faith.

klank 9y ago

> nations are a completely artificial social construct But if nations aren't simply social constructs, what are they? Is it the word "artificial" that is so surprising? Maybe I have more fringe beliefs than I thought I did.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
CJefferson 9y ago
I think you have to continue to the second part of that sentence.
defen 9y ago
> if nations aren't simply social constructs, what are they? A Schelling point for coordinated actions by large groups of people, organized around ethnic, cultural, and/or linguistic grounds?
- klank 9y ago
  Had to look up "Schelling point", so apologies if I'm not fully grasping what you mean by it. However, "organized around ethnic, cultural, and/or linguistic grounds" seems like another way of saying "social construct". If you were to compare and contrast what you suggest with a social construct how would they be different?
  - defen 9y ago
    Too often I see people argue "X is a social construct" as a way of arguing that X "doesn't exist", or that people who believe in it have a kind of false consciousness. I'm trying to show why people believe in it. Yes, it's a social construct; but that doesn't mean it's worthless - "money" is also a social construct: it only has value because other people think it has value. The nation appears to be the largest stable unit of organization humans are capable of, at present at least. The history of the world has shown that Empires don't last too long these days.
9y ago

amarkov 9y ago

> Obviously I can't verify this, but for example he had a professor who actively taught that nations are a completely artificial social construct, and as such all immigration policies of any sort are illegitimate and harmful. But that's a very mainstream position in economics, with much stronger arguments behind it than ideological purity. And it's typically supported by libertarians more than progressives, since the arguments are weakened by strong government-provided social services. This is what I worry about, when I hear people complain that their views aren't tolerated on campus. Are they really being shut down by intolerant professors who won't accept dissent? Or are they dismissing ideas they don't immediately find reasonable as far-left propaganda and refusing to listen?

aaron-lebo 9y ago
But that's a very mainstream position in economics, with much stronger arguments behind it than ideological purity. What mainstream economists believe all immigration policies are illegitimate and harmful? Not being snarky. That would be considered a fairly ideological stance in most other fields. I've never heard that expressed in political science (some overlap with economics) from anyone but people on HN and Reddit.
- michaelbuckbee 9y ago
  Yeah, it's just impossible to know how biased this interpretation or the initial statements from the professor were. Lots of things like these are discussed in the same way as physics professors say: "Imagine an infinite frictionless plane" - that it's a model for thinking about concepts and not a policy plan. Imagine a completely borderless world where the only goal is literally economic efficiency - capital and labor are able to migrate freely anywhere and anything less is harmful in a strictly economic sense. Practically, that's a bad idea for lots of reasons (like it might be economically efficient for someone to murder me, but I'd find it rather inconvenient) - so maybe some rules about passage of criminals and you can go on from there.
- camgunz 9y ago
  It's essentially a weird labor market protectionism policy, and really no economist argues protectionism is good.

pavlov 9y ago

At least in the case of France, the point seems valid, and it's perhaps opposite of what you're assuming. The modern French nation is actually a left-wing construct -- an intentional product of the French Revolution. The Kingdom of France was not really a unified nation-state as we understand them today. There were multiple languages and a rich spectrum of local identities. French subjects were not necessarily French-speaking: their native tongue could just as well be Provençal, Italian or something else, and the King didn't really care. The Revolution triggered local counter-revolutions of people who didn't necessarily think themselves as French in the sense that the new government in Paris wanted them to. (The War in the Vendée was a particularly bloody local war even by Revolution standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vendée https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vendée) To counter the insurgencies and establish their new order, the Revolutionary authorities set about to explicitly design what a French citizen should be. The predominance of the French language was one element of this.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
Napoleon (whose political views were across the board, but fairly right-wing) had more say about establishing the French state than any of the revolutionaries that had power before him. The Code Napoleon, for example.

matthewowen 9y ago

Liberal != left. The hard left (for want of a better term) don't describe themselves as liberals and are generally critical of liberalism. Liberal is largely a term of the soft left / centrists.

irhd 9y ago

> Obviously I can't verify this, but you'll post it anyway, because that's always the case with these stories. > I think true liberalism is not just having a general set of 'progressive' values, but also being open to dissenting opinions and facing them honestly and openly. I don't agree with, for example, shouting down Jordan Peterson over his original argument. I also don't agree that we need to give any platform or voice to the multitude of people intent on spreading hateful, violent, ideas.

jeffrom 9y ago

Perhaps a more reasonable explanation is that the student signed up for a class which covered political theories including a critique of national borders, and the student dismissed it, and therefore got a bad grade. Anecdotally, I was a political science major and there are always a few loud people who came to argue and not learn.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

>France was brought up as a particular example. Also, this view point was not up for classroom debate -- you would get a bad grade if you deviated from this in homework essays. Where I went to school there were classes that counted for a good number of gen-eds but didn't have onerous pre-reqs. They were all terrible classes were like this. It was like they were daring all the engineering students to take a class on extremist feminism and not argue.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

Nations are artificial constructs, I’m not sure how anyone could argue against that. Immigration controls are part of a “got mine, screw you” tribalism mentality that, in contrast, is quite natural. Even chimps in the wild have been observed to take anti immigration stances.

AndrewDucker 9y ago

What else could nations be other than an artificial construct. I'm baffled as to what else they could be.