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I seem to recall running into a claim that the original idea of the republicans was that the government would be a check against coercion, be it physical, emoti
by digi_owl 8y ago
I seem to recall running into a claim that the original idea of the republicans was that the government would be a check against coercion, be it physical, emotional, economic, or otherwise.
- yosito 8y agoSeems the current Republican establishment is the exact opposite of that ideal.
- ythn 8y agoLibertarians are the new advocates for small government. Libertarians = Arch Linux (lean, mean, minimal) Everybody else = Windows or Mac (i.e. huge operating system that tries to protect users from everything under the sun)
- xd2024 8y agosnap Yep, this is going in my cringe compilation.
- pretendscholar 8y agoKeep /pol/ memes on /pol/.
- Facemelters 8y agoThis is what happens when engineers receive very little formal liberal arts education. Cringe.
- dqpb 8y agoMy experience with liberal arts education is that it teaches you how to talk and what to say, but not how to think.
- Zimahl 8y agoThat's the anti-college talking point that republicans like to preach to the uneducated masses. It's absolutely designed to devalue what is actually being taught in higher education, allow for the easy dismissal of soft sciences. And once you can dismiss soft sciences, you can certainly dismiss the hard sciences with guilt by association. I earned my CS degree from a liberal arts college and took my share of liberal arts classes. But the name doesn't directly infer a political slant - there isn't an indoctrination that the right would like to say happens. Certainly some departments will have slants to them (women's studies, african american studies, etc.) but that doesn't mean that the scientific method gets forgotten at the door. Research still gets done and still gets reviewed. Certainly moreso than what happens on Fox News.
- frockington 8y agoMajoring in a soft science is one of the least helpful things a human can do to themselves and society. As an engineer, sitting in on the required liberal arts classes felt like a seminar on group think and what aboutism
- megaman22 8y agoIt's not so bad if you stick to some of the harder, or at least more rigidly defined liberal arts areas. Philosophy, Classics, and History (if you pick your way carefully) can be among the less squishy. If you go back to things that are at least 100, 150 years old, but not so far back that written records no longer exist, you can avoid most of the worst excesses of critical theory and similar politicized stances.
- eli_gottlieb 8y agoYou know, there's a certain classist dismissal here of people who just plain did not attend university, let alone take "liberal arts classes" (someone please tell me what the normative value of my Chinese mythology course was!). How about we stop assuming the working class can't think for itself, eh?
- sctb 8y agoCringe away, but please don't comment that you did—it's not on topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html