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You don't have to "what if" it, people have already looked into it. In "The Coddling of the American Mind" they cite studies showing that universities are more

by hn8788 5y ago

You don't have to "what if" it, people have already looked into it. In "The Coddling of the American Mind" they cite studies showing that universities are more left-leaning than they've ever been.

tstrimple 5y ago
What if that's because "right-leaning" information is truly wrong? What if global warming is real and a real threat and being caused by human activity? What if cutting taxes doesn't pay for itself? What if abstinence only education really does lead to more pregnancies and abortions? What if LGBT people really should be able to get married? What if running around encouraging other people not to get vaccinated and take basic precautions to prevent the spread of a pandemic really does lead to more infections and deaths? There's not a both sides to every story. Sometimes people and groups are simply wrong. That or there really is a global conspiracy between doctors, professors, journalists and corporate PR departments specifically to spread lies about conservatives...
- janeroe 5y ago
  > What if that's because "right-leaning" information is truly wrong? What if it's not? > What if cutting taxes doesn't pay for itself? If only we had some kind of experiments in the 20th century that showed what systems lead to impoverishment and hunger. Or better yet two centuries of scientific inquiries and refutations of crank economics on logical grounds. Like you know, Marxism, whose incoherency is shown by left, right, and center authors alike. Or imagine, we knew MMT is neither a theory nor modern but a reincarnation of some disproved ideas of old.
  - tstrimple 5y ago
    Here's study analyzing 20 years of tax cuts and is pretty conclusive in that they never pay for themselves. https://www.crfb.org/papers/tax-cuts-dont-pay-themselves https://www.crfb.org/papers/tax-cuts-dont-pay-themselves I guess this is part of the "Marxist" academia that can't be trusted because they just have it out for conservative thought?
    - janeroe 5y ago
      Oh, I thought your "tax cuts not paying for themselves" is a figure of speech. And that's a literal quote. What is it supposed to mean? Like if you steal less from the people, you get less if that's your only source?
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        "Tax cuts pay for themselves" has been the conservative justification for how cutting taxes on the wealthy is fiscally conservative and actually benefits everyone, for ~4 decades.
        janeroe 5y ago
        I'm not an American so have no this Democrats vs. Republicans dichotomy, cheering or deriding the very same decisions depending on whether they're coming from "our" or "their" people (as in "He's a Son of a Bitch, but he's OUR Son of A Bitch"). I can afford to be more consistent. What attracted my attention to your post specifically (knock at conservative values aside) is the mentioning of tax cuts as if that's something terribly wrong. It's not. The paper you've linked that allegedly is supposed to impress Americans, wouldn't anyone else. Authors' assumption for some reason (was it what Republicans promoted?) is that government doesn't have to be more thrifty and less wasteful. It reads: look, the government was just an inefficient juggernaut as usual, and the tax cuts put this behavior under risk. Insatiable appetites of governments aside, tax cuts do pay off. And not only economically, but also in terms of bringing greater justice and better satisfaction of all but communists.
      - jonathankoren 5y ago
        As an old person who actually remembers when George Bush (the dad) coined the term “voodoo economics” during the 1980 primary against Reagan, I’ll explain the central thesis to what backers call “supply side” economics. It’s basically the same logic as selling merchandise at low cost. How does the government make money? Volume! Seriously. The argument is that cutting taxes will spur economic growth that will grow the economy so much, that the loss in revenues will be made up by economic growth. i.e Tax cuts pay for themselves. There is actually ample evidence that this doesn’t actually work, or at least hasn’t worked in 40 years. (Diminishing returns and whatnot.) I’d go so far as to argue that some supporters of this policy even know this because it gave cover for their real goal of simply cutting social programs under the guise of “we can’t afford it”.
- whoooooo123 5y ago
  What if there are two genders?
rtpg 5y ago
Where’s the logic behind “left-leaning => wrong”? What was the baseline before? “Centrism = unbiased” is itself a whole category of propaganda that is also easily disproved by the fact that centrist positions depends on the country! Remember, an American centrist ‘s idea of foreign policy is to keep the drone strikes going, but leave the ground troops out. The mixing of “biased”,”left-leaning” and “objective/subjective” is probably part of the stuff a news literacy course will go into! The world isn’t nearly divided into two parts that happen to align with the American psyche!
somehnacct3757 5y ago
There's two ways to lean left. Do some leftward leaning, or stand still while your reference point ("the right") leans away. I personally think both of these have happened. I bristle at the inference that only one of them is taking place.
- lordloki 5y ago
  Except evidence has shown the the left has moved further left than the right has moved right. Both have moved but the left has moved further left in the US.
  - forz877 5y ago
    Evidence that isn't cited, just assumed as fact. This post is an excellent example of information to not trust.
  - alexilliamson 5y ago
    Except evidence says the opposite. I would start here. The right is driving polarization. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/solutions-to-political-polarization-in-america/confronting-asymmetric-polarization/3966003B2517E22BF288796AC4985F34 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/solutions-to-political-...
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      If we're talking about US politics, there's also the tendency of the right to cluster to a common narrative, whereas the left tends to be more tolerant of diverse narratives. It would seem unsurprising that the end result of this, upon pulling the "center" of each party towards its own extreme, is essentially what we've seen -- ~50% of conservatives now believe in vaccine/pandemic conspiracy theories, vs liberals support some extremists at the local level, but also continue to support centrists like Biden at the national level.
      - wolverine876 5y ago
        > It would seem unsurprising that the end result of this, upon pulling the "center" of each party towards its own extreme, is essentially what we've seen -- ~50% of conservatives now believe in vaccine/pandemic conspiracy theories, vs liberals support some extremists at the local level They wouldn't be pulled to extremes, they'd already be there. However, most research shows it's the right that's moved far. Look at Trumpism and compare that to prior conservative leaders, such as GW Bush, GHW Bush, Reagan, Ford .... Biden fits right in with Clinton and Obama. > liberals support some extremists at the local level What extremists? There are people farther left than Biden, but nobody trying to seize power from the people, letting a deadly pandemic spread for political reasons, backing arrest and brutality toward their political enemies, etc. It's not balanced; if Amy punches Bob, it's not even-handed to blame both of them. If Amy burns down the house, it's not even-handed to say 'we're all crazy'.
wolverine876 5y ago
> In "The Coddling of the American Mind" they cite studies showing that universities are more left-leaning than they've ever been. What do they mean by 'left-leaning'?: My professors might have been left-leaning, but I rarely knew their politics. The question is what the students are learning. Also, conservatives have moved far rightward, which might make others relatively more leftish. Also, reactionaries politicize lots of things, such as climate change. Education and research isn't affirmative action for conservatives - they need to prove their ideas. Climate change denial lacks the science behind it; it shouldn't be taught. That doesn't make climate change education biased toward liberals. How does the book address those issues? Also, why do you trust that book (an honest question - I haven't heard of it)?
- bopbeepboop 5y ago
  > Climate change denial lacks the science behind it; it shouldn't be taught. That doesn't make climate change education biased toward liberals. To paraphrase: “Our institution doesn’t believe this so our institution shouldn’t teach this!” Also, you’re making a false dichotomy: it’s possible that both conservatives and liberals misrepresent climate change. “Climate change education” often doesn’t have science behind it either — it’s fanciful projections from the most shocking numbers they found in an actual report, made into sausage through the citation grinder. That climate change denial shouldn’t be taught is also why the fanciful, extreme left wing form of “climate change education” we see in universities shouldn’t be taught. Teaching that fanciful view in universities is liberal bias, even if teaching denialism would also be wrong.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  > Also, conservatives have moved far rightward, which might make others relatively more leftish. I don't think this is true, I think the left-wing media has fixated increasingly on the far-right or exaggerating the extent to which individuals on the right are "far-right" which gives the impression that the right is drifting, but it's just the media changing how it represents the right. To be clear, the right is changing, but it's not perceptibly drifting to the right. > Also, reactionaries politicize lots of things, such as climate change. Education and research isn't affirmative action for conservatives - they need to prove their ideas. Climate change denial lacks the science behind it; it shouldn't be taught. That doesn't make climate change education biased toward liberals. 2 things: 1. We don't even need to invoke conservative beliefs (certainly we don't need to cherry-pick the most overtly anti-science of conservative beliefs), we can look at moderate liberal beliefs, like colorblind approaches to combatting racism which are equally vilified and actively suppressed. 2. If we're talking about "ideas competing in some marketplace" then why are the left so frequently resorting to cancellation of intellectuals rather than debate? E.g., consider all of the petitions to have professors fired or to have papers deleted from journals. And I'm not talking about dumb kids circulating petitions to have their professors fired, but university faculty circulating petitions to have their colleagues fired for ideological (not factual) transgressions. But every time we talk about this, left-wing folks pretend that the debate is whether or not to allow creationism or climate denial in the classroom. This seems transparently disingenuous to me.
kesselvon 5y ago
It's not surprising that universities are more left-leaning when the right has taken a stance against higher education and pushes anti-intellectualism for political gain. The right likes to push this idea of universities as brainwashing factories, but there's very little of that going on given that its usually a struggle to get everyone to do the assigned reading, let alone try to brainwash people.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  I flat out started dropping classes when I showed up and lecture was regurgitating the assigned reading. I understand some students are lazy. But that's what an F is for. Even in undergrad, I valued my time and tuition dollars more than that. As my father told a student who complained about a D in his course: "No, I didn't give you a D. You earned a D. I would have given you an F." (Went to GT and had family who taught undergrad and grad, so might have different perspective on expectations)
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    Was this a problem more frequently in some departments than others? For that matter, were they real profs or TAs?
- beaner 5y ago
  I dunno, I went to college. I've seen what it's like on the inside. Before I ever had political opinions it was pretty easy to see that people came out kind of brainless and all thinking the same things. It did not seem like an institution that really developed peoples' ability to think for themselves.
  - kesselvon 5y ago
    What you get out of college is entirely up to you.
    - willcipriano 5y ago
      The same is true of life but life doesn't require student loans.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
I hear this a lot, but I graduated from a US university and I never knew how any of my professors stood on political matters (and I was a hardcore conservative in college). Right-wingers tend to be upset that social sciences and the humanities exist as research topics and degree programs, mostly because they're not happy with study results that run counter to their beliefs.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  Which is also silly, because if they had conversations with those professors, they'd mostly find people with extremely nuanced, evidence-backed opinions. It doesn't take too long in research-land to appreciate that ideologies are merely abstractions; they're tools to help us understand and discuss the real world. The people with blind ideological faith are mostly uneducated (and perhaps undergrads), but the academics know how messy the world actually is and love to talk about the jagged, contradictory bits that don't line up with our current models of thought.

by hn8788 5y ago

You don't have to "what if" it, people have already looked into it. In "The Coddling of the American Mind" they cite studies showing that universities are more left-leaning than they've ever been.

tstrimple 5y ago

What if that's because "right-leaning" information is truly wrong? What if global warming is real and a real threat and being caused by human activity? What if cutting taxes doesn't pay for itself? What if abstinence only education really does lead to more pregnancies and abortions? What if LGBT people really should be able to get married? What if running around encouraging other people not to get vaccinated and take basic precautions to prevent the spread of a pandemic really does lead to more infections and deaths? There's not a both sides to every story. Sometimes people and groups are simply wrong. That or there really is a global conspiracy between doctors, professors, journalists and corporate PR departments specifically to spread lies about conservatives...

janeroe 5y ago
> What if that's because "right-leaning" information is truly wrong? What if it's not? > What if cutting taxes doesn't pay for itself? If only we had some kind of experiments in the 20th century that showed what systems lead to impoverishment and hunger. Or better yet two centuries of scientific inquiries and refutations of crank economics on logical grounds. Like you know, Marxism, whose incoherency is shown by left, right, and center authors alike. Or imagine, we knew MMT is neither a theory nor modern but a reincarnation of some disproved ideas of old.
- tstrimple 5y ago
  Here's study analyzing 20 years of tax cuts and is pretty conclusive in that they never pay for themselves. https://www.crfb.org/papers/tax-cuts-dont-pay-themselves https://www.crfb.org/papers/tax-cuts-dont-pay-themselves I guess this is part of the "Marxist" academia that can't be trusted because they just have it out for conservative thought?
  - janeroe 5y ago
    Oh, I thought your "tax cuts not paying for themselves" is a figure of speech. And that's a literal quote. What is it supposed to mean? Like if you steal less from the people, you get less if that's your only source?
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      "Tax cuts pay for themselves" has been the conservative justification for how cutting taxes on the wealthy is fiscally conservative and actually benefits everyone, for ~4 decades.
      - janeroe 5y ago
        I'm not an American so have no this Democrats vs. Republicans dichotomy, cheering or deriding the very same decisions depending on whether they're coming from "our" or "their" people (as in "He's a Son of a Bitch, but he's OUR Son of A Bitch"). I can afford to be more consistent. What attracted my attention to your post specifically (knock at conservative values aside) is the mentioning of tax cuts as if that's something terribly wrong. It's not. The paper you've linked that allegedly is supposed to impress Americans, wouldn't anyone else. Authors' assumption for some reason (was it what Republicans promoted?) is that government doesn't have to be more thrifty and less wasteful. It reads: look, the government was just an inefficient juggernaut as usual, and the tax cuts put this behavior under risk. Insatiable appetites of governments aside, tax cuts do pay off. And not only economically, but also in terms of bringing greater justice and better satisfaction of all but communists.
    - jonathankoren 5y ago
      As an old person who actually remembers when George Bush (the dad) coined the term “voodoo economics” during the 1980 primary against Reagan, I’ll explain the central thesis to what backers call “supply side” economics. It’s basically the same logic as selling merchandise at low cost. How does the government make money? Volume! Seriously. The argument is that cutting taxes will spur economic growth that will grow the economy so much, that the loss in revenues will be made up by economic growth. i.e Tax cuts pay for themselves. There is actually ample evidence that this doesn’t actually work, or at least hasn’t worked in 40 years. (Diminishing returns and whatnot.) I’d go so far as to argue that some supporters of this policy even know this because it gave cover for their real goal of simply cutting social programs under the guise of “we can’t afford it”.
whoooooo123 5y ago
What if there are two genders?

rtpg 5y ago

Where’s the logic behind “left-leaning => wrong”? What was the baseline before? “Centrism = unbiased” is itself a whole category of propaganda that is also easily disproved by the fact that centrist positions depends on the country! Remember, an American centrist ‘s idea of foreign policy is to keep the drone strikes going, but leave the ground troops out. The mixing of “biased”,”left-leaning” and “objective/subjective” is probably part of the stuff a news literacy course will go into! The world isn’t nearly divided into two parts that happen to align with the American psyche!

somehnacct3757 5y ago

There's two ways to lean left. Do some leftward leaning, or stand still while your reference point ("the right") leans away. I personally think both of these have happened. I bristle at the inference that only one of them is taking place.

lordloki 5y ago
Except evidence has shown the the left has moved further left than the right has moved right. Both have moved but the left has moved further left in the US.
- forz877 5y ago
  Evidence that isn't cited, just assumed as fact. This post is an excellent example of information to not trust.
- alexilliamson 5y ago
  Except evidence says the opposite. I would start here. The right is driving polarization. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/solutions-to-political-polarization-in-america/confronting-asymmetric-polarization/3966003B2517E22BF288796AC4985F34 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/solutions-to-political-...
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    If we're talking about US politics, there's also the tendency of the right to cluster to a common narrative, whereas the left tends to be more tolerant of diverse narratives. It would seem unsurprising that the end result of this, upon pulling the "center" of each party towards its own extreme, is essentially what we've seen -- ~50% of conservatives now believe in vaccine/pandemic conspiracy theories, vs liberals support some extremists at the local level, but also continue to support centrists like Biden at the national level.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > It would seem unsurprising that the end result of this, upon pulling the "center" of each party towards its own extreme, is essentially what we've seen -- ~50% of conservatives now believe in vaccine/pandemic conspiracy theories, vs liberals support some extremists at the local level They wouldn't be pulled to extremes, they'd already be there. However, most research shows it's the right that's moved far. Look at Trumpism and compare that to prior conservative leaders, such as GW Bush, GHW Bush, Reagan, Ford .... Biden fits right in with Clinton and Obama. > liberals support some extremists at the local level What extremists? There are people farther left than Biden, but nobody trying to seize power from the people, letting a deadly pandemic spread for political reasons, backing arrest and brutality toward their political enemies, etc. It's not balanced; if Amy punches Bob, it's not even-handed to blame both of them. If Amy burns down the house, it's not even-handed to say 'we're all crazy'.

wolverine876 5y ago

> In "The Coddling of the American Mind" they cite studies showing that universities are more left-leaning than they've ever been. What do they mean by 'left-leaning'?: My professors might have been left-leaning, but I rarely knew their politics. The question is what the students are learning. Also, conservatives have moved far rightward, which might make others relatively more leftish. Also, reactionaries politicize lots of things, such as climate change. Education and research isn't affirmative action for conservatives - they need to prove their ideas. Climate change denial lacks the science behind it; it shouldn't be taught. That doesn't make climate change education biased toward liberals. How does the book address those issues? Also, why do you trust that book (an honest question - I haven't heard of it)?

bopbeepboop 5y ago
> Climate change denial lacks the science behind it; it shouldn't be taught. That doesn't make climate change education biased toward liberals. To paraphrase: “Our institution doesn’t believe this so our institution shouldn’t teach this!” Also, you’re making a false dichotomy: it’s possible that both conservatives and liberals misrepresent climate change. “Climate change education” often doesn’t have science behind it either — it’s fanciful projections from the most shocking numbers they found in an actual report, made into sausage through the citation grinder. That climate change denial shouldn’t be taught is also why the fanciful, extreme left wing form of “climate change education” we see in universities shouldn’t be taught. Teaching that fanciful view in universities is liberal bias, even if teaching denialism would also be wrong.
throwaway894345 5y ago
> Also, conservatives have moved far rightward, which might make others relatively more leftish. I don't think this is true, I think the left-wing media has fixated increasingly on the far-right or exaggerating the extent to which individuals on the right are "far-right" which gives the impression that the right is drifting, but it's just the media changing how it represents the right. To be clear, the right is changing, but it's not perceptibly drifting to the right. > Also, reactionaries politicize lots of things, such as climate change. Education and research isn't affirmative action for conservatives - they need to prove their ideas. Climate change denial lacks the science behind it; it shouldn't be taught. That doesn't make climate change education biased toward liberals. 2 things: 1. We don't even need to invoke conservative beliefs (certainly we don't need to cherry-pick the most overtly anti-science of conservative beliefs), we can look at moderate liberal beliefs, like colorblind approaches to combatting racism which are equally vilified and actively suppressed. 2. If we're talking about "ideas competing in some marketplace" then why are the left so frequently resorting to cancellation of intellectuals rather than debate? E.g., consider all of the petitions to have professors fired or to have papers deleted from journals. And I'm not talking about dumb kids circulating petitions to have their professors fired, but university faculty circulating petitions to have their colleagues fired for ideological (not factual) transgressions. But every time we talk about this, left-wing folks pretend that the debate is whether or not to allow creationism or climate denial in the classroom. This seems transparently disingenuous to me.

kesselvon 5y ago

It's not surprising that universities are more left-leaning when the right has taken a stance against higher education and pushes anti-intellectualism for political gain. The right likes to push this idea of universities as brainwashing factories, but there's very little of that going on given that its usually a struggle to get everyone to do the assigned reading, let alone try to brainwash people.

ethbr0 5y ago
I flat out started dropping classes when I showed up and lecture was regurgitating the assigned reading. I understand some students are lazy. But that's what an F is for. Even in undergrad, I valued my time and tuition dollars more than that. As my father told a student who complained about a D in his course: "No, I didn't give you a D. You earned a D. I would have given you an F." (Went to GT and had family who taught undergrad and grad, so might have different perspective on expectations)
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  Was this a problem more frequently in some departments than others? For that matter, were they real profs or TAs?
beaner 5y ago
I dunno, I went to college. I've seen what it's like on the inside. Before I ever had political opinions it was pretty easy to see that people came out kind of brainless and all thinking the same things. It did not seem like an institution that really developed peoples' ability to think for themselves.
- kesselvon 5y ago
  What you get out of college is entirely up to you.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    The same is true of life but life doesn't require student loans.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

I hear this a lot, but I graduated from a US university and I never knew how any of my professors stood on political matters (and I was a hardcore conservative in college). Right-wingers tend to be upset that social sciences and the humanities exist as research topics and degree programs, mostly because they're not happy with study results that run counter to their beliefs.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
Which is also silly, because if they had conversations with those professors, they'd mostly find people with extremely nuanced, evidence-backed opinions. It doesn't take too long in research-land to appreciate that ideologies are merely abstractions; they're tools to help us understand and discuss the real world. The people with blind ideological faith are mostly uneducated (and perhaps undergrads), but the academics know how messy the world actually is and love to talk about the jagged, contradictory bits that don't line up with our current models of thought.