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You can't be a leftist and support legacy admissions. You can be a right-liberal and support legacy admissions, but even the mildest mild-mild leftism would rej

You can't be a leftist and support legacy admissions. You can be a right-liberal and support legacy admissions, but even the mildest mild-mild leftism would reject that kind of thing.

kbelder 1y ago
And yet they don't.
- impossiblefork 1y ago
  Liberals are not leftists. They are not egalitarians and they are not really for social equality. Allowing universities legacy admissions is a position so far to the right that I don't think any political party anywhere outside of the US propagates for it. There isn't a social democrat in Denmark or something who has vaguely leftist view but who also believes that universities should admit people based on their parents having gone there.
  - philwelch 1y ago
    If anyone really favored social equality they would support abolishing the elite universities entirely. Anything short of that still produces an identifiable class of people who attended these institutions, and it’s the existence of that class in the first place rather than its partly hereditary nature that runs counter to social equality.
    - impossiblefork 1y ago
      Harvard-style elite universities, absolutely, and actual leftists do support abolishing them. CMU-style, or ETH-style or Independent University of Moscow-style elite universities are however probably an efficient use of resources.
philwelch 1y ago
If you look at the political tendencies of the elite universities that themselves practice legacy admissions, those tendencies are overwhelmingly to the left of the American political center. I know it’s popular to make a “no true Scotsman” argument against anyone to the right of Mao Zedong but it’s silly.
- impossiblefork 1y ago
  So by what definition of leftist thought could this possibly be okay? Wikipedia has one (ideologies that seek social equality and egalitarianism), which this is clearly incompatible with. It's certainly unacceptable to socialists, communists, anarchists, syndicalists or social democrats. Liberals are not leftists. Liberals are mostly inviolable-property + free-trade type people.
  - philwelch 1y ago
    Soviet Russia was not an egalitarian society, it was a brutal dictatorship governed by an effective ruling class of party members. Mainland China is the same. If that’s your standard of “leftism”, you’re drawing the line somewhere to the far left of any self-proclaimed communist party that has ever held power in any country. This is clearly absurd.
    - impossiblefork 1y ago
      So you're saying that Soviet Russia doesn't fit the Wikipedia definition of leftism. I don't see how that makes US university professors leftists. What definition of leftism are you using?
      - philwelch 1y ago
        You’re the commie version of those annoying right wingers who like to start semantic arguments that the Nazis weren’t really right wing. Leftism is an incoherent and false ideology fundamentally unsuited to the governance of human societies. Once you recognize that fact, the hypocrisy of actual leftists will cease to surprise you.

You can't be a leftist and support legacy admissions. You can be a right-liberal and support legacy admissions, but even the mildest mild-mild leftism would reject that kind of thing.

kbelder 1y ago

And yet they don't.

impossiblefork 1y ago
Liberals are not leftists. They are not egalitarians and they are not really for social equality. Allowing universities legacy admissions is a position so far to the right that I don't think any political party anywhere outside of the US propagates for it. There isn't a social democrat in Denmark or something who has vaguely leftist view but who also believes that universities should admit people based on their parents having gone there.
- philwelch 1y ago
  If anyone really favored social equality they would support abolishing the elite universities entirely. Anything short of that still produces an identifiable class of people who attended these institutions, and it’s the existence of that class in the first place rather than its partly hereditary nature that runs counter to social equality.
  - impossiblefork 1y ago
    Harvard-style elite universities, absolutely, and actual leftists do support abolishing them. CMU-style, or ETH-style or Independent University of Moscow-style elite universities are however probably an efficient use of resources.

philwelch 1y ago

If you look at the political tendencies of the elite universities that themselves practice legacy admissions, those tendencies are overwhelmingly to the left of the American political center. I know it’s popular to make a “no true Scotsman” argument against anyone to the right of Mao Zedong but it’s silly.

impossiblefork 1y ago
So by what definition of leftist thought could this possibly be okay? Wikipedia has one (ideologies that seek social equality and egalitarianism), which this is clearly incompatible with. It's certainly unacceptable to socialists, communists, anarchists, syndicalists or social democrats. Liberals are not leftists. Liberals are mostly inviolable-property + free-trade type people.
- philwelch 1y ago
  Soviet Russia was not an egalitarian society, it was a brutal dictatorship governed by an effective ruling class of party members. Mainland China is the same. If that’s your standard of “leftism”, you’re drawing the line somewhere to the far left of any self-proclaimed communist party that has ever held power in any country. This is clearly absurd.
  - impossiblefork 1y ago
    So you're saying that Soviet Russia doesn't fit the Wikipedia definition of leftism. I don't see how that makes US university professors leftists. What definition of leftism are you using?
    - philwelch 1y ago
      You’re the commie version of those annoying right wingers who like to start semantic arguments that the Nazis weren’t really right wing. Leftism is an incoherent and false ideology fundamentally unsuited to the governance of human societies. Once you recognize that fact, the hypocrisy of actual leftists will cease to surprise you.