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The core fiction that enables the university to work is a dedication to 'truth' and progress through discussion. Safety and freedom is part of that bargain. Uni

The core fiction that enables the university to work is a dedication to 'truth' and progress through discussion. Safety and freedom is part of that bargain. Universities have failed on those accounts. That breaks down when there isn't open discussion on campus. Communists were jeered but essentially allowed on campus in the 60s and 70s, even at the height of the cold war. The left now holds a place of orthodoxy in the universities and power structures. Whether the 'right' can break it back into an enforced balance is yet to be seen. Until then, the central tie of an otherwise diverse institution will break down and break into fragments. Which would be a shame. The opposition needs to "live" somewhere!

whattheheckheck 7mo ago
[flagged]
- TimorousBestie 7mo ago
  To play devil’s advocate since I’ve been a little energetic in this thread already, I’ll go ahead and agree that they’re probably correct about single-income, two-parent homes having better outcomes for children. I disagree that it should always be the woman staying home (or always the same parent through the children’s adolescence, or that both parents should have different genders, or) but I think the premise is sound. They’re also objectively correct that women should, on average, be having children earlier (but wrong when they want it to be before the age of majority, or when they want to lower that age, or permit child marriage, or want to deny that couple sound sex education and medical care.)
  - jarjoura 7mo ago
    Who is "they" here? Having a single-income parent in a two-parent home was the norm for most of US history. It's also still the norm outside of the US. Where is the evidence that children are worse off because both parents work? Kids (5+) barely spend any time at home during a typical work day, so I'm not sure what "they" are correct about. How is it objectively correct that women should, on average, have children earlier? Sorry, but this is purely a subjective statement and women are free to agree or disagree with that statement. Having been raised by my grandparents, I personally believe the only secret for success is to show up for children, and love them and provide them a stable environment to thrive in. Everything else is just window dressing.
    - watwut 7mo ago
      > Having a single-income parent in a two-parent home was the norm for most of US history. You dont really have income and non income on a household farm. You have patriarch making decisions and everybody else working. This included slave owning farms where she had managing/organizing responsibilities. Also, women in lower classes needed income and did worked for it. They did not had professional occupations and they were responsible for children, so it was things that fit into those boundaries - low income non professional work. But it was not really done for funsies. Then again, kids as small as 5 were left to handle by themselves and older kids were supposed to contribute. It is really incomparable to being stay at home parent now, isolated and literally having nothing useful to do except existing and playing.
    - TimorousBestie 7mo ago
      > Who is "they" here? Sorry, I thought it was clear from the context that these are widely-held, American right-wing opinions that I happen to agree with. > How is it objectively correct that women should, on average, have children earlier? There are a few specific birth defects that are more common in younger mothers but most become much more common as the mother ages, and the overall risk of complication & death increases with maternal age. > Having been raised by my grandparents, I personally believe the only secret for success is to show up for children, and love them and provide them a stable environment to thrive in. Everything else is just window dressing. That’s a great sentiment but of little practical use in deciding policy.
      - jarjoura 7mo ago
        Ah, sorry, I guess I'm not sure what it is you're actually debating needs to be fixed. Are children being born today with more birth defects and we (society) now want to concern ourselves with the issue that if parents want to have children, they need to plan for it and start earlier? Is that what a supposed objective policy would try to address? Men also have a clock and birth defects are known to go up the older they are. So this can't be limited to women regardless of policy decisions. I'm also not sure there could be any actual conversative government policy that could fix what is ultimately a financial incentives problem. Lots of parents would start earlier if they were able to have things like home ownership and space to raise kids in, and education systems that don't skew towards needing upper middle class levels of access to. Any potential new idea with any realistic long term fix would end up looking quite progressive and in our current hostile environment become a no-go for any conservative political appointee.
  - mastermage 7mo ago
    Just to also play the devils advocate, why SHOULD women be having children earlier. Its very much a very personal choice in their own freedom. I don't think this should be a political take at all. In this decision there is nothing any Government should have a say in.
    - TimorousBestie 7mo ago
      > Just to also play the devils advocate, why SHOULD women be having children earlier. Lower prevalence of complications, lower risk of death, lower risk of birth defects. > Its very much a very personal choice in their own freedom. We don’t disagree. > I don't think this should be a political take at all. In this decision there is nothing any Government should have a say in. Unfortunately, Americans don’t live in that world. The government makes decisions that impact the health of pregnant mothers and children all the time.
    - hattmall 7mo ago
      To have a longer life with their children... It's not something government should regulate but it is something that government policy should incentivize.
      - superxpro12 7mo ago
        Children are only children for about 10 years.... then they turn into teenagers and adults. this is nonsense.
      - YCpedohaven 7mo ago
        > It's not something government should regulate but it is something that government policy should incentivize. Every time this comes up, there are numerous instances reported of welfare states in Europe, Asia, etc. trying this and it not working. The west, and especially the US is falling out of love with republicans and liberal democracy as they learn that some problems need to solved with an iron fist.
        mindslight 7mo ago
- rcbdev 7mo ago
  People like you really lost the plot on nuance.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
- paulddraper 7mo ago
  * Markets should be free * Theft should be punished * There should be educational choice A lot of this depends what you consider to be “right” wing.
  - watwut 7mo ago
    Neither of these is right wing value. They are right wing talking points right uses when it suits them and completely ignores when it does not suit them.
    - red-iron-pine 7mo ago
      to put a finer point on it, those points exist where they have vested interests in extracting value out of those fields. no large right wing doner wants a free market, they want their restrictions removed, and to have a monopoly to the fullest extent
  - mghackerlady 7mo ago
    Markets being completely free got us in this mess, and while sound on paper has so many potential ways to go wrong it should be controlled by the working class either directly or indirectly through voting Theft is a symptom, not a disease. Eliminate the disease and theft effectively disappears Educational choice deserves to be respected so long as it isn't being used to propagate objectively false information
    - AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
      > Markets being completely free got us in this mess, and while sound on paper has so many potential ways to go wrong it should be controlled by the working class either directly or indirectly through voting Is that what got us into this mess? (Which mess?) Take medical care, for instance. Is that a free market? Not really, no. I mean, there are clearly markets that can be too free. No, you can't put poison in food and call it "free market". You can't roll through the farmer's market with guns and take everybody's stuff and call it "free market". There is a level of regulation where markets work best, and they work worse with either too much or too little regulation. But something like the medical market... most people can't shop around for insurance; their employer works with only one insurer. Most people can't shop around freely for doctors; they have to go to someone within their plan. And so on. That's not even close to a free market. > Theft is a symptom, not a disease. Eliminate the disease and theft effectively disappears Great. Now tell us what you think the disease is, and how you think we should eliminate it. > Educational choice deserves to be respected so long as it isn't being used to propagate objectively false information And who is going to authoritatively determine what is objectively false? You just appointed that person dictator of the educational system. (See previous remarks about free markets.)
TimorousBestie 7mo ago
> The core fiction that enables the university to work is a dedication to 'truth' and progress through discussion. . . . That breaks down when there isn't open discussion on campus. Umberto Eco, “Ur-Fascism”: “Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.”” > The left now holds a place of orthodoxy in the universities and power structures. Eco: “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.” > Whether the 'right' can break it back into an enforced balance is yet to be seen. . . . The opposition needs to “live” somewhere! Eco: “However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
- 21asdffdsa12 7mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
nixon_why69 7mo ago
I think its better to take aim at "safetyism" rather than the left or right. The last couple years have seen the right become increasingly good at weaponizing it although the left did have a head start. Note that the current wave of attacks are all justified by safetyism, they're pushed by an anti-semitism task force that's encompassed any anti-war sentiment.
mastermage 7mo ago
I think these comparisons between left and right, always break down when one side clearly does not want others to live. I am fine with opposition when we can both agree on the fundamentals that every person deserves to live (and probably a good life too not just barely scraping by). There are alot of people now again, that do not belive in this fundamental principle.
pjc50 7mo ago
> The opposition needs to "live" somewhere! Not if they're systematically wrong about everything. There's no need to keep an intellectual disease vector in the academy any more than there would be a moral obligation to open your windows to the malaria mosquitos. Climate change and medicine are the largest, most visible aspects of this, but it's intellectual dishonesty all the way down. Note that this has got much worse since about the Obama era. There are no true small-c conservative intellectuals any more.
- joquarky 7mo ago
  The 2008 financial crisis is when the intellectually honest conservatives threw in the towel and let the sociopaths take over.
  - rbanffy 7mo ago
    That’s what you should do when proven wrong.
mghackerlady 7mo ago
Oh no, a group consisting of people applying scientific methodology and 20 year olds is quite fond of an objectively scientific and idealist political philosophy. Color me shocked
abeppu 7mo ago
> That breaks down when there isn't open discussion on campus. Communists were jeered but essentially allowed on campus in the 60s and 70s, even at the height of the cold war. I think that's a misleading telling of the history. During the 40s and 50s a lot of people were fired for suspected or real links to communism and some schools even demanded loyalty oaths. Courts struck down a bunch of laws that were used to fire people but many rulings didn't land until the 60s. Angela Davis was famously fired in 1969.
21asdffdsa12 7mo ago
The only solution is to recognize that bipartisanship is unavoidable and to found conservative or really liberal universities.
- xorvoid 7mo ago
  Strongly disagree. This is just increasing the "political temperature". The only true solution is people learning to talk and disagree with each other without "taking their ball and going home". Sorting ourselves into ideological camps on everything is destructive.
- rbanffy 7mo ago
  What would “conservative” universities teach? The role of chemtrails in minority violence? Creationism? Why the Earth, despite being flat, is perceived as round? Cognitive differences between races of people? Why is climate change actually a Global Cooling? Universities should be places where truth is sought without prejudice.
  - Auracle 7mo ago
    It’s funny how you talk about truth without prejudice and yet you did list one thing in there that’s essentially true, but definitely can’t be discussed at universities anymore. Not because of truth, but because of political correctness.
    - rbanffy 7mo ago
      You are always free to destroy your career by exposing your own biases and methodological failures.
awkward 7mo ago
Safety and freedom is incompatible with direct political control. Respect for truth is a false value if what truth is is to be put to a vote or changed to match the whims of whoever is in power.

whattheheckheck 7mo ago

[flagged]

TimorousBestie 7mo ago
To play devil’s advocate since I’ve been a little energetic in this thread already, I’ll go ahead and agree that they’re probably correct about single-income, two-parent homes having better outcomes for children. I disagree that it should always be the woman staying home (or always the same parent through the children’s adolescence, or that both parents should have different genders, or) but I think the premise is sound. They’re also objectively correct that women should, on average, be having children earlier (but wrong when they want it to be before the age of majority, or when they want to lower that age, or permit child marriage, or want to deny that couple sound sex education and medical care.)
- jarjoura 7mo ago
  Who is "they" here? Having a single-income parent in a two-parent home was the norm for most of US history. It's also still the norm outside of the US. Where is the evidence that children are worse off because both parents work? Kids (5+) barely spend any time at home during a typical work day, so I'm not sure what "they" are correct about. How is it objectively correct that women should, on average, have children earlier? Sorry, but this is purely a subjective statement and women are free to agree or disagree with that statement. Having been raised by my grandparents, I personally believe the only secret for success is to show up for children, and love them and provide them a stable environment to thrive in. Everything else is just window dressing.
  - watwut 7mo ago
    > Having a single-income parent in a two-parent home was the norm for most of US history. You dont really have income and non income on a household farm. You have patriarch making decisions and everybody else working. This included slave owning farms where she had managing/organizing responsibilities. Also, women in lower classes needed income and did worked for it. They did not had professional occupations and they were responsible for children, so it was things that fit into those boundaries - low income non professional work. But it was not really done for funsies. Then again, kids as small as 5 were left to handle by themselves and older kids were supposed to contribute. It is really incomparable to being stay at home parent now, isolated and literally having nothing useful to do except existing and playing.
  - TimorousBestie 7mo ago
    > Who is "they" here? Sorry, I thought it was clear from the context that these are widely-held, American right-wing opinions that I happen to agree with. > How is it objectively correct that women should, on average, have children earlier? There are a few specific birth defects that are more common in younger mothers but most become much more common as the mother ages, and the overall risk of complication & death increases with maternal age. > Having been raised by my grandparents, I personally believe the only secret for success is to show up for children, and love them and provide them a stable environment to thrive in. Everything else is just window dressing. That’s a great sentiment but of little practical use in deciding policy.
    - jarjoura 7mo ago
      Ah, sorry, I guess I'm not sure what it is you're actually debating needs to be fixed. Are children being born today with more birth defects and we (society) now want to concern ourselves with the issue that if parents want to have children, they need to plan for it and start earlier? Is that what a supposed objective policy would try to address? Men also have a clock and birth defects are known to go up the older they are. So this can't be limited to women regardless of policy decisions. I'm also not sure there could be any actual conversative government policy that could fix what is ultimately a financial incentives problem. Lots of parents would start earlier if they were able to have things like home ownership and space to raise kids in, and education systems that don't skew towards needing upper middle class levels of access to. Any potential new idea with any realistic long term fix would end up looking quite progressive and in our current hostile environment become a no-go for any conservative political appointee.
- mastermage 7mo ago
  Just to also play the devils advocate, why SHOULD women be having children earlier. Its very much a very personal choice in their own freedom. I don't think this should be a political take at all. In this decision there is nothing any Government should have a say in.
  - TimorousBestie 7mo ago
    > Just to also play the devils advocate, why SHOULD women be having children earlier. Lower prevalence of complications, lower risk of death, lower risk of birth defects. > Its very much a very personal choice in their own freedom. We don’t disagree. > I don't think this should be a political take at all. In this decision there is nothing any Government should have a say in. Unfortunately, Americans don’t live in that world. The government makes decisions that impact the health of pregnant mothers and children all the time.
  - hattmall 7mo ago
    To have a longer life with their children... It's not something government should regulate but it is something that government policy should incentivize.
    - superxpro12 7mo ago
      Children are only children for about 10 years.... then they turn into teenagers and adults. this is nonsense.
    - YCpedohaven 7mo ago
      > It's not something government should regulate but it is something that government policy should incentivize. Every time this comes up, there are numerous instances reported of welfare states in Europe, Asia, etc. trying this and it not working. The west, and especially the US is falling out of love with republicans and liberal democracy as they learn that some problems need to solved with an iron fist.
      - mindslight 7mo ago
rcbdev 7mo ago
People like you really lost the plot on nuance.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
paulddraper 7mo ago
* Markets should be free * Theft should be punished * There should be educational choice A lot of this depends what you consider to be “right” wing.
- watwut 7mo ago
  Neither of these is right wing value. They are right wing talking points right uses when it suits them and completely ignores when it does not suit them.
  - red-iron-pine 7mo ago
    to put a finer point on it, those points exist where they have vested interests in extracting value out of those fields. no large right wing doner wants a free market, they want their restrictions removed, and to have a monopoly to the fullest extent
- mghackerlady 7mo ago
  Markets being completely free got us in this mess, and while sound on paper has so many potential ways to go wrong it should be controlled by the working class either directly or indirectly through voting Theft is a symptom, not a disease. Eliminate the disease and theft effectively disappears Educational choice deserves to be respected so long as it isn't being used to propagate objectively false information
  - AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
    > Markets being completely free got us in this mess, and while sound on paper has so many potential ways to go wrong it should be controlled by the working class either directly or indirectly through voting Is that what got us into this mess? (Which mess?) Take medical care, for instance. Is that a free market? Not really, no. I mean, there are clearly markets that can be too free. No, you can't put poison in food and call it "free market". You can't roll through the farmer's market with guns and take everybody's stuff and call it "free market". There is a level of regulation where markets work best, and they work worse with either too much or too little regulation. But something like the medical market... most people can't shop around for insurance; their employer works with only one insurer. Most people can't shop around freely for doctors; they have to go to someone within their plan. And so on. That's not even close to a free market. > Theft is a symptom, not a disease. Eliminate the disease and theft effectively disappears Great. Now tell us what you think the disease is, and how you think we should eliminate it. > Educational choice deserves to be respected so long as it isn't being used to propagate objectively false information And who is going to authoritatively determine what is objectively false? You just appointed that person dictator of the educational system. (See previous remarks about free markets.)

TimorousBestie 7mo ago

> The core fiction that enables the university to work is a dedication to 'truth' and progress through discussion. . . . That breaks down when there isn't open discussion on campus. Umberto Eco, “Ur-Fascism”: “Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.”” > The left now holds a place of orthodoxy in the universities and power structures. Eco: “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.” > Whether the 'right' can break it back into an enforced balance is yet to be seen. . . . The opposition needs to “live” somewhere! Eco: “However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”

21asdffdsa12 7mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

nixon_why69 7mo ago

I think its better to take aim at "safetyism" rather than the left or right. The last couple years have seen the right become increasingly good at weaponizing it although the left did have a head start. Note that the current wave of attacks are all justified by safetyism, they're pushed by an anti-semitism task force that's encompassed any anti-war sentiment.

mastermage 7mo ago

I think these comparisons between left and right, always break down when one side clearly does not want others to live. I am fine with opposition when we can both agree on the fundamentals that every person deserves to live (and probably a good life too not just barely scraping by). There are alot of people now again, that do not belive in this fundamental principle.

pjc50 7mo ago

> The opposition needs to "live" somewhere! Not if they're systematically wrong about everything. There's no need to keep an intellectual disease vector in the academy any more than there would be a moral obligation to open your windows to the malaria mosquitos. Climate change and medicine are the largest, most visible aspects of this, but it's intellectual dishonesty all the way down. Note that this has got much worse since about the Obama era. There are no true small-c conservative intellectuals any more.

joquarky 7mo ago
The 2008 financial crisis is when the intellectually honest conservatives threw in the towel and let the sociopaths take over.
- rbanffy 7mo ago
  That’s what you should do when proven wrong.

mghackerlady 7mo ago

Oh no, a group consisting of people applying scientific methodology and 20 year olds is quite fond of an objectively scientific and idealist political philosophy. Color me shocked

abeppu 7mo ago

> That breaks down when there isn't open discussion on campus. Communists were jeered but essentially allowed on campus in the 60s and 70s, even at the height of the cold war. I think that's a misleading telling of the history. During the 40s and 50s a lot of people were fired for suspected or real links to communism and some schools even demanded loyalty oaths. Courts struck down a bunch of laws that were used to fire people but many rulings didn't land until the 60s. Angela Davis was famously fired in 1969.

21asdffdsa12 7mo ago

The only solution is to recognize that bipartisanship is unavoidable and to found conservative or really liberal universities.

xorvoid 7mo ago
Strongly disagree. This is just increasing the "political temperature". The only true solution is people learning to talk and disagree with each other without "taking their ball and going home". Sorting ourselves into ideological camps on everything is destructive.
rbanffy 7mo ago
What would “conservative” universities teach? The role of chemtrails in minority violence? Creationism? Why the Earth, despite being flat, is perceived as round? Cognitive differences between races of people? Why is climate change actually a Global Cooling? Universities should be places where truth is sought without prejudice.
- Auracle 7mo ago
  It’s funny how you talk about truth without prejudice and yet you did list one thing in there that’s essentially true, but definitely can’t be discussed at universities anymore. Not because of truth, but because of political correctness.
  - rbanffy 7mo ago
    You are always free to destroy your career by exposing your own biases and methodological failures.

awkward 7mo ago

Safety and freedom is incompatible with direct political control. Respect for truth is a false value if what truth is is to be put to a vote or changed to match the whims of whoever is in power.