Buying a left-wing education
Sayan Bhattacharyya
>--------------
>Linda Bowles January 29, 2002
>
>Buying a left-wing education
>
>Parents who spend $30,000 or more a year to provide their offspring a
>prestigious education at an Ivy League school are almost certain to be
>buying their sons and daughters a first-class indoctrination into
>radical left-wing ideology -- from which they may never recover.
>
>It is not exactly news to find that many of the professors at schools
>such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton don't think like most mainstream
>Americans, and make no effort to disguise their contempt for Western
>culture, religious faith, patriotism and capitalism. They fuzzily
>believe that communism or something like it should probably be given
>another chance.
>
>The latest survey to measure the ideological outlook of Ivy League
>professors was conducted by the Luntz Research Companies. Several
>questions were posed to 151 professors, most of whom teach in the
>humanities. Their answers revealed a lock step, collectivist parade of
>conforming liberals. As far as the eye could see, or the survey could
>reach, there was essentially no evidence of intellectual diversity.
>
>For example, of those professors who voted in the 2000 election, 84
>percent voted for Al Gore, 9 percent voted for George Bush, and 6
>percent voted for Ralph Nader.
>
>Asked about party affiliation, 3 percent admitted they were
>Republicans while 57 percent declared themselves Democrats. This is a
>sharp contrast from surveys of the general population with 37 percent
>declaring themselves Republicans and 34 percent confessing that they
>are Democrats. When asked to name the best president of the past 40
>years "all things considered," Clinton got 26 percent, Kennedy 17
>percent, Johnson 15 percent, Carter 13 percent, and Ronald Reagan 4
>percent.
>
>Forty percent of the professors support reparations for slavery, which
>compares with only 11 percent support in the general population as
>measured in national polls.
>
>The purpose of the survey was to measure the political views of those
>who teach the humanities and compare them with the views of mainstream
>America. Those who enter the field of education because they want to
>be social or political change agents are attracted to the teaching of
>soft subjects in the humanities such as English literature, history
>and sociology.
>
>The reason is simple. If, for example, one is teaching math, things
>have to add up. If, however, one is teaching a revisionist version of
>history, or a feminist version of literary works by "dead white
>males," nothing has to add up, and the subject matter may serve as a
>platform for the trashing of American culture, values and traditions.
>
[...] deleted for brevity
>
>Contact Linda Bowles
>
>
>©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
>
>townhall.com
>
Michael S. Morris
Sunday, the 3rd of February, 2002
Sayan quotes:
[Poll results indicating that humanities profs are
left-wing relative to the US political spectrum.]
Would this surprise anyone? I'll bet it is also the case
that academic scientists poll to the left of the
population, though doubtless less far to the left
than do humanities-types (3% Republicans indicates
a group of people far out of touch with political reality).
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Dan Clore
This is all pretty surprising: intelligent individuals don't
have the same opinions as stupid individuals. Who would have
thought it? -- Only the intelligent, apparently.
--
Dan Clore
mailto:cl...@columbia-center.org
Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.wildsidepress.com/index2.htm
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_Detective Comics_ #608
tejas
"Michael S. Morris" <msmo...@netdirect.net> wrote in message
news:3C5D4A71...@netdirect.net...
When did being a Republican or a Democrat have anything to do
with reality?
--
Ted Samsel
tbsa...@infi.net
http://home.infi.net/~tbsamsel
Michael S. Morris
Sunday, the 3rd of February, 2002
Sayan quoted:
[Poll results indicating that humanities profs are
left-wing relative to the US political spectrum.]
I said:
Would this surprise anyone? I'll bet it is also the case
that academic scientists poll to the left of the
population, though doubtless less far to the left
than do humanities-types (3% Republicans indicates
a group of people far out of touch with political reality).
Ted:
When did being a Republican or a Democrat have
anything to do with reality?
Since about the 1850's.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
David Latane
3% Republicans would indicate a group solidly in touch with
Reality--until you read that more than 3% are Democrats.
D. Latane
Michael S. Morris
Sunday, the 3rd of February, 2002
Sayan quoted:
[Poll results indicating that humanities profs are
left-wing relative to the US political spectrum.]
I said:
Would this surprise anyone? I'll bet it is also the case
that academic scientists poll to the left of the
population, though doubtless less far to the left
than do humanities-types (3% Republicans indicates
a group of people far out of touch with political reality).
Ted:
When did being a Republican or a Democrat have
anything to do with reality?
I said:
Since about the 1850's.
David Latane:
3% Republicans would indicate a group
solidly in touch with Reality--until you
read that more than 3% are Democrats.
Well, I hear you, but I don't agree. I think the
political reality in the United States has been about
evenl;y split between Republican and Democrat for a
long time now. A group that is 3% Republican and 57%
Democrat does not represent the political reality of
American politics. That's all. I haven't voted for
either Republican or Democrat for some while myself,
but I certainly don't claim to be representative of
the mainstream myself.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
tejas
You are gullible.
ObBook: Gullible's Travels.
Paul Ilechko
>
> This is all pretty surprising: intelligent individuals don't
> have the same opinions as stupid individuals. Who would have
> thought it? -- Only the intelligent, apparently.
>
Intelligence and stupidity are orthogonal, not oppositional.
smw
To rephrase Ted (surely against his wishes) -- since when is
acquiescence to the norm a sign of being in touch with reality?
s
Bruce McGuffin
> To rephrase Ted (surely against his wishes) -- since when is
> acquiescence to the norm a sign of being in touch with reality?
To rudely and inconsiderately drag a book into R.A.B., however
elliptically, that Bobos in Paradise Guy (? Brooks) had an article in
Atlantic Monthly a while back. He'd been researching the differences
between "Middle America" and "Bi-Coastal America" (I don't think those
were his exact labels, but that's what he meant). One of his
interesting conclusions was that Middle America has more poltical,
moral, cultural, etc. variation than Bi-Coastal America does, and is
more tolerant of the same. Not what a good Bi-Coastalite like me
expects, but on reflection, not entirely unconsistent with my own
experiences.
I mention this, because, of course, Academe is in some ways the
epitome of Bi-Coastal culture, even when located in the Mid-West.
Bruce McGuffin
Silke Weineck
Bruce McGuffin wrote:
>smw <s...@umich.edu> writes:
>
>
>>To rephrase Ted (surely against his wishes) -- since when is
>>acquiescence to the norm a sign of being in touch with reality?
>>
>
>To rudely and inconsiderately drag a book into R.A.B., however
>elliptically, that Bobos in Paradise Guy (? Brooks) had an article in
>Atlantic Monthly a while back. He'd been researching the differences
>between "Middle America" and "Bi-Coastal America" (I don't think those
>were his exact labels, but that's what he meant). One of his
>interesting conclusions was that Middle America has more poltical,
>moral, cultural, etc. variation than Bi-Coastal America does, and is
>more tolerant of the same. Not what a good Bi-Coastalite like me
>expects, but on reflection, not entirely unconsistent with my own
>experiences.
>
define moral, cultural, and political variation?
Far be it from me to portray the academy as a beautiful circus of human
variety. At the same time, I expect the academy is a red herring in this
regard; I know plenty of non-academics who are left-liberal for the same
reasons as humanities faculty -- i.e. the books they read. Not that it
ain't possible to read a lot of books and still vote Republican, but
it's a rare feat.
s
Richard Harter
> To rephrase Ted (surely against his wishes) -- since when is
> acquiescence to the norm a sign of being in touch with reality?
Since about 2,000,000 BC. Reality is socially constructed and the
norm is the center of reality.
smw
Richard Harter wrote:
Touch, man, not vacant gaze.
j del col
Or its sequel --Gulliver's Travails--.
J. Del Col
tejas
Hardly. I'm fairly amenable to being paraphrased or rephrased...
-- since when is
> acquiescence to the norm a sign of being in touch with reality?
Just like in BUDDHA'S LITTLE FINGER, fer sure.
tejas
"Richard Harter" <c...@tiac.net> wrote in message
news:fa4c142c.02020...@posting.google.com...
But where's Norm? And why doesn't he bring beer?
ObLeftNorm: Thomas
ObRightNorm: Podohoretz
Louis Katorz
>(3% Republicans indicates   a group of
>people far out of touch with political
>reality).
Ted Samsel wrote:
          >When did being a Republican or a
>Democrat have   anything to do with
>reality?
Mike Morris wrote:
>Since about the 1850's.
Ted Samsel wrote:
>You are gullible.
>ObBook: Gullible's Travels.
J. Del Col wrote:
>Or its sequel--Gulliver's Travails--.
Or its prequel--Becoming Gullible.
lk
Richard Harter
David Latane
I've never voted Republican--except larkin' in the primaries--but this
is just the sort of statement that might drive me to it.
D. latane
smw
Yup, about the quality of reasoning behind such an act.
Seriously, why not face the facts? How many serious right-wing thinkers
or writers do you know? And I don't mean writers or thinkers co-opted by
the right. Count for yourself.
s
Jean Clarke
Just a Jeanie
jimC
Republican opponent. And if I lived in Ulan Bator, I could see myself
with a yak named Spot.
--
jimC
http://www.geocities.com/jimcolli92625/
Official Web pages of the Crystal Cove Lunchtime Hikers. Updated 05 Feb 02
0204 GMT. See what Clyde Tombaugh saw in Flagstaff. See Calico Systems
Computers' West Los Angeles store on a warm December day in 1983 in the
neighborhood where computer stores started.
Sayan Bhattacharyya
>> Seriously, why not face the facts? How many serious right-wing
>thinkers
>> or writers do you know? And I don't mean writers or thinkers co-opted by
>> the right. Count for yourself.
The problem, of course, is that many thinkers do not fit neatly into
the right/left binary scheme. For example: is Gandhi left-wing or
right-wing? To the extent that Gandhi was anti-imperialist, he is
certainly left-wing. But given the way he rails against modernity and
progress (he argues, incredibly, against railways and hospitals, for
example), he sounds very like a right-wing fundamentalist.
Richard Harter
> Far be it from me to portray the academy as a beautiful circus of human
> variety. At the same time, I expect the academy is a red herring in this
> regard; I know plenty of non-academics who are left-liberal for the same
> reasons as humanities faculty -- i.e. the books they read. Not that it
> ain't possible to read a lot of books and still vote Republican, but
> it's a rare feat.
Uh, huh. Your "rare feat" reflects the circles that you move in rather
than any particular reality. Move in other circles and you find lots of
people who vote Republican more often than not and who also read lots of
books.
Be that as it may your remark about people being left-liberal because of
the books that they read is acute.
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 6th of February, 2002
Sayan quoted:
[Poll results indicating that humanities profs are
left-wing relative to the US political spectrum.]
I said:
Would this surprise anyone? I'll bet it is also the case
that academic scientists poll to the left of the
population, though doubtless less far to the left
than do humanities-types (3% Republicans indicates
a group of people far out of touch with political reality).
Ted:
When did being a Republican or a Democrat have
anything to do with reality?
I said:
Since about the 1850's.
David Latane:
3% Republicans would indicate a group
solidly in touch with Reality--until you
read that more than 3% are Democrats.
I said:
Well, I hear you, but I don't agree. I think the
political reality in the United States has been about
evenl;y split between Republican and Democrat for a
long time now. A group that is 3% Republican and 57%
Democrat does not represent the political reality of
American politics. That's all. I haven't voted for
either Republican or Democrat for some while myself,
but I certainly don't claim to be representative of
the mainstream myself.
Silke:
To rephrase Ted (surely against his wishes) --
since when is acquiescence to the norm a sign
of being in touch with reality?
It is thinkable I suppose that the professoriate is
in touch with many aspects of reality that the norm is
not. Physicists, for instance, understand physical
reality better than 99% of the population. But, we
were, after all, speaking of humanites profs. And, to
recall precisely what I said, I said *political* reality.
In a democracy, the norm *defines* the *political*
reality. Of course, I'm sorry to have break that
news to you.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 6th of February, 2002
Silke:
Far be it from me to portray the academy as a
beautiful circus of human variety. At the same
time, I expect the academy is a red herring in this
regard; I know plenty of non-academics who are
left-liberal for the same reasons as humanities
faculty -- i.e. the books they read.
Except of course they are a tiny political minority.
Silke:
Not that it ain't possible to read a lot of
books and still vote Republican, but
it's a rare feat.
Bullshit. The best-read contributors to rab
over the years have been Republicans. Witness
Keith Morgan and Jim Hartley.
The fact is, *you* are only reporting on a
selection effect---you live in a certain ghetto,
and assume it to be the world.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Wednesday, the 6th of February, 2002
Silke:
Seriously, why not face the facts? How many serious
right-wing thinkers or writers do you know? And I
don't mean writers or thinkers co-opted by
the right. Count for yourself.
Well, since there exists not *one* *serious* left-wing
thinker or writer, it'd be difficult to come
up with less than that on the right-wing side,
wouldn't it?
Or, does the little exclusion there of "and I don't
mean co-opted by the right" betray you? I.e.,
the left-wing academy gets to define who is in
and out, and if anybody has any merit at all, he
must be "co-opted" by the right. Meanwhile,
try reading some Thomas Pangle or Michael Oakeshott.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Sayan Bhattacharyya wrote:
>
> >smw wrote:
> >> Seriously, why not face the facts? How many serious right-wing
> >thinkers
> >> or writers do you know? And I don't mean writers or thinkers co-opted by
> >> the right. Count for yourself.
>
> The problem, of course, is that many thinkers do not fit neatly into
> the right/left binary scheme.
Quite -- esp the US-American one. And far be it from me to suggest that
any of the people I had in mind writing the above would happily endorse
the Democrats. Merely that they couldn't vote for Bush, Ashcroft, etc.
s
smw
"Michael S. Morris" wrote:
>
> Wednesday, the 6th of February, 2002
>
> Silke:
> Seriously, why not face the facts? How many serious
> right-wing thinkers or writers do you know? And I
> don't mean writers or thinkers co-opted by
> the right. Count for yourself.
>
> Well, since there exists not *one* *serious* left-wing
> thinker or writer, it'd be difficult to come
> up with less than that on the right-wing side,
> wouldn't it?
You lack both imagination and intellectual taste. Leo Strauss and
Heidegger both count as serious conservative thinkers. Even though I
find it hard to imagine that either of them could stomach Bush. I'm not
very impressed by either Pangle or Oakeshott.
But you can have your goat back, I really only wanted to borrow it.
s
smw
Richard Harter wrote:
>
> Silke Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote in message news:<3C600F97...@umich.edu>...
>
> > Far be it from me to portray the academy as a beautiful circus of human
> > variety. At the same time, I expect the academy is a red herring in this
> > regard; I know plenty of non-academics who are left-liberal for the same
> > reasons as humanities faculty -- i.e. the books they read. Not that it
> > ain't possible to read a lot of books and still vote Republican, but
> > it's a rare feat.
>
> Uh, huh. Your "rare feat" reflects the circles that you move in rather
> than any particular reality. Move in other circles and you find lots of
> people who vote Republican more often than not and who also read lots of
> books.
I submit for your consideration that after ten years of marriage to a
Leo-Straussian, I know more about conservative intellectuals than you'd
ever want to. At the same time, even those
Public-Interest-Commentary-Weekly-Standard reading crowd found it
extremely difficult to go for Dubya, and if they did, then to a large
extent out of resentment grounded in that very
left-liberal-academy-conspiracy-theme that's been sounded here.
> Be that as it may your remark about people being left-liberal because of
> the books that they read is acute.
As I said in my reply to Sayan, it's not as if reading books makes you
love Clinton, Gore, etc. It merely makes other choices available look
even less appealing.
s
smw
"Michael S. Morris" wrote:
>
> Wednesday, the 6th of February, 2002
>
> Silke:
> Far be it from me to portray the academy as a
> beautiful circus of human variety. At the same
> time, I expect the academy is a red herring in this
> regard; I know plenty of non-academics who are
> left-liberal for the same reasons as humanities
> faculty -- i.e. the books they read.
>
> Except of course they are a tiny political minority.
Of course. So are people who read a lot of books of the sort I had in
mind. That said, they are "a tiny political minority" only in the US,
not in Europe. And humanities faculty on the whole spends a lot more
time overseas than your average citizen, opening their eyes to the fact
that left politics don't lead to the collapse of civilization with which
the right and the right center (i.e. Democrats) have successfully
associated everything even vaguely socialist.
> Silke:
> Not that it ain't possible to read a lot of
> books and still vote Republican, but
> it's a rare feat.
>
> Bullshit. The best-read contributors to rab
> over the years have been Republicans. Witness
> Keith Morgan and Jim Hartley.
>
> The fact is, *you* are only reporting on a
> selection effect---you live in a certain ghetto,
> and assume it to be the world.
Well, no, I've lived many places other than the US academy. I have no
idea what Keith Morgan and Jim Hartley read -- I don't recall the first
one, and I don't recall Jim ever posting on continental philosophy.
In any case, why fume at the mouth like this? It's merely a matter of
statistical correlation.
s
smw
"Michael S. Morris" wrote:
> > In a democracy, the norm *defines* the *political*
> reality. Of course, I'm sorry to have break that
> news to you.
Do a google search on "Enron" for political reality, sweetums. Politics
isn't who votes for whom; politics is what power does.
s
Joan Marie Shields
>It is thinkable I suppose that the professoriate is
>in touch with many aspects of reality that the norm is
>not. Physicists, for instance, understand physical
>reality better than 99% of the population. But, we
>were, after all, speaking of humanites profs. And, to
>recall precisely what I said, I said *political* reality.
>In a democracy, the norm *defines* the *political*
>reality. Of course, I'm sorry to have break that
>news to you.
Most professors, in my experience, are much like nearly
everyone else - some are pretty knowledgable about the
world and some are hopelessly clueless. Most of my
experience has been with biologists, MDs, epidemiologists,
the odd chemist and engineers - even a few physisits.
Regarding the last, one I had in college was fairly left-
wing in his politics (a pacifist with a facination for
trajectories) and a very good cello player. My own advisor
is a strong proponent of women's rights though is fairly
conservative otherwise. Humanities - there are those who
lean left and some that lean right and then there are those
who really don't give a shit.
Of course, there was an old neighbor of mine who looked like
a dyed-in-the wool redneck who, contrary to stereotype, was
quite thoughtful about his politics and very open-minded about
other's opinions and experience. The there is my ex-father-in-
law who owns a very nice collection of civil war books (enough
to make many here very jealous) - read all the time and was a
definite right-winger.
3% Republican doesn't mean that 97% are left-wing.
Oh, and as for physisits understanding more about physical
reality - only so far as biologists understanding more about
biological reality. I don't think either has the market
cornered on understanding reality.
yiwf,
joan
--
Joan Shields jshi...@uci.edu
http://www.ags.uci.edu/~jshields
University of California - Irvine School of Social Ecology
Department of Environmental Analysis and Design
David J. Loftus
Errr ... surely you meant "a cutie"?
David Loftus
(who was doomed to become left-liberal LONG before
he began to read books in any great number....)
Bruce McGuffin
> Bruce McGuffin wrote:
>
> >smw <s...@umich.edu> writes:
> >
> >
> >>To rephrase Ted (surely against his wishes) -- since when is
> >> acquiescence to the norm a sign of being in touch with reality?
>
> >
> >To rudely and inconsiderately drag a book into R.A.B., however
> >elliptically, that Bobos in Paradise Guy (? Brooks) had an article in
> >Atlantic Monthly a while back. He'd been researching the differences
> >between "Middle America" and "Bi-Coastal America" (I don't think those
> >were his exact labels, but that's what he meant). One of his
> >interesting conclusions was that Middle America has more poltical,
> >moral, cultural, etc. variation than Bi-Coastal America does, and is
> >more tolerant of the same. Not what a good Bi-Coastalite like me
> >expects, but on reflection, not entirely unconsistent with my own
> >experiences.
> >
> define moral, cultural, and political variation?
For example a wider range of views on homosexuality and related
issues. More social acceptance of people whose political views fall
outside the local norm. More acceptance of the fact that people will
have different views on abortion, and the like. More tolerance of
behavior that is common in economic classes other than one's own.
You can find the article on-line at
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/12/brooks.htm
It's fairly long, and unless your interested in the whole
"culture wars" thing, I don't recommend reading it.
>
> Far be it from me to portray the academy as a beautiful circus of
> human variety. At the same time, I expect the academy is a red herring
> in this regard; I know plenty of non-academics who are left-liberal
> for the same reasons as humanities faculty -- i.e. the books they
> read. Not that it ain't possible to read a lot of books and still vote
> Republican, but it's a rare feat.
All true. The question is what is "reality" in the context of this
discussion. The academy represents, and is often the trend setter for
Brooks "blue areas" (my bi-coastal areas). The original article implied
that reality is found in Brooks "red areas" (my middle America).
What Brooks concluded is that in Blue America you can wall yourself
off with people of your own kind, and avoid having to deal with the
others. In Red America people are all mixed up together, and so have
learned to be more tolerant of differences. This despite the word
"diversity" being a mantra of the blue elite.
Where I live, entire towns are oriented towards one economic class or
the other. The town I live in is fairly upper-class, and adheres to
the east-coast, urban version of upper-class-hood. To the South is a
town that is working class. To the West are two other upper class
towns, but they espouse a more country gentleman style of
upper-class-hood (example: my town is full of over-priced coffee shops
and stores selling quirky little objet d'art, their town is full of
expensive china shops [1], and stores selling horse or dog themed
objet d'art.) For the past several years, the poltical establishment
in my town has been carrying on an extended public quarrel with a
small group of conservatives (old people who moved in before the town
completely took on its current character). It has become obvious to me
from their newspaper editorials and letters, that when the local
establishment carries on about the importance of diversity, they
don't mean THAT diverse.
Bruce McGuffin
[1] No bull.
j del col
One inanity refuted by another--the perfect RAB argument.
J. Del Col
Michael Zeleny
> Seriously, why not face the facts? How many serious right-wing
>thinkers or writers do you know? And I don't mean writers or thinkers
>co-opted by the right. Count for yourself.
I met him ten years ago, after attending the Whitehead Lectures by
Saul Kripke. Having broadcast some snide remarks about the nature of
numbers, I found my hand warmly clasped by Bob Nozick at the Emerson
Hall reception that followed. In all fairness, the ebullience of his
greeting might have had something to do with my being decorated by a
stunning teenage concubine.
I recall thinking that Bob was the most handsome philosopher that I
ever met. I then wondered whether his visage was in any way related
to his social engineering proposal for redistributing sex appeal by
doling out plastic surgery. (Then again, "nosik" is Russian for a
little nose.) Finally it occurred to me that "respectful contempt"
with which my adviser Hilary Putnam professed to regard Nozick, was
the epitome of Harvard education.
Incidentally, Saul Kripke has since earned his conservative stripes
by dint of being emeritized from Princeton for sexual harassment.
Win one, lose one.
--
cordially, -- Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu
7576 Willow Glen Rd, Hollywood, CA 90046 323-876-8234 323-363-1860
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better. -- Samuel Beckett
smw
Bruce McGuffin wrote:
>
> Silke Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> writes:
>
> > Bruce McGuffin wrote:
> >
> > >smw <s...@umich.edu> writes:
> > >
> > >
> > >>To rephrase Ted (surely against his wishes) -- since when is
> > >> acquiescence to the norm a sign of being in touch with reality?
> >
> > >
> > >To rudely and inconsiderately drag a book into R.A.B., however
> > >elliptically, that Bobos in Paradise Guy (? Brooks) had an article in
> > >Atlantic Monthly a while back. He'd been researching the differences
> > >between "Middle America" and "Bi-Coastal America" (I don't think those
> > >were his exact labels, but that's what he meant). One of his
> > >interesting conclusions was that Middle America has more poltical,
> > >moral, cultural, etc. variation than Bi-Coastal America does, and is
> > >more tolerant of the same. Not what a good Bi-Coastalite like me
> > >expects, but on reflection, not entirely unconsistent with my own
> > >experiences.
> > >
> > define moral, cultural, and political variation?
>
> For example a wider range of views on homosexuality and related
> issues. More social acceptance of people whose political views fall
> outside the local norm.
I'll check out the article, but doesn't it strike you as funny that in
your summary above, "a wider range of views on homosexuality" rather
obviously conflicts with "more social acceptance" assuming that the
narrowness of the coastie range presumably prescribes acceptance of
homosexuality?
More acceptance of the fact that people will
> have different views on abortion, and the like.
See above -- more acceptance of the fact that some people will think
that bombing clinics is a viable response to the abortion question
translates into more acceptance?
It's nice to see the diversity angle crop up from the other side o the
divide -- a little chuckle for the irony monster.
ore tolerance of
> behavior that is common in economic classes other than one's own.
>
> You can find the article on-line at
> http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/12/brooks.htm
> It's fairly long, and unless your interested in the whole
> "culture wars" thing, I don't recommend reading it.
>
> >
> > Far be it from me to portray the academy as a beautiful circus of
> > human variety. At the same time, I expect the academy is a red herring
> > in this regard; I know plenty of non-academics who are left-liberal
> > for the same reasons as humanities faculty -- i.e. the books they
> > read. Not that it ain't possible to read a lot of books and still vote
> > Republican, but it's a rare feat.
>
> All true. The question is what is "reality" in the context of this
> discussion. The academy represents, and is often the trend setter for
> Brooks "blue areas" (my bi-coastal areas). The original article implied
> that reality is found in Brooks "red areas" (my middle America).
So far, you seem to have argued that there's a greater heterogeneity of
ideological takes in the red areas -- that may translate into some kind
of diversity, but what does it have to do with reality?
> What Brooks concluded is that in Blue America you can wall yourself
> off with people of your own kind, and avoid having to deal with the
> others. In Red America people are all mixed up together, and so have
> learned to be more tolerant of differences. This despite the word
> "diversity" being a mantra of the blue elite.
As I said, I'll check it out. I've only lived in Miami, Baltimore, Phila
and Ann Arbor, but the first three were far more diverse in any respect
you cite above. Of course, there's an urban/town distinction at work
here as well, and Ann Arbor is surely not representative of the Midwest,
but on the basis of a number of cross-country trips, I'm unconvinced so
far.
s
smw
smw wrote:
>
> Bruce McGuffin wrote:
> >
> > Silke Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> writes:
> >
> > > Bruce McGuffin wrote:
> > >
> > > >smw <s...@umich.edu> writes:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >>To rephrase Ted (surely against his wishes) -- since when is
> > > >> acquiescence to the norm a sign of being in touch with reality?
> > >
> > > >
> > > >To rudely and inconsiderately drag a book into R.A.B., however
> > > >elliptically, that Bobos in Paradise Guy (? Brooks) had an article in
> > > >Atlantic Monthly a while back. He'd been researching the differences
> > > >between "Middle America" and "Bi-Coastal America" (I don't think those
> > > >were his exact labels, but that's what he meant). One of his
> > > >interesting conclusions was that Middle America has more poltical,
> > > >moral, cultural, etc. variation than Bi-Coastal America does, and is
> > > >more tolerant of the same. Not what a good Bi-Coastalite like me
> > > >expects, but on reflection, not entirely unconsistent with my own
> > > >experiences.
> > > >
> > > define moral, cultural, and political variation?
> >
> > For example a wider range of views on homosexuality and related
> > issues. More social acceptance of people whose political views fall
> > outside the local norm.
>
> I'll check out the article
I did, part read part skimmed. Curiously, it didn't resemble what you
wrote very much. Brooks' point seemed to be that "blue" and "red"
America largely think alike, with some statistical differences, and that
his choice of "red" America doesn't like to talk much about
controversial issues. Do you want to cite me something from there that
makes your point about greater ideological diversity?
j...@radidelmex.net
> Ted Samsel wrote:
>
>>You are gullible.
>
>>ObBook: Gullible's Travels.
> J. Del Col wrote:
>>Or its sequel--Gulliver's Travails--.
> Or its prequel--Becoming Gullible.
Or the self-help book--"Releasing the Gullible Child Within"?
ArtflDodgr
> "Michael S. Morris" wrote:
[snip]
> > The fact is, *you* are only reporting on a
> > selection effect---you live in a certain ghetto,
> > and assume it to be the world.
>
> Well, no, I've lived many places other than the US academy. I have no
> idea what Keith Morgan and Jim Hartley read -- I don't recall the first
> one, and I don't recall Jim ever posting on continental philosophy.
>
> In any case, why fume at the mouth like this?
This malapropism seems oddly on target.
--
A.
Louis Katorz
>Republican/Democrat ? Isn't that a game
>something like Monopoly?
Or Pin The Tail On The Elephant/Donkey? Campaign rhetoric is a very
effective blindfold.
lk
Louis Katorz
Or "The Dummy Book For Gullibles".
lk
Marko Amnell
Marko Amnell
> My town is full of over-priced coffee shops and stores
> selling quirky little objet d'art, their town is full
> of expensive china shops [1] ...
>
> [1] No bull.
No bull about china shops? Ha ha ha...
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 7th of February, 2002
Silke:
Seriously, why not face the facts? How many serious
right-wing thinkers or writers do you know? And I
don't mean writers or thinkers co-opted by
the right. Count for yourself.
I said:
Well, since there exists not *one* *serious* left-wing
thinker or writer, it'd be difficult to come
up with less than that on the right-wing side,
wouldn't it?
Silke:
You lack both imagination and intellectual taste.
Neither really.
Silke:
Leo Strauss and Heidegger both count as serious
conservative thinkers.
This flabbergasts. Strauss and Heidegger are dead.
I *assumed* your blanket assertion about the small number
of "serious, right-wing thinkers" was at least limited
to *living* intellectuals. If you open it up to all serious
political thinkers for all of time, and given that
you seem to define the center of liberal (as opposed
to social) democracy as *already* right-wing, it would seem
that nearly *all* but a tiny 19th-20th century aberration
of serious political thought has been either "right-wing"
(TM Silke) or, umm, far to the right of "right-wing".
Silke:
Even though I find it hard to imagine that either
of them could stomach Bush.
This is stupid of you. Bush is a lightweight who any
serious thinker would find hard to stomach. This doesn't
mean that Al Gore or Ralph Nader would have been easier
to stomach, however. The quality of American politicians is
very low. I certainly do not buy that this lowness is
special to Republicans.
Silke:
I'm not very impressed by either Pangle or
Oakeshott.
And, of course, I'm not surprised that you aren't
impressed. Your ghetto *defines away* those guys as
unimpressive. They are, however, both serious thinkers
and impressive.
Silke:
But you can have your goat back, I really only
wanted to borrow it.
Funny you should mention that. Martha came in from
barn chores last night and said she couldn't find
Aix. So she took a flashlight back out to search.
Turned out Aix was asleep in the goathouse.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 7th of February, 2002
I said:
In a democracy, the norm *defines* the *political*
reality. Of course, I'm sorry to have break that
news to you.
Silke:
Do a google search on "Enron" for political
reality, sweetums. Politics isn't who votes
for whom; politics is what power does.
Well, but the problem is that when the Enron guy
came door-to-door here back before the election,
he was going to give us our $1.57, but stipulated
that 43% of it was for the presidential election,
of which 52% of that was to bribe us to vote for
W. and 48% to bribe us to vote for Gore. Then, of
the remainder, we were to weight the bribes 60-40
towards incumbents, except where it looked like
the incumbent was going to lose one month before
the election. And, anyway, our eyes kind of glazed
over at the math involved and we suggested he go take
the money to our neighbour who watches television
and, thus, follow such instructions more closely.
I voted Libertarian (the American Fascist Party to
those in the Silkeverse).
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 7th of February, 2002
Joan Marie Shields wrote:
Most professors, in my experience, are much like nearly
everyone else - some are pretty knowledgable about the
world and some are hopelessly clueless. Most of my
experience has been with biologists, MDs, epidemiologists,
the odd chemist and engineers - even a few physisits.
Regarding the last, one I had in college was fairly left-
wing in his politics (a pacifist with a facination for
trajectories) and a very good cello player. My own advisor
is a strong proponent of women's rights though is fairly
conservative otherwise. Humanities - there are those who
lean left and some that lean right and then there are those
who really don't give a shit.
Which says that your experience gives you an inaccurate
impression of humanities-types political leanings, since
the objective measure thereof---the poll in question,
showed 3% Republicans and 57% percent Democrats.
Joan:
3% Republican doesn't mean that 97% are left-wing.
Umm, in the Silkeverse, no, since she defines even
Democrats as right-wing. But, compared to the middle of
American politics, the poll said 57% Democrat. I.e.
19 times more Democrat than Republican. That's a huge
disparity, and shifted to the left from the center of
American politics.
Joan:
Oh, and as for physisits understanding more about physical
reality - only so far as biologists understanding more about
biological reality. I don't think either has the market
cornered on understanding reality.
I didn't say physicists have any market cornered except
the one about physical reality. (And then, not really
"cornered".) However, if you will examine what I was
responding to, you will see that I began only speaking
about "political reality". Silke reduced that to "reality",
and so physicists got introduced in order to shunt off that
particular logical/rhetorical red herring. (You know,
"geologists know more tha other people about geology,
geology is a part of reality, so geologists know some
of reality better than other people, so geologists are
better informed about reality than other people, so
they must know political reality better, and vote more
informed votes and hold more informed political opinions
than other people". That was the kind of crap that Silke
was suggesting with respect to humanites-types.)
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Sayan Bhattacharyya
>
>
>"Michael S. Morris" wrote:
>>
>> Wednesday, the 6th of February, 2002
>>
>> Silke:
>> Far be it from me to portray the academy as a
>> beautiful circus of human variety. At the same
>> time, I expect the academy is a red herring in this
>> regard; I know plenty of non-academics who are
>> left-liberal for the same reasons as humanities
>> faculty -- i.e. the books they read.
>>
>> Except of course they are a tiny political minority.
>
>Of course. So are people who read a lot of books of the sort I had in
>mind. That said, they are "a tiny political minority" only in the US,
>not in Europe.
And even if we agree to entertain the decidedly novel and revolutionary
idea that the world does not actually consist of only the US and
Europe, Silke's observation is still true.
-Sayan.
Joan Marie Shields
Joan Shields (jshi...@uci.edu) wrote:
> Most professors, in my experience, are much like nearly
> everyone else - some are pretty knowledgable about the
> world and some are hopelessly clueless. Most of my
> experience has been with biologists, MDs, epidemiologists,
> the odd chemist and engineers - even a few physisits.
> Regarding the last, one I had in college was fairly left-
> wing in his politics (a pacifist with a facination for
> trajectories) and a very good cello player. My own advisor
> is a strong proponent of women's rights though is fairly
> conservative otherwise. Humanities - there are those who
> lean left and some that lean right and then there are those
> who really don't give a shit.
Michael S. Morris <msmo...@netdirect.net> wrote:
>Which says that your experience gives you an inaccurate
>impression of humanities-types political leanings, since
>the objective measure thereof---the poll in question,
>showed 3% Republicans and 57% percent Democrats.
I said most, not all. Keep in mind that I worked at UNC-CH (a fairly
large university) for 8 years before coming to UCI nearly 6 years ago.
While my undergraduate degree is in Biology with a minor in Chemistry,
I also finished a minor in English. All in all I'd say that while I
don't have as much experience with Humanities as say Silke, I do have
at least as much though more than likely more than you.
Still, all in all I think you're both pretty silly though I must admit
that Silke is slightly more entertaining. You're both stereotyping and
making broad sweeping statements that actually mean very little. I'm
sure if you looked at acedemics in different areas and compared those
numbers to say CEOs and say pipe-fitters and hairdressers in Northern
Iowa you'd find something. Hey, look at the politics of physicians
as well or perhaps MD-PhDs.
Bruce McGuffin
No, because when I wrote "acceptance" what I meant was tolerance, not
approval. If we are to have true diversity, tolerance is what you get.
If you demand approval, than you are not longer tolerating those whose
moral values differ from your own.
> More acceptance of the fact that people will
> > have different views on abortion, and the like.
>
> See above -- more acceptance of the fact that some people will think
> that bombing clinics is a viable response to the abortion question
> translates into more acceptance?
No, people are able to acknowledge that they dissaprove of abortion
without having to bomb the clinic. Other people who support abortion
are able to acknowledge that the first groups disagrees with abortion,
without accusing them of bombing clinics.
>
> It's nice to see the diversity angle crop up from the other side o the
> divide -- a little chuckle for the irony monster.
Irony abounds. Is your irony monster loose because conservatives who
don't particularly espouse diversity as a positive value are being
harbored under the diversity rubric (by my argument, not theirs), or
because liberals who do espouse diversity are having trouble
supporting it when diversity turns out to include people whose
political values they dislike?
Bruce McGuffin
Bruce McGuffin
Ideological diversity is not the central theme of the article,
just something he alludes to repeatedly in passing, that I thought
was interesting. He may not even use those words. You have to do
a little thinking to extract my point from his article. But I'm sure
you're in favor of thought.
Bruce McGuffin
smw
"Michael S. Morris" wrote:
>
> Thursday, the 7th of February, 2002
>
> Silke:
> Seriously, why not face the facts? How many serious
> right-wing thinkers or writers do you know? And I
> don't mean writers or thinkers co-opted by
> the right. Count for yourself.
> I said:
> Well, since there exists not *one* *serious* left-wing
> thinker or writer, it'd be difficult to come
> up with less than that on the right-wing side,
> wouldn't it?
> Silke:
> You lack both imagination and intellectual taste.
>
> Neither really.
>
> Silke:
> Leo Strauss and Heidegger both count as serious
> conservative thinkers.
>
> This flabbergasts. Strauss and Heidegger are dead.
> I *assumed* your blanket assertion about the small number
> of "serious, right-wing thinkers" was at least limited
> to *living* intellectuals.
Whatever would give you such a silly idea in the context of a discussion
of the books read by humanities faculty?
If you open it up to all serious
> political thinkers for all of time, and given that
> you seem to define the center of liberal (as opposed
> to social) democracy as *already* right-wing,
at this point in history -- I called it center-right, however, not
right-wing. Forgive me for arguing from a political background that
includes more than two parties.
it would seem
> that nearly *all* but a tiny 19th-20th century aberration
> of serious political thought has been either "right-wing"
> (TM Silke) or, umm, far to the right of "right-wing".
Nah. In the context of their times, they were hardly ever on the
reactionary side of things.
> Silke:
> Even though I find it hard to imagine that either
> of them could stomach Bush.
>
> This is stupid of you. Bush is a lightweight who any
> serious thinker would find hard to stomach. This doesn't
> mean that Al Gore or Ralph Nader would have been easier
> to stomach, however.
Gore, just a tad easier perhaps. Mind, just a tad. I'm reminded of a NYT
op-ed column where someone claimed that Clinton would have "happily
stayed up all night discussing the nature of good and evil" whereas
Bush's lack of such "hyperreflexivity" should probably be seen as an
asset.
The quality of American politicians is
> very low. I certainly do not buy that this lowness is
> special to Republicans.
Neither do I, really. But I think the quality of intellectuals arguing
for what you think of as the left is on the whole slightly higher than
the quality of intellectuals arguing for the right. In fact, the dearth
of intellectuals on the right side of things is something the right
itself habitually thematizes, sometimes with regret, sometimes with
something apparently approaching pride.
> Silke:
> I'm not very impressed by either Pangle or
> Oakeshott.
>
> And, of course, I'm not surprised that you aren't
> impressed. Your ghetto *defines away* those guys as
> unimpressive. They are, however, both serious thinkers
> and impressive.
Can't you take those bloody blinkers off for once? I'm not impressed by
Pangle because he's derivative of Strauss and never managed to get out
of his shadow.
s
smw
I'm entirely in favor of thought. However, the article simply
contradicts your point. If you think otherwise, kindly cite something.
s
Michael Zeleny
>thank god
This response will come back to haunt you, if you ever mature
to the point of pondering what gets left behind.
smw
Bruce McGuffin wrote:
>
> smw <s...@umich.edu> writes:
>
Bruce on variation:
> > > For example a wider range of views on homosexuality and related
> > > issues. More social acceptance of people whose political views fall
> > > outside the local norm.
> >
> > I'll check out the article, but doesn't it strike you as funny that in
> > your summary above, "a wider range of views on homosexuality" rather
> > obviously conflicts with "more social acceptance" assuming that the
> > narrowness of the coastie range presumably prescribes acceptance of
> > homosexuality?
> >
>
> No, because when I wrote "acceptance" what I meant was tolerance, not
> approval. If we are to have true diversity, tolerance is what you get.
> If you demand approval, than you are not longer tolerating those whose
> moral values differ from your own.
Bruce, this is a touch silly, and you know it well enough. The idea that
the coastal cities are less tolerant than Middle America simply isn't
supported by the article. Neither is the idea that there's greater
"variation." You can find pretty much any viewpoint on any issue in
either regions. It's a question of percentages. And awfully small ones
if you go back to the origin of the red/blue divide. More generally, I
find the idea of "tolerance" implied in your paragraph a kind of cotton
wool. What's the opposite of tolerance in this system supposed to be?
What is it they do to anti-abortionists in, say, Philadelphia that they
don't do to them in Flint?
> > More acceptance of the fact that people will
> > > have different views on abortion, and the like.
> >
> > See above -- more acceptance of the fact that some people will think
> > that bombing clinics is a viable response to the abortion question
> > translates into more acceptance?
>
> No, people are able to acknowledge that they dissaprove of abortion
> without having to bomb the clinic. Other people who support abortion
> are able to acknowledge that the first groups disagrees with abortion,
> without accusing them of bombing clinics.
So red America is exactly like blue America -- some support liberal,
some conservative legislation, and very few think that clinics ought to
be bombed or that abortion is the greatest thing since marshmallows.
>
> >
> > It's nice to see the diversity angle crop up from the other side o the
> > divide -- a little chuckle for the irony monster.
>
> Irony abounds. Is your irony monster loose because conservatives who
> don't particularly espouse diversity as a positive value are being
> harbored under the diversity rubric (by my argument, not theirs), or
> because liberals who do espouse diversity are having trouble
> supporting it when diversity turns out to include people whose
> political values they dislike?
In your paraphrase, Brooks comes across as a conservative praising
diversity, which is cute (even though not very accurate -- in fact, he
finds his middle America way too bland and wouldn't want to live there).
That said, nobody likes diversity when it interferes with what they
cherish the most. In the end, what matters is the kind of legislation
you support. On abortion, to give a terribly simple example -- liberal
legislation allows people to keep or not keep their babies, to
"tolerate" in your parlance the decision they want to make. Restrictive
legislation doesn't. At the same time, if you really are convinced that
abortion is murder (and very few anti-abortionists really do seem to
think that), "tolerating" it wouldn't be much of an option.
s
smw
You're an ass, Morris. I think Libertarianism is pretty silly and full
of contradictions; I also think its practice would leave the country in
shambles. But fascism is first and most importantly predicated upon an
extreme level of state control, and I don't see anything in
Libertarianism that would support such a definition. Which doesn't mean
that self-declared Libertarians can't espouse fascist or fascistoid
ideas, or ideas also dear to fascists.
smw
Joan Marie Shields wrote:
> All in all I'd say that while I
> don't have as much experience with Humanities as say Silke, I do have
> at least as much though more than likely more than you.
>
> Still, all in all I think you're both pretty silly though I must admit
> that Silke is slightly more entertaining. You're both stereotyping and
> making broad sweeping statements that actually mean very little.
I don't mind being called silly, but I slightly preferred to be called
silly on the basis of the argument I actually make. It's hardly
"stereotyping" to fully agree with the suggestion that the majority of
humanities faculty are to the left of the US center. My argument is that
this has to do much with their reading matter, and that non-academics
who read and like similar books tend to be left of center as well.
Now if you want to argue with that, feel free. The voting patterns of
MDs, however, are besides the point.
s
Joan Marie Shields
Joan Shields (jshi...@uci.edu) wrote:
>> All in all I'd say that while I
>> don't have as much experience with Humanities as say Silke, I do have
>> at least as much though more than likely more than you.
>> Still, all in all I think you're both pretty silly though I must admit
>> that Silke is slightly more entertaining. You're both stereotyping and
>> making broad sweeping statements that actually mean very little.
smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
>I don't mind being called silly, but I slightly preferred to be called
>silly on the basis of the argument I actually make. It's hardly
>"stereotyping" to fully agree with the suggestion that the majority of
>humanities faculty are to the left of the US center. My argument is that
>this has to do much with their reading matter, and that non-academics
>who read and like similar books tend to be left of center as well.
I can't really say if most are to the left (the label of Democrat/Republican
is, imo, not a good indication of left vs right-wing, there are many shades
of grey between - not to mention that there's not that much difference
between the two, in the average sense, as you've pointed out in the past)
although I do think that simply saying that they 'read more' is being
rather simplistic. Off the top of my head I can think of at least a dozen
individuals in the Humanities and the Sciences who read a great deal, some
even wildly, who are nevertheless rather conservative in their politics.
And, like in my last post, my advisor is fairly well-read (going by her
library our conversations about books) and is very adament about women's
rights though she is fairly conservative about other subjects. Would you
call her left-wing or right-wing?
Keep in mind as well that just because a Humanities professor may read
a good many books - is the reading material broadbased or mostly in a
narrow subject?
> Now if you want to argue with that, feel free. The voting patterns of
>MDs, however, are besides the point.
Not at all. They are a group of fairly well-educated (hopefully) people
who have, more than likely, read a great deal. They also have a very
personal interest in certain political movements/actions. Are they more
likely to be left or right-wing when it comes to healthcare given their
close experience with the healthcare industry in this country? Can you
group them politically given this?
And even if you are correct about all this - what does it mean? Are most
college graduates left-wing? Are most without a college degree right-wing?
Are the poor (tending to have less education) more likely then to be
right-wing?
smw
Joan Marie Shields wrote:
>
> Joan Shields (jshi...@uci.edu) wrote:
> >> All in all I'd say that while I
> >> don't have as much experience with Humanities as say Silke, I do have
> >> at least as much though more than likely more than you.
>
> >> Still, all in all I think you're both pretty silly though I must admit
> >> that Silke is slightly more entertaining. You're both stereotyping and
> >> making broad sweeping statements that actually mean very little.
>
> smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
> >I don't mind being called silly, but I slightly preferred to be called
> >silly on the basis of the argument I actually make. It's hardly
> >"stereotyping" to fully agree with the suggestion that the majority of
> >humanities faculty are to the left of the US center. My argument is that
> >this has to do much with their reading matter, and that non-academics
> >who read and like similar books tend to be left of center as well.
>
> I can't really say if most are to the left (the label of Democrat/Republican
> is, imo, not a good indication of left vs right-wing, there are many shades
> of grey between - not to mention that there's not that much difference
> between the two, in the average sense, as you've pointed out in the past)
> although I do think that simply saying that they 'read more' is being
> rather simplistic.
Why say it, then? Seriously, can't you take the time to read an argument
and give some slight effort to understanding it before you post? The
question is not who "reads more" but who reads what. And humanities
faculty read different books than mainstream America. At the same time,
these books are also read by non-academics. And the non-academics who
tend to read the books that humanities faculty tend to read (esp the
theoretical stuff), tend to be to the left as well.
> Off the top of my head I can think of at least a dozen
> individuals in the Humanities and the Sciences who read a great deal, some
> even wildly, who are nevertheless rather conservative in their politics.
Wonderful. Now can we please get back to the point, which is one of
percentages? The preferences are well-documented.
> And, like in my last post, my advisor is fairly well-read (going by her
> library our conversations about books) and is very adament about women's
> rights though she is fairly conservative about other subjects. Would you
> call her left-wing or right-wing?
I wouldn't call her anything whatsoever. I have no clue what you mean by
"fairly well-read," "being adamant about women's rights" or "fairly
conservative about other subjects."
> Keep in mind as well that just because a Humanities professor may read
> a good many books - is the reading material broadbased or mostly in a
> narrow subject?
Please digest that red herring by yourself.
>
> > Now if you want to argue with that, feel free. The voting patterns of
> >MDs, however, are besides the point.
>
> Not at all. They are a group of fairly well-educated (hopefully) people
> who have, more than likely, read a great deal.
But they're not humanities faculty. And I rather doubt that as a group
they're well-read in continental philosophy, another topic that's been
brought up. I was fairly involved in the life science, values, and
societies program here for a few years, heavily populated by MDs, and I
can say with considerable confidence that on the whole their reading
habits differ from the reading habits of your average complit professor.
And before you cite all the MDs you know who have _A Thousand Plateaus_
on their nightdesk, keep in mind that we are talking trends, averages,
majorities, etc.
>
> And even if you are correct about all this - what does it mean? Are most
> college graduates left-wing? Are most without a college degree right-wing?
> Are the poor (tending to have less education) more likely then to be
> right-wing?
Why don't you do a google search on voting patterns and find out.
s
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 7th of February, 2002
I said:
In a democracy, the norm *defines* the *political*
reality. Of course, I'm sorry to have break that
news to you.
Silke:
Do a google search on "Enron" for political
reality, sweetums. Politics isn't who votes
for whom; politics is what power does.
I said:
Well, but the problem is that when the Enron guy
came door-to-door here back before the election,
he was going to give us our $1.57, but stipulated
that 43% of it was for the presidential election,
of which 52% of that was to bribe us to vote for
W. and 48% to bribe us to vote for Gore. Then, of
the remainder, we were to weight the bribes 60-40
towards incumbents, except where it looked like
the incumbent was going to lose one month before
the election. And, anyway, our eyes kind of glazed
over at the math involved and we suggested he go take
the money to our neighbour who watches television
and, thus, follow such instructions more closely.
I voted Libertarian (the American Fascist Party to
those in the Silkeverse).
Silke:
You're an ass, Morris.
I'm sick and tired of hearing those who oppose governmental
power get called "right-wing" by historically ignorant gits
like you, Weineck.
And the point of the paragraph remains against you.
It has yet to be shown that a dime of all this money
that corporations dole out to politicos goes to
cause one vote to have been cast other than it was
cast. I.e., the "political spectrum" in the United States
is *exactly* where it would have been had you not had
Enron to cluck over.
Silke:
I think Libertarianism is pretty silly and full
of contradictions; I also think its practice
would leave the country in shambles.
I'm sure you think all kinds of equally ridiculous things,
but this does not make them true. In any event, though
I might be called a libertarian by some usages I have encountered,
I am not a Libertarian. I have my own quarrels with the
Libertarian Party. They do, however, talk the closest sense
of anyone going, and, I have chosen to shake the dust of
voting for Democrats from my feet. In any event, if there
is an "ism" I subscribe, it is Liberalism---not the abolition
of government as in Anarchism, not the minimalization
of government as in Libertarianism, but the strict
limitation of government away from the proper sphere and
sovereignty of choice of the individual.
Silke:
But fascism is first and most importantly
predicated upon an extreme level of state
control,
Gosh. We actually agree about something.
Of course, I go on to remark that this is
kind of like communism, and to note Churchill
again in calling communism and fascism twin
sons of the same mother, but again, why the
hell is it that you can bring yourself to call
the US polity at present right-wing? There is
place on earth with less state control at
present, and this place has never been more
free in practice as well as theory.
Silke:
and I don't see anything in
Libertarianism that would support
such a definition.
Nor do I. But you did just get through calling
moderate Democrats "right-wing". This could only
mean that their insufficient leftishness (love
of "state control dedicated to the social good")
by European standards makes them more liberal, more
libertarian, than the European center. Thus, you seem
to be calling anything that smacks of freedom,
"right-wing". Why liberals and libertarians should
get lumped with fascists and conservatives as
"right-wing", I don't know, but I don't like it.
Silke:
Which doesn't mean that self-declared
Libertarians can't espouse fascist or fascistoid
ideas, or ideas also dear to fascists.
Of course it doesn't mean that. Any more than
adherence to "social democratism" absolves
one of the taint. Of course, from a liberal/
libertarian perspective, the taint of
state control is and always is the taint
of state control, so the only real spectrum
is the one between liberalism and illiberalism,
and it matters not a jot whether the illiberalism
is enacted in the name of blood and country or
the proletariat.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 7th of February, 2002
Joan:
Humanities - there are those who
lean left and some that lean right and then there are those
who really don't give a shit.
I said:
Which says that your experience gives you an inaccurate
impression of humanities-types political leanings, since
the objective measure thereof---the poll in question,
showed 3% Republicans and 57% percent Democrats.
Joan:
I said most, not all. [...]
All right. Here's where I get patronizing: Earth to
Joan: The starting point here is *a poll* in which
humanities professors at Eastern universities were
asked about their political leanings.
That poll (obviously gleefully reported by a conservative
columnist) says 3% Repubs, 57% Democrats. I.e., 20 times
more Democrats than GOP.
I merely said that this poll is what I have encountered
in my experience---there are a few Republican humanities-types
out there (I've seen them more in the "harder" humanites,
like historians, or political philosophers), but they are
damn few. And I said that twenty times more Demos than Repubs
is far, far, far, far from the national average of the
electorate.
Now you add that, in your experience, some lean
right, some lean left, some don't give a shit.
I.e., you *imply* a rough equality in numbers
between those humanities types who lean left and
those who lean right.
I conclude: Either the poll is wrong or you are
wrong about the political leanings of humanities
professors.
If you want to argue the poll is wrong please argue
with it and not with me.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Kater Moggin
> Politics isn't who votes for whom; politics is what power does.
Meaning that politically speaking, most teachers are petty
tyrants, no matter how they cast their votes. ObBook:
_Alice in Wonderland_, which Herr Doktor Latane helpfully cited
during an earlier tramp over the same ground.
-- Moggin
Marko Amnell
> Marko Amnell wrote:
> >thank god
>
> This response will come back to haunt you, if you ever
> mature to the point of pondering what gets left behind.
Somehow, your suggestion that my glee at the news of the
passing of that libertarian poseur and academic hack Nozick
would come back to "haunt" me reminded me of something I
read this morning over coffee at a local café. It's a passage
from Jonathan Rée's review of _Radical Enlightenment:
Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750_ by
Jonathan Israel in the January 24 issue of the London
Review of Books. Here's the passage:
"Hegel was perhaps the first thinker to treat the Enlightenment
as a thing of the past, pronouncing in 1807 that it had always
been destined to fail because, for all its harping on about
reason, it was nothing like as rational as it thought. When it
tried to discredit traditional Christianity as a tissue of
absurdities created by conspiracies of priests, for example,
it was not only overlooking the implicit rationality of popular
religious practice, but also painting a prophetic self-portrait.
It was the catastrophe of Jacobin supremacy in Paris in 1793-
1794 that revealed the true meaning of the Enlightenment's
infatuation with its own cold calculations. The fake religiosity
of the Festival of the Supreme Being hovered over the corpse of
Revolutionary reality like 'the exhalation of a stale gas', as
Hegel put it, and a monstrous equation between suspicion and
guilt led straight to the Terror. The absolute freedom of the
Enlightenment was the negation of trust, faith, love, life and
history: all it meant was death by guillotine - 'the coldest
and meanest of all deaths', Hegel said, 'with no more significance
than cutting off a head of cabbage or swallowing a mouthful of
water'."
I particularly like the image of the Festival of the Supreme
Being hovering like a foul stench over the headless corpses
of guillotined members of the French aristocracy. It's almost
like something out of Lautréamont, don't you think?
And do let me know when your transformation from a young and
promising logician, rationalist philosophy student and
revolutionary socialist to a middle-aged melancholy wreck
and mystic is complete, Zeleny. I expect you'll be taking
up the study of the Kabbala next. You wouldn't want to leave
anything from your cherished Jewish heritage behind, now
would you?
Michael S. Morris
Friday, the 8th of February, 2002
Marko Amnell wrote:
It's a passage
from Jonathan Rée's review of _Radical Enlightenment:
Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750_ by
Jonathan Israel in the January 24 issue of the London
Review of Books. Here's the passage: [...]
Interesting how old themes come back---the idea that
Hegel is the start of the Left, for claiming a kind
of scientific progression to history, and the idea
that the problem (the problem=the anfractuosity of left and
right that has so occupied "continental philosophy" with
such murderous consequences for the last 200 years)
has always been that European Enlightenment got hung up
with the French Revolution. So much so that the French
Revolution became the archetype for all "revolution".
The British 1688 Revolution and the American 1776 Revolution
became "not really revolutions"---they couldn't be
real since there were no guillotines.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
M J Carley
>The British 1688 Revolution and the American 1776 Revolution
>became "not really revolutions"---they couldn't be
>real since there were no guillotines.
Of course, you're forgetting the previous English Revolution, to which
the 1688 `revolution' was a counter-revolution, and which most
certainly did involve a guillotine, in spirit if not in practice.
--
`The question of whether Wittgenstein ever entered a Dublin pub cannot
be answered definitively.'
Marko Amnell
> Interesting how old themes come back---the idea that
> Hegel is the start of the Left, for claiming a kind
> of scientific progression to history, and the idea
> that the problem (the problem=the anfractuosity of left and
> right that has so occupied "continental philosophy" with
> such murderous consequences for the last 200 years)
> has always been that European Enlightenment got hung up
> with the French Revolution. So much so that the French
> Revolution became the archetype for all "revolution".
> The British 1688 Revolution and the American 1776 Revolution
> became "not really revolutions"---they couldn't be
> real since there were no guillotines.
Well, I don't think the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in
England really was a revolution. The monarchy had already
been restored to the throne in 1661, and the fact that a
few noblemen asked the Protestant Willam of Orange of the
Netherlands to come to save England from a Catholic king
doesn't count in my book as a big enough change to be
called a "revolution". The reign of Willam and Mary did
lead right away to the Bill of Rights in 1689 and that
was a very important step in the development of liberalism.
I think the American Revolution was mostly a war of independence,
not a revolution, but I expect you would disgree with me
about that given your interest in the American Constitution.
I think the French Revolution has become the paradigmatic
example of a revolution (and a model for the Russian Revolution
of 1917) because it led to a change in the whole structure
of society. The American Revolution did not change American
society as profoundly as the French Revolution, although there
were big changes, some as a result of the fact the 13 colonies
had to conduct a major war together for seven years. I think
it is possible to argue, as Barrington Moore did for example,
that the French Revolution was so violent because the forces
of social change in France had been "pent up" for so long.
The French peasantry and bourgeoisie really were over-taxed
and bent on change at all costs, while their English counterparts
had enjoyed a much more liberal regime for quite some time.
But do recall that the initial stages of the English Civil War
were very violent indeed. I think that is when the real English
Revolution occurred, with the execution of Charles I, and the
rule of Parliament and Cromwell as Lord Protector, not with
the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Cromwell did come very close
to becoming a dictator at one point, and there was plenty
of blood shed in the battles between the Cavaliers and Roundheads.
The shift from an agrarian and feudal society to an industrial
and capitalistic one with the bourgeoisie in power probably
always has to involve some bloodshed. Why would the old order
voluntarily give up power? That was what Barrington Moore thought
anyway.
ObBook. _The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy_ by
Barrington Moore Jr.
smw
Libertarianism is far too confused to be labeled "right-wing." Some of
its ideas are from the right, some from the left. It's nowhere near as
homogeneous a movement as you seem to try to make it, anyway, and those
who call themselves Libertarians cover a wide spectrum of political
stances, many of them contradictory. But you know this.
> And the point of the paragraph remains against you.
> It has yet to be shown that a dime of all this money
> that corporations dole out to politicos goes to
> cause one vote to have been cast other than it was
> cast.
I already told you it's not about voting, it's about what those who've
been voted in promise to do for it behind closed doors, and what they
actually do do. Mind, this is not specific to Republicans or the right,
either.
I.e., the "political spectrum" in the United States
> is *exactly* where it would have been had you not had
> Enron to cluck over.
so what?
> Silke:
> But fascism is first and most importantly
> predicated upon an extreme level of state
> control,
>
> Gosh. We actually agree about something.
But now we need an instance of me calling Libertarians fascist, or
perhaps a retraction from you.
> Of course, I go on to remark that this is
> kind of like communism, and to note Churchill
> again in calling communism and fascism twin
> sons of the same mother, but again, why the
> hell is it that you can bring yourself to call
> the US polity at present right-wing? There is
> place on earth with less state control at
> present, and this place has never been more
> free in practice as well as theory.
I actually imagine that you do believe that.
> Silke:
> and I don't see anything in
> Libertarianism that would support
> such a definition.
>
> Nor do I. But you did just get through calling
> moderate Democrats "right-wing".
I just got through calling the right of center, which they are from the
perspective of a full political spectrum. This doesn't even strike me as
in the least controversial.
This could only
> mean that their insufficient leftishness (love
> of "state control dedicated to the social good")
> by European standards makes them more liberal, more
> libertarian, than the European center. Thus, you seem
> to be calling anything that smacks of freedom,
> "right-wing".
This is so silly it's almost baffling. You are really and truly
suggesting that the Bush administration is giving off the fragrance of
"freedom"?
Why liberals and libertarians should
> get lumped with fascists and conservatives as
> "right-wing", I don't know, but I don't like it.
Why don't you find someone who argues the points you want to argue
against?
>
> Silke:
> Which doesn't mean that self-declared
> Libertarians can't espouse fascist or fascistoid
> ideas, or ideas also dear to fascists.
>
> Of course it doesn't mean that. Any more than
> adherence to "social democratism" absolves
> one of the taint. Of course, from a liberal/
> libertarian perspective, the taint of
> state control is and always is the taint
> of state control, so the only real spectrum
> is the one between liberalism and illiberalism,
> and it matters not a jot whether the illiberalism
> is enacted in the name of blood and country or
> the proletariat.
Gosh, the day I see the word "proletariat" used in a presidential
campaign by one of the main candidates I'll buy you a beer.
s
smw
"Michael S. Morris" wrote:
>
> Friday, the 8th of February, 2002
>
> Marko Amnell wrote:
> It's a passage
> from Jonathan Rée's review of _Radical Enlightenment:
> Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750_ by
> Jonathan Israel in the January 24 issue of the London
> Review of Books. Here's the passage: [...]
>
> Interesting how old themes come back---the idea that
> Hegel is the start of the Left, for claiming a kind
> of scientific progression to history
I was discussing the _Phenomenology_ with a friend recently (I'm reading
it with a group of grad students right now), and he said that it must
have looked rather like _Anti-Oedipus_ when it came out. A very smart
analogy, I thought.
s
Marko Amnell
> I was discussing the _Phenomenology_ with a friend recently
> (I'm reading it with a group of grad students right now),
> and he said that it must have looked rather like _Anti-Oedipus_
> when it came out. A very smart analogy, I thought.
Hmm. One way of looking at what Deleuze and Guattari tried to
do is to read _Anti-Oedipus_ as an attempt to carry out a fusion
of the ideas of Freud and Marx (something that had been brewing
in French thought for some time before that), and they wrote in
a style that rebelled against what they perceived to be the overly
rationalistic orthodoxies of their predecessors. I take it your
student thought Hegel was also reacting to overly rationalistic
predecessors like Kant in a somewhat similar way. The problem
with this analogy is that while Hegel was politically conservative,
Deleuze and Guattari were radical socialists.
smw
Marko Amnell wrote:
>
> smw wrote:
>
> > I was discussing the _Phenomenology_ with a friend recently
> > (I'm reading it with a group of grad students right now),
> > and he said that it must have looked rather like _Anti-Oedipus_
> > when it came out. A very smart analogy, I thought.
>
> Hmm. One way of looking at what Deleuze and Guattari tried to
> do is to read _Anti-Oedipus_ as an attempt to carry out a fusion
> of the ideas of Freud and Marx (something that had been brewing
> in French thought for some time before that)
it's one way, to be sure, but I think that what D/G are pointing out is
that the Freudian family is a remnant of the living monotheistic god and
that you cannot abolish the father w/o abolishing the son as well.
, and they wrote in
> a style that rebelled against what they perceived to be the overly
> rationalistic orthodoxies of their predecessors. I take it your
> student thought
not my student, my former thesis advisor.
> Hegel was also reacting to overly rationalistic
> predecessors like Kant in a somewhat similar way.
The _Phenomenology_ is a wild book, very sensual, quite bitchy at times,
and radically new at the time (even though more deeply indebted to early
Romanticism than its polemics would suggest).
> The problem
> with this analogy is that while Hegel was politically conservative,
> Deleuze and Guattari were radical socialists.
See, the idea that Hegel was "politically conservative" strikes me as an
enormous misunderstanding. Here's the first few paragraphs of Pinkard's
biography:
"Hegel is one of the thinkers just about all educated people think they
know something about. His philosophy was the forerunner to Karl Marx's
theory of history, but unlike Marx, who was a materialist, Hegel was an
idealist in the sense that he thought that reality was ultimately
spiritual, and that it developed according to the process of
thesis/antithesis/synthesis. Hegel also glorified the Prussian state
claiming that it was God's work, was perfect, and was the culmination of
all human history. ... Hegel played a large role in the growth of German
nationalism, authoritarianism, and militarism with his quasi-mystical
celebrations of what he pretentiously called the Absolute.
Just about everything in the first paragraph is false except for the
first sentence.
What is even more striking is that it is all clearly and demonstrably
wrong, has been known to be wrong in scholarly circles for a long time
now, _and_ it still appears in almost all short histories of thought or
brief encyclopedia entries about Hegel."
Terry Pinkard, _Hegel: A Biography_, Cambridge UP 2000.
Joan Marie Shields
Joan Shields (jshi...@uci.edu) wrote:
>> >> Still, all in all I think you're both pretty silly though I must admit
>> >> that Silke is slightly more entertaining. You're both stereotyping and
>> >> making broad sweeping statements that actually mean very little.
smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
>> >I don't mind being called silly, but I slightly preferred to be called
>> >silly on the basis of the argument I actually make. It's hardly
>> >"stereotyping" to fully agree with the suggestion that the majority of
>> >humanities faculty are to the left of the US center. My argument is that
>> >this has to do much with their reading matter, and that non-academics
>> >who read and like similar books tend to be left of center as well.
>> I can't really say if most are to the left (the label of Democrat/Republican
>> is, imo, not a good indication of left vs right-wing, there are many shades
>> of grey between - not to mention that there's not that much difference
>> between the two, in the average sense, as you've pointed out in the past)
>> although I do think that simply saying that they 'read more' is being
>> rather simplistic.
>Why say it, then? Seriously, can't you take the time to read an argument
>and give some slight effort to understanding it before you post? The
>question is not who "reads more" but who reads what. And humanities
>faculty read different books than mainstream America. At the same time,
>these books are also read by non-academics. And the non-academics who
>tend to read the books that humanities faculty tend to read (esp the
>theoretical stuff), tend to be to the left as well.
What is your evidence of this? 57% Democrat and 3% Republican among
Humanities professors is hardly evidence. Besides, how do they come to
read such books (none of which are listed though there was a comment about
continental philosophers - sorry, most of the philosophers I've read are
Eastern so maybe I'm just don't understand the shorthand)? Is it perhaps
more a case that those (accepting, for the moment that your statement about
the political leanings of most Humanities profs is true - though you have
to admit that a 3% difference does not exactly translate to most) who are
drawn to the Humanities, drawn to read such books, are more apt to be left-
wing from the beginning? If you should insist that 100 people representing
a cross-section of the US politcal views read a certain set of books that
most (most > 57%) will suddenly become left-wing?
So, answer me four questions:
1) Does 57% really constitute 'most'?
2) What came first, the political leanings or the books? Keep in mind
family influences, mentors, political climate etc.
3) What are the other 40% who have not labeled themselves Democrat or
Republican? Where do they fall?
4) What constitutes a left-winger? Am I left-wing? Some would scream
yes while others would say no.
>> Off the top of my head I can think of at least a dozen
>> individuals in the Humanities and the Sciences who read a great deal, some
>> even wildly, who are nevertheless rather conservative in their politics.
>Wonderful. Now can we please get back to the point, which is one of
>percentages? The preferences are well-documented.
And like I've said in the above - the percentages you've presented are
so simplistic as to be nearly meaningless.
>> And, like in my last post, my advisor is fairly well-read (going by her
>> library our conversations about books) and is very adament about women's
>> rights though she is fairly conservative about other subjects. Would you
>> call her left-wing or right-wing?
>I wouldn't call her anything whatsoever. I have no clue what you mean by
>"fairly well-read," "being adamant about women's rights" or "fairly
>conservative about other subjects."
Her politics is a mix between standard Republican and Democratic dogma.
If you have no conception about how someone can be a bit of both - well,
perhaps that's the nub of the problem. People, even Humanities professors,
rarely fall completely along party lines. You and Morris are two examples
of this - though I'd hardly say either of you are typical of the norm.
>> Keep in mind as well that just because a Humanities professor may read
>> a good many books - is the reading material broadbased or mostly in a
>> narrow subject?
>Please digest that red herring by yourself.
Oh no, it's a valid point. If your specialty is the change in religious
literature during the late 13th century - how does that influence a left-
wing political view? Perhaps you are talking about a small sub-set of
Humanities professors? How about music professors? Also in the Humanities
but would they have all read the same books?
>> >Now if you want to argue with that, feel free. The voting patterns of
>> >MDs, however, are besides the point.
>> Not at all. They are a group of fairly well-educated (hopefully) people
>> who have, more than likely, read a great deal.
>But they're not humanities faculty. And I rather doubt that as a group
>they're well-read in continental philosophy, another topic that's been
>brought up. I was fairly involved in the life science, values, and
>societies program here for a few years, heavily populated by MDs, and I
>can say with considerable confidence that on the whole their reading
>habits differ from the reading habits of your average complit professor.
>And before you cite all the MDs you know who have _A Thousand Plateaus_
>on their nightdesk, keep in mind that we are talking trends, averages,
>majorities, etc.
True, they are not Humanities professors and probably not well-read in
continental philosophy - however, if what you say holds true about
Humanities professors, can you not then make a statement about another
group, in this case MDs? Can you predict the political leanings of
another group based on what sorts of books they are likely (or unlikely)
to read? Or is this ONLY in the case of Humanities professors? What
about historians? Are those who specialize in Greek history more likely
to be one or the other based on the texts they are most likely to have
read? Will an understanding of Plato, Aristotle etc align their politics
as you claim is the case with Humanities professors?
Trends, averages and majorities - that's a tricky line to follow. The
latter two can shift depending upon where you put your ruler. Does a
label of Democrat and Republican indicate left and right-wing? Or is
that being too simplistic? What fields does Humanities cover? Do you
include music and arts? The Humanities department here at UCI covers
art history (western as well as eastern), languages (German, Italian,
Korean, etc), Women's studies, poetry, essay writing, composition
classes, Drama, novels (including Dostoyevski and Defoe (whose Journal
of the Plague Years is also of interest to infectious disease people)),
film, Introduction to the History of Science, Philosophy of Biology,
world history (as well as more specialized i.e., US Civil War and
Pompeii) as well as various philosophy classes.
What books do all these have in common?
>> And even if you are correct about all this - what does it mean? Are most
>> college graduates left-wing? Are most without a college degree right-wing?
>> Are the poor (tending to have less education) more likely then to be
>> right-wing?
>Why don't you do a google search on voting patterns and find out.
I thought you were the expert here.
smw
Joan Marie Shields wrote:
...
> >Why say it, then? Seriously, can't you take the time to read an argument
> >and give some slight effort to understanding it before you post? The
> >question is not who "reads more" but who reads what. And humanities
> >faculty read different books than mainstream America. At the same time,
> >these books are also read by non-academics. And the non-academics who
> >tend to read the books that humanities faculty tend to read (esp the
> >theoretical stuff), tend to be to the left as well.
>
> What is your evidence of this? 57% Democrat and 3% Republican among
> Humanities professors is hardly evidence. Besides, how do they come to
> read such books (none of which are listed though there was a comment about
> continental philosophers - sorry, most of the philosophers I've read are
> Eastern so maybe I'm just don't understand the shorthand)? Is it perhaps
> more a case that those (accepting, for the moment that your statement about
> the political leanings of most Humanities profs is true - though you have
> to admit that a 3% difference does not exactly translate to most)
??? 3% of humanities faculty voted Republican. Roughly 50% of the
electorate voted Republican. This translates into "a 3% difference"
exactly how?
who are
> drawn to the Humanities, drawn to read such books, are more apt to be left-
> wing from the beginning?
Precisely. As I said, calling it "the academy" is a red herring.
> If you should insist that 100 people representing
> a cross-section of the US politcal views read a certain set of books that
> most (most > 57%) will suddenly become left-wing?
Yes, I strongly suspect that if all of the US-American electorate read
the same material that humanities profs read, the political balance in
the US would shift. Apparently, you want to disagree with that. Be my
guest.
> So, answer me four questions:
> 1) Does 57% really constitute 'most'?
uh, yes.
> 2) What came first, the political leanings or the books? Keep in mind
> family influences, mentors, political climate etc.
political views are overdetermined. We know that.
> 3) What are the other 40% who have not labeled themselves Democrat or
> Republican? Where do they fall?
Most of them to the left.
> 4) What constitutes a left-winger? Am I left-wing? Some would scream
> yes while others would say no.
who cares?
> >> Off the top of my head I can think of at least a dozen
> >> individuals in the Humanities and the Sciences who read a great deal, some
> >> even wildly, who are nevertheless rather conservative in their politics.
>
> >Wonderful. Now can we please get back to the point, which is one of
> >percentages? The preferences are well-documented.
>
> And like I've said in the above - the percentages you've presented are
> so simplistic as to be nearly meaningless.
The point of the article was that humanities faculty don't vote
Republican. That's a simple, not a simplistic point. The article in
question wants to present that as some kind of institutionalized thought
control. I'm arguing that there are other reasons.
> >> And, like in my last post, my advisor is fairly well-read (going by her
> >> library our conversations about books) and is very adament about women's
> >> rights though she is fairly conservative about other subjects. Would you
> >> call her left-wing or right-wing?
>
> >I wouldn't call her anything whatsoever. I have no clue what you mean by
> >"fairly well-read," "being adamant about women's rights" or "fairly
> >conservative about other subjects."
>
> Her politics is a mix between standard Republican and Democratic dogma.
> If you have no conception about how someone can be a bit of both - well,
> perhaps that's the nub of the problem. People, even Humanities professors,
> rarely fall completely along party lines.
But they vote along party lines.
> You and Morris are two examples
> of this - though I'd hardly say either of you are typical of the norm.
>
> >> Keep in mind as well that just because a Humanities professor may read
> >> a good many books - is the reading material broadbased or mostly in a
> >> narrow subject?
>
> >Please digest that red herring by yourself.
>
> Oh no, it's a valid point. If your specialty is the change in religious
> literature during the late 13th century - how does that influence a left-
> wing political view? Perhaps you are talking about a small sub-set of
> Humanities professors? How about music professors? Also in the Humanities
> but would they have all read the same books?
Many of them would have, yes, indeed. And the ones who don't usually
know how to fake it. You'll be hard-pressed, for instance, to find a
humanities prof who isn't acquainted with Foucault, no matter what his
or her field.
>
> >> >Now if you want to argue with that, feel free. The voting patterns of
> >> >MDs, however, are besides the point.
>
> >> Not at all. They are a group of fairly well-educated (hopefully) people
> >> who have, more than likely, read a great deal.
>
> >But they're not humanities faculty. And I rather doubt that as a group
> >they're well-read in continental philosophy, another topic that's been
> >brought up. I was fairly involved in the life science, values, and
> >societies program here for a few years, heavily populated by MDs, and I
> >can say with considerable confidence that on the whole their reading
> >habits differ from the reading habits of your average complit professor.
> >And before you cite all the MDs you know who have _A Thousand Plateaus_
> >on their nightdesk, keep in mind that we are talking trends, averages,
> >majorities, etc.
>
> True, they are not Humanities professors and probably not well-read in
> continental philosophy - however, if what you say holds true about
> Humanities professors, can you not then make a statement about another
> group, in this case MDs?
No, I can't, since the material they read as part of their profession is
unlikely to strongly influence their politics.
> Can you predict the political leanings of
> another group based on what sorts of books they are likely (or unlikely)
> to read? Or is this ONLY in the case of Humanities professors? What
> about historians? Are those who specialize in Greek history more likely
> to be one or the other based on the texts they are most likely to have
> read? Will an understanding of Plato, Aristotle etc align their politics
> as you claim is the case with Humanities professors?
History is part of the humanities by many folks' count. And, yes, I'd
say that mainstream academic history leans to the left.
[...]
> What fields does Humanities cover? Do you
> include music and arts? The Humanities department here at UCI covers
> art history (western as well as eastern), languages (German, Italian,
> Korean, etc), Women's studies, poetry, essay writing, composition
> classes, Drama, novels (including Dostoyevski and Defoe (whose Journal
> of the Plague Years is also of interest to infectious disease people)),
> film, Introduction to the History of Science, Philosophy of Biology,
> world history (as well as more specialized i.e., US Civil War and
> Pompeii) as well as various philosophy classes.
>
> What books do all these have in common?
Quite a few, actually.
> >> And even if you are correct about all this - what does it mean? Are most
> >> college graduates left-wing? Are most without a college degree right-wing?
> >> Are the poor (tending to have less education) more likely then to be
> >> right-wing?
>
> >Why don't you do a google search on voting patterns and find out.
>
> I thought you were the expert here.
Sigh. Be well,
s
Joan Marie Shields
> I said most, not all. [...]
Michael S. Morris <msmo...@netdirect.net> wrote:
>All right. Here's where I get patronizing: Earth to
>Joan: The starting point here is *a poll* in which
>humanities professors at Eastern universities were
>asked about their political leanings.
>That poll (obviously gleefully reported by a conservative
>columnist) says 3% Repubs, 57% Democrats. I.e., 20 times
>more Democrats than GOP.
But what were the other 40% and does 57% percent really constitute
most? And are the labels Democrat and Republican really equal
left and right-wing?
[snip]
>Now you add that, in your experience, some lean
>right, some lean left, some don't give a shit.
>I.e., you *imply* a rough equality in numbers
>between those humanities types who lean left and
>those who lean right.
>I conclude: Either the poll is wrong or you are
>wrong about the political leanings of humanities
>professors.
>If you want to argue the poll is wrong please argue
>with it and not with me.
I'm saying that the results of the poll - 57% vs 3% - are not nearly
enough to make a judgement about politcal leanings. It could very
well be that you and Silke are correct - though, to be honest, I think
the implications are pretty reactionary and silly - however, what you
both have presented is pretty thin in terms of evidence. Like I said,
I think you're both being pretty silly. Not all Humanities professors
are going to think alike - even those who have read the same books and
claim to be left-wing.
Just out of curiousity - I wonder how many Eastcoast Humanities professors
hold or have held (even dead ones will do) political office or leadership
roles in the Democratic Party (making the assumption that Democrats are
all left-wingers)? This is more along the lines of what does it mean if
most (given a definition of most) Eastcoast Humanities professors are
left-wing. Are they a viable political force?
Bruce McGuffin
> Bruce McGuffin wrote:
> >
> > smw <s...@umich.edu> writes:
> >
>
> Bruce on variation:
> > > > For example a wider range of views on homosexuality and related
> > > > issues. More social acceptance of people whose political views fall
> > > > outside the local norm.
> > >
> > > I'll check out the article, but doesn't it strike you as funny that in
> > > your summary above, "a wider range of views on homosexuality" rather
> > > obviously conflicts with "more social acceptance" assuming that the
> > > narrowness of the coastie range presumably prescribes acceptance of
> > > homosexuality?
> > >
> >
> > No, because when I wrote "acceptance" what I meant was tolerance, not
> > approval. If we are to have true diversity, tolerance is what you get.
> > If you demand approval, than you are not longer tolerating those whose
> > moral values differ from your own.
>
> Bruce, this is a touch silly, and you know it well enough. The idea that
> the coastal cities are less tolerant than Middle America simply isn't
> supported by the article. Neither is the idea that there's greater
> "variation."
There is some silliness here, but it's not mine, its the authors. His
mistake is to compare only the upper class in the blue areas with all
economic classes in the red areas. He may very well have fallen into
this trap because, as he himself implies, there is more economic
segregation in the blue areas.
As for whether the article supports the more tolerance theory, I
suppose if you need your conclusions spelled out for you in black and
white there is only the one sentenc you found. But an intelligent
reader such as yourself should be able to read the article, see the
many examples given, and realize that there is more there than the one
sentence.
> You can find pretty much any viewpoint on any issue in
> either regions. It's a question of percentages. And awfully small ones
> if you go back to the origin of the red/blue divide. More generally, I
> find the idea of "tolerance" implied in your paragraph a kind of cotton
> wool. What's the opposite of tolerance in this system supposed to be?
> What is it they do to anti-abortionists in, say, Philadelphia that they
> don't do to them in Flint?
Not invite them to parties. I am convinced that if I became an
outspoken (but not aggressive) anti-abortionist today, my social
circle would contract, fast and a lot. In Brooks Red America (which
does exist to some extent, in my experience), having opinions either
pro- or con- abortion would not effect my social life much, as long
as I didn't pick fights about it.
>
>
> > > More acceptance of the fact that people will
> > > > have different views on abortion, and the like.
> > >
> > > See above -- more acceptance of the fact that some people will think
> > > that bombing clinics is a viable response to the abortion question
> > > translates into more acceptance?
> >
> > No, people are able to acknowledge that they dissaprove of abortion
> > without having to bomb the clinic. Other people who support abortion
> > are able to acknowledge that the first groups disagrees with abortion,
> > without accusing them of bombing clinics.
>
> So red America is exactly like blue America -- some support liberal,
> some conservative legislation, and very few think that clinics ought to
> be bombed or that abortion is the greatest thing since marshmallows.
> >
> > >
> > > It's nice to see the diversity angle crop up from the other side o the
> > > divide -- a little chuckle for the irony monster.
> >
> > Irony abounds. Is your irony monster loose because conservatives who
> > don't particularly espouse diversity as a positive value are being
> > harbored under the diversity rubric (by my argument, not theirs), or
> > because liberals who do espouse diversity are having trouble
> > supporting it when diversity turns out to include people whose
> > political values they dislike?
>
> In your paraphrase, Brooks comes across as a conservative
I never said Brook's was conservative. In fact, anyone familiar with
his work (and he has been a best selling author recently) knows he
isn't. Brooks probably came accross as a conservative to you, because
as a Blue American, you don't expect a person to cross party lines,
even intellectually. To one of Brook's Red Americans (and to some real
ones too) it seems perfectly reasonable that a liberal writer would
find an admirable trait among a group of people different from
himself.
> praising
> diversity, which is cute (even though not very accurate -- in fact, he
> finds his middle America way too bland and wouldn't want to live there).
So what's your point? I didn't say I wanted to live there either, only
that one aspect of his finding was striking.
> That said, nobody likes diversity when it interferes with what they
> cherish the most.
Indeed. It shouldn't surprise me when I find this pariticular
hypocrasy among the advocates of diversity. Never the less, I think it
does us all some good to be aware of it.
Bruce McGuffin
Joan Marie Shields
Joan Shields (jshi...@uci.edu) wrote:
>who are
>> drawn to the Humanities, drawn to read such books, are more apt to be left-
>> wing from the beginning?
smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
>Precisely. As I said, calling it "the academy" is a red herring.
Wait a moment - they read a set of books and become left-wing or they
are left-wing and so are drawn to a set of books that reinforces that
view?
>> If you should insist that 100 people representing
>> a cross-section of the US politcal views read a certain set of books that
>> most (most > 57%) will suddenly become left-wing?
>Yes, I strongly suspect that if all of the US-American electorate read
>the same material that humanities profs read, the political balance in
>the US would shift. Apparently, you want to disagree with that. Be my
>guest.
I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing - though I think that the
results might not fall quite along these lines.
>> So, answer me four questions:
>> 1) Does 57% really constitute 'most'?
>uh, yes.
Versus the percentage of those who call themselves Republicans - but
what about versus the whole?
>> 2) What came first, the political leanings or the books? Keep in mind
>> family influences, mentors, political climate etc.
>political views are overdetermined. We know that.
Then the books one reads in college and for one's degree may not be the
biggest factor? Simply a means to reinforce leanings already held?
>> 3) What are the other 40% who have not labeled themselves Democrat or
>> Republican? Where do they fall?
>Most of them to the left.
And where is your proof of this? How did they label themselves? Did
all of them label themselves left-wing?
>> 4) What constitutes a left-winger? Am I left-wing? Some would scream
>> yes while others would say no.
>who cares?
You may not care whether or not I am one BUT if you can't tell what I am
then how can you tell what most of the Eastcoast Humanities professors
are? How do you deliniate who is left or right-wing? If these are
self-reported labels then there's bias there since not everyone views
right and left-wing the same.
>> >> Off the top of my head I can think of at least a dozen
>> >> individuals in the Humanities and the Sciences who read a great deal, some
>> >> even wildly, who are nevertheless rather conservative in their politics.
>> >Wonderful. Now can we please get back to the point, which is one of
>> >percentages? The preferences are well-documented.
>> And like I've said in the above - the percentages you've presented are
>> so simplistic as to be nearly meaningless.
>The point of the article was that humanities faculty don't vote
>Republican. That's a simple, not a simplistic point. The article in
>question wants to present that as some kind of institutionalized thought
>control. I'm arguing that there are other reasons.
It's a pretty sloppy use of statistics - but that's nothing new.
[snip]
>> >> Keep in mind as well that just because a Humanities professor may read
>> >> a good many books - is the reading material broadbased or mostly in a
>> >> narrow subject?
>> >Please digest that red herring by yourself.
>> Oh no, it's a valid point. If your specialty is the change in religious
>> literature during the late 13th century - how does that influence a left-
>> wing political view? Perhaps you are talking about a small sub-set of
>> Humanities professors? How about music professors? Also in the Humanities
>> but would they have all read the same books?
>Many of them would have, yes, indeed. And the ones who don't usually
>know how to fake it. You'll be hard-pressed, for instance, to find a
>humanities prof who isn't acquainted with Foucault, no matter what his
>or her field.
Why would a music professor have read Foucault? Or a German professor?
BTW, I'm a scientist but I've read some Foulcault.
>> >> >Now if you want to argue with that, feel free. The voting patterns of
>> >> >MDs, however, are besides the point.
>> >> Not at all. They are a group of fairly well-educated (hopefully) people
>> >> who have, more than likely, read a great deal.
>> >But they're not humanities faculty. And I rather doubt that as a group
>> >they're well-read in continental philosophy, another topic that's been
>> >brought up. I was fairly involved in the life science, values, and
>> >societies program here for a few years, heavily populated by MDs, and I
>> >can say with considerable confidence that on the whole their reading
>> >habits differ from the reading habits of your average complit professor.
>> >And before you cite all the MDs you know who have _A Thousand Plateaus_
>> >on their nightdesk, keep in mind that we are talking trends, averages,
>> >majorities, etc.
>> True, they are not Humanities professors and probably not well-read in
>> continental philosophy - however, if what you say holds true about
>> Humanities professors, can you not then make a statement about another
>> group, in this case MDs?
>No, I can't, since the material they read as part of their profession is
>unlikely to strongly influence their politics.
Why is that? Why wouldn't their study of the history of public health
or the present state of public health and infectious disease not influence
their politics? Why does only philosophy (continental philosophy to be
specific) influence political leanings and nothing else? What arrogance!
>> Can you predict the political leanings of
>> another group based on what sorts of books they are likely (or unlikely)
>> to read? Or is this ONLY in the case of Humanities professors? What
>> about historians? Are those who specialize in Greek history more likely
>> to be one or the other based on the texts they are most likely to have
>> read? Will an understanding of Plato, Aristotle etc align their politics
>> as you claim is the case with Humanities professors?
>History is part of the humanities by many folks' count. And, yes, I'd
>say that mainstream academic history leans to the left.
>[...]
>> What fields does Humanities cover? Do you
>> include music and arts? The Humanities department here at UCI covers
>> art history (western as well as eastern), languages (German, Italian,
>> Korean, etc), Women's studies, poetry, essay writing, composition
>> classes, Drama, novels (including Dostoyevski and Defoe (whose Journal
>> of the Plague Years is also of interest to infectious disease people)),
>> film, Introduction to the History of Science, Philosophy of Biology,
>> world history (as well as more specialized i.e., US Civil War and
>> Pompeii) as well as various philosophy classes.
>> What books do all these have in common?
>Quite a few, actually.
Can you give me a hint? Maybe a partial list? I'm curious.
You know, I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree - it's just that your
evidence and your cause and effect is rather sloppy. I guess it's my
scientific/analytical bent (Morris would disagree, I'm sure).
smw
Bruce McGuffin wrote:
>
> smw <s...@umich.edu> writes:
>
> > Bruce McGuffin wrote:
> > >
> > > smw <s...@umich.edu> writes:
> > >
> >
> > Bruce on variation:
> > > > > For example a wider range of views on homosexuality and related
> > > > > issues. More social acceptance of people whose political views fall
> > > > > outside the local norm.
> > > >
> > > > I'll check out the article, but doesn't it strike you as funny that in
> > > > your summary above, "a wider range of views on homosexuality" rather
> > > > obviously conflicts with "more social acceptance" assuming that the
> > > > narrowness of the coastie range presumably prescribes acceptance of
> > > > homosexuality?
> > > >
> > >
> > > No, because when I wrote "acceptance" what I meant was tolerance, not
> > > approval. If we are to have true diversity, tolerance is what you get.
> > > If you demand approval, than you are not longer tolerating those whose
> > > moral values differ from your own.
> >
> > Bruce, this is a touch silly, and you know it well enough. The idea that
> > the coastal cities are less tolerant than Middle America simply isn't
> > supported by the article. Neither is the idea that there's greater
> > "variation."
>
> There is some silliness here, but it's not mine, its the authors. His
> mistake is to compare only the upper class in the blue areas with all
> economic classes in the red areas.
middle class, I'd say, not upper. those parts of the upper class I've
known (Philadelphia only) differ from the picture of blue as Brooks
paints it
He may very well have fallen into
> this trap because, as he himself implies, there is more economic
> segregation in the blue areas.
>
> As for whether the article supports the more tolerance theory, I
> suppose if you need your conclusions spelled out for you in black and
> white there is only the one sentenc you found. But an intelligent
> reader such as yourself should be able to read the article, see the
> many examples given, and realize that there is more there than the one
> sentence.
That's the second time you're riding this line -- however, Brooks simply
doesn't say that these areas are either more culturally diverse (which
would be silly, since all large cities offer everything smaller middle-A
communities offer, but many things the latter don't) or more tolerant.
He merely says they didn't like to talk to him about controversial
issues.
>
> > You can find pretty much any viewpoint on any issue in
> > either regions. It's a question of percentages. And awfully small ones
> > if you go back to the origin of the red/blue divide. More generally, I
> > find the idea of "tolerance" implied in your paragraph a kind of cotton
> > wool. What's the opposite of tolerance in this system supposed to be?
> > What is it they do to anti-abortionists in, say, Philadelphia that they
> > don't do to them in Flint?
>
> Not invite them to parties. I am convinced that if I became an
> outspoken (but not aggressive) anti-abortionist today, my social
> circle would contract, fast and a lot.
Not if you kept quiet about it, which seems what Brooks' middle-A
advocates. If you pick fights, you're out in either region. So, again,
how does this imply greater tolerance?
In Brooks Red America (which
> does exist to some extent, in my experience), having opinions either
> pro- or con- abortion would not effect my social life much, as long
> as I didn't pick fights about it.
see above
> > > > More acceptance of the fact that people will
> > > > > have different views on abortion, and the like.
> > > >
> > > > See above -- more acceptance of the fact that some people will think
> > > > that bombing clinics is a viable response to the abortion question
> > > > translates into more acceptance?
> > >
> > > No, people are able to acknowledge that they dissaprove of abortion
> > > without having to bomb the clinic. Other people who support abortion
> > > are able to acknowledge that the first groups disagrees with abortion,
> > > without accusing them of bombing clinics.
> >
> > So red America is exactly like blue America -- some support liberal,
> > some conservative legislation, and very few think that clinics ought to
> > be bombed or that abortion is the greatest thing since marshmallows.
You grant this? That there is no greater diversity on this issue in
either area?
> > > > It's nice to see the diversity angle crop up from the other side o the
> > > > divide -- a little chuckle for the irony monster.
> > >
> > > Irony abounds. Is your irony monster loose because conservatives who
> > > don't particularly espouse diversity as a positive value are being
> > > harbored under the diversity rubric (by my argument, not theirs), or
> > > because liberals who do espouse diversity are having trouble
> > > supporting it when diversity turns out to include people whose
> > > political values they dislike?
> >
> > In your paraphrase, Brooks comes across as a conservative
>
> I never said Brook's was conservative.
I didn't say you did -- I say you made him come across as one. Which
indeed he isn't.
In fact, anyone familiar with
> his work (and he has been a best selling author recently) knows he
> isn't. Brooks probably came accross as a conservative to you, because
> as a Blue American, you don't expect a person to cross party lines,
> even intellectually.
This is getting so bloody tired, Bruce.
To one of Brook's Red Americans (and to some real
> ones too) it seems perfectly reasonable that a liberal writer would
> find an admirable trait among a group of people different from
> himself.
Any other strawpeople you want to hang up here? this is just so awfully
banal. Even the most heavily party-lined tend to have parents, uncles,
etc. who don't share their political views, and they all hang out on
Thanksgiving together.
>
> > praising
> > diversity, which is cute (even though not very accurate -- in fact, he
> > finds his middle America way too bland and wouldn't want to live there).
>
> So what's your point? I didn't say I wanted to live there either, only
> that one aspect of his finding was striking.
I'm saying that while you claim Brooks says Red-A is more diverse, he
actually says it's awfully boring and nobody talks about anything about
which one can have diverse opinions.
> > That said, nobody likes diversity when it interferes with what they
> > cherish the most.
>
> Indeed. It shouldn't surprise me when I find this pariticular
> hypocrasy among the advocates of diversity. Never the less, I think it
> does us all some good to be aware of it.
There's a show on German TV you ought to apply for, "Das Wort zum
Sonntag."
s
smw
Joan Marie Shields wrote:
>> but would they have all read the same books?
>
> >Many of them would have, yes, indeed. And the ones who don't usually
> >know how to fake it. You'll be hard-pressed, for instance, to find a
> >humanities prof who isn't acquainted with Foucault, no matter what his
> >or her field.
>
> Why would a music professor have read Foucault? Or a German professor?
> BTW, I'm a scientist but I've read some Foulcault.
Look, if you can ask why a German professor would read Foucault, you
clearly haven't.
anyway, I'm out of here.
s
Sayan Bhattacharyya
>
>>No, I can't, since the material they read as part of their profession is
>>unlikely to strongly influence their politics.
>
>Why is that? Why wouldn't their study of the history of public health
>or the present state of public health and infectious disease not influence
>their politics? Why does only philosophy (continental philosophy to be
>specific) influence political leanings and nothing else? What arrogance!
>
The point is that books about `philosophy' (in an expanded sense
of the word) are about ideas in a way books about public health
are not (the latter are about facts, not ideas, I would think).
Those facts lend themselves to a `right-wing' interpretation as much
as a left-wing one.
For example, when a doctor reads about, say, the poor state of public
health in a region, he might say to himself, "The solution to this
problem is to enact a tax cut. Then these folks will have more
money than they had before they had to pay all these taxes to the
government, and so they will be able to buy more health care with
the extra money."
Michael Zeleny
>>>thank god
I object to the implied contrast between rationalist philosophy and
melancholy mysticism. Witness Aristotle asking: "Why is it that all
those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or
art re clearly of an atrabilious temperament?" Witness him also make
short shrift of mystical Platonic rationalism, contrasting it to his
own mundane approach in a way echoing all the way down to skyhooks and
earth cranes. I most vigorously disclaim any past, present, or future
allegiance to any conceivable kind or flavor of limp-wristed socialist
doctrines. Try anarchism or communism, synonyms in my book.
Michael Zeleny
>Marko Amnell <marko_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>>Marko Amnell wrote:
>>>>thank god
>>>This response will come back to haunt you, if you ever
>>>mature to the point of pondering what gets left behind.
>>Somehow, your suggestion that my glee at the news of the
>>passing of that libertarian poseur and academic hack Nozick
Somehow, in my haste to rebut the incoherent insinuendoes appended
to your Hegelian divagations, I neglected to dismiss these fulsome
epithets. Please muster the minimal honesty needed to acknowledge
that poseurs and hacks are far more likely to haunt newsgroups and
newsrooms, than they are to hold forth behind lecterns in university
classrooms. The selectionary pressures of the academe are orders of
magnitude beyond those suffered by broadsheet scriveners, let alone
Usenet posters. In Nozick's case, these pressures often redounded
to fashionable inanity exemplified by his call for a "non-coercive
philosophy" proffering explanatory nostrums in lieu of demonstrative
arguments. (David Stove, whom you mentioned the other day, is very
good at mocking this tendency, noting that "no ideal could be more
destructive of human life than the ideal of non-coerciveness." The
only way, he writes, "of producing a non-coercive human being is to
produce an autistic one. But then, autism is really the conclusion
to which Nozick's conception of philosophy tends, just as it is the
conclusion to which American foreign policy in the same period has
tended." Then again, for better or worse, that foreign policy has
expired some time before Nozick.) I also have very special memories
of being laid up with summer cold in a Parisian garret, with naught
to keep me company but Ian McEwan's The Innocent, Robert Nozick's
The Examined Life, and the inimitable atlas of The Lives of Lesions:
Chronology in Dermatopathology, penned by the redoubtable A. Bernard
Ackerman. I assure you that nothing in the range that spanned from
the venereal banality of hard chancre and condyloma latum, all the
way to the fatal stigmata of malignant melanoma and other melanocytic
neoplasms, induced my cringing nearly as much as Bob's musings on the
erotic thrust of a ripe strawberry boldly impinging upon his palate in
The Holiness of Everyday Life. And who could forget the profundity of
conclusions drawn from Bob's revealing conjecture that people seldom
masturbate in front of pictures of themselves?
Nonetheless, upon revisiting his Anarchy, State and Utopia, I remain
convinced that the vigor of Nozick's arguments will long outlast the
memories of an occasional lapsus digiti. For the record, my regard
for John Rawls as the greatest political philosopher of my lifetime,
nowise depends on subscribing to the tenets of political liberalism.
Nor does my appreciation of Nozick's criticism of Rawls depend upon an
endorsement of libertarianism putatively served by the positive part
of his argument. Likewise, I respect and admire the late David Lewis
without subscribing to physicalism and modal realism that underlie his
most important metaphysical work. It is a sure mark of a small mind,
to gauge the value of philosophical arguments by the degree of support
they lend to one's cherished prejudices.
>art are clearly of an atrabilious temperament?" Witness him also make
David Latane
>
>Just out of curiousity - I wonder how many Eastcoast Humanities professors
>hold or have held (even dead ones will do) political office or leadership
>roles in the Democratic Party (making the assumption that Democrats are
>all left-wingers)? This is more along the lines of what does it mean if
>most (given a definition of most) Eastcoast Humanities professors are
>left-wing. Are they a viable political force?
>
>yiwf,
>
>joan
>
They just rock the Chapel Hill town council. . . .
D. Latane
Joan Marie Shields
Joan Shields (jshi...@uci.edu) wrote:
>>Just out of curiousity - I wonder how many Eastcoast Humanities professors
>>hold or have held (even dead ones will do) political office or leadership
>>roles in the Democratic Party (making the assumption that Democrats are
>>all left-wingers)? This is more along the lines of what does it mean if
>>most (given a definition of most) Eastcoast Humanities professors are
>>left-wing. Are they a viable political force?
David Latane <dla...@vcu.org> wrote:
>They just rock the Chapel Hill town council. . . .
Oh, so that's where they all are. I lived in the Chapel Hill area for
about ten years - oftentimes it was (and probably still is) a town and
gown sort of thing though without as much violence :). Still, while
the surrounding areas aren't quite as 'red-neck' as some might imagine,
Chapel Hill's political influence is somewhat limited...
If this is an example of Eastcoast Humanities professors political
force... well, I really can't see what all the fuss is about.
Joan Marie Shields
>>> but would they have all read the same books?
smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:
>> >Many of them would have, yes, indeed. And the ones who don't usually
>> >know how to fake it. You'll be hard-pressed, for instance, to find a
>> >humanities prof who isn't acquainted with Foucault, no matter what his
>> >or her field.
>> Why would a music professor have read Foucault? Or a German professor?
>> BTW, I'm a scientist but I've read some Foucault.
>Look, if you can ask why a German professor would read Foucault, you
>clearly haven't.
Actually, I meant why a German language professor - or perhaps a Korean
language professor - or a music, drama, ancient Greek historian... etc?
Also, what, other than a fairly recent post-modernism philosopher (former
Gallist), other books would most... sorry, I should be more specific,
80-90% of Eastcoast Humanities professors read?
Also, what is the definition of a left-winger?
>anyway, I'm out of here.
Aw, don't go away mad - and here I was hoping to learn something about
that so mysterious group.
Then again, I think I'll stick with science - makes a lot more sense.
Joan Marie Shields
Silke opined:
>>>No, I can't, since the material they read as part of their profession is
>>>unlikely to strongly influence their politics.
Joan Shields <jshi...@rigel.oac.uci.edu> wrote:
>>Why is that? Why wouldn't their study of the history of public health
>>or the present state of public health and infectious disease not influence
>>their politics? Why does only philosophy (continental philosophy to be
>>specific) influence political leanings and nothing else? What arrogance!
Sayan Bhattacharyya <bhat...@engin.umich.edu> wrote:
>The point is that books about `philosophy' (in an expanded sense
>of the word) are about ideas in a way books about public health
>are not (the latter are about facts, not ideas, I would think).
>Those facts lend themselves to a `right-wing' interpretation as much
>as a left-wing one.
>For example, when a doctor reads about, say, the poor state of public
>health in a region, he might say to himself, "The solution to this
>problem is to enact a tax cut. Then these folks will have more
>money than they had before they had to pay all these taxes to the
>government, and so they will be able to buy more health care with
>the extra money."
Actually, there are a number of differing philosophies about public
health. More importantly, some of these views of public health have
had great influences on the politics of public health - public health
reforms of the mid 1800s and the changes in the US in the 1960s. As
a matter of fact we're still paying for those changes and we'll be
paying for them for some time to come.
And what about Decartes?
David Latane
Joan Shields (jshi...@uci.edu) wrote:but would they have all read the same books?
smw <s...@umich.edu> wrote:Many of them would have, yes, indeed. And the ones who don't usually
know how to fake it. You'll be hard-pressed, for instance, to find a
humanities prof who isn't acquainted with Foucault, no matter what his
or her field.Why would a music professor have read Foucault? Or a German professor?
BTW, I'm a scientist but I've read some Foucault.Look, if you can ask why a German professor would read Foucault, you
clearly haven't.
Actually, I meant why a German language professor - or perhaps a Korean
language professor - or a music, drama, ancient Greek historian... etc?
Also, what, other than a fairly recent post-modernism philosopher (former
Gallist), other books would most... sorry, I should be more specific,
80-90% of Eastcoast Humanities professors read?
Also, what is the definition of a left-winger?
D. Latane
Marko Amnell
> Somehow, in my haste to rebut the incoherent insinuendoes
> appended to your Hegelian divagations, I neglected to dismiss
> these fulsome epithets. Please muster the minimal honesty
> needed to acknowledge that poseurs and hacks are far more
> likely to haunt newsgroups and newsrooms, than they are to
> hold forth behind lecterns in university classrooms. The
> selectionary pressures of the academe are orders of magnitude
> beyond those suffered by broadsheet scriveners, let alone
> Usenet posters. In Nozick's case, these pressures often
> redounded to fashionable inanity exemplified by his call
> for a "non-coercive philosophy" proffering explanatory nostrums
> in lieu of demonstrative arguments. (David Stove, whom you
> mentioned the other day, is very good at mocking this tendency,
> noting that "no ideal could be more destructive of human life
> than the ideal of non-coerciveness." The only way, he writes,
> "of producing a non-coercive human being is to produce an
> autistic one. But then, autism is really the conclusion to
> which Nozick's conception of philosophy tends, just as it
> is the conclusion to which American foreign policy in the same
> period has tended."
So what's your argument here, Zeleny? That despite being both a
newsgroup and a newsroom poseur and hack, I nevertheless had the
intellectual savvy to pick out a collection of David Stove's
philosophical essays from amongst all the thousands of volumes
of literary dreck and detritus at a bookstore remainder sale.
And the discounted book I did select, by an author I had never
even heard of before, is by a writer who your yourself acknowledge
is "very good at mocking" Robert Nozick's "inane" (your word, not
mine) call for a "non-coercive philosophy". Since you're so fond
of fencing metaphors, try this: What the estimable readers of RAB
have just witnessed is the sight of the wizened old fencing master
Monsieur Zeleny, a Usenet legend, stumbling over his own untied
shoelaces at the very start of his duel with the insolent young
upstart Monsieur Amnell, who Z challenged to a match of skill when
A had the audacity to shout "fulsome epithets" at the beloved
memory of his recently deceased teacher Nozick. What is the astonished
swordsman Amnell to do at the sight of such an embarrassing and
unmanly show of clumsiness? It would almost be too cruel to run the
prone wreck of a man through with his blade. No, he laughs lightly
and turns to his second and exclaims: "Let's leave the old drink-
sodden fool to wallow in his own self-pity. It would be too heartless
for me to put him out of his misery. Time will take care of that,
in any case. And I don't think we shall have to wait too long for
that either. So let us go, my friend." And so there he lies alone
on the ground, cursing at himself for his stupidity, the Great Zeleny,
overcome on the field of battle by an untied shoelace.
Marko Amnell
> The _Phenomenology_ is a wild book, very sensual, quite bitchy
> at times, and radically new at the time (even though more deeply
> indebted to early Romanticism than its polemics would suggest).
Wild, sensual, quite bitchy at times, but nevertheless romantic.
Just like you then, Silke?
Michael S. Morris
Saturday, the 9th of February, 2002
I said:
I'm sick and tired of hearing those who oppose governmental
power get called "right-wing" by historically ignorant gits
like you, Weineck.
Silke:
Libertarianism is far too confused to be labeled "right-wing."
I didn't say I am Libertarian. I didn't say I adhere
to Libertarianism. I said I voted for Libertarian
candidates in the last few elections, rather than for
Democrat, Republican, or Reform or other candidates. I did
so on almost a race-by-race basis, reading or listening
to what was said by each of the candidates. W., for instance,
was too far *left* in my opinion (in things like
his open regard for the power of federal education
money to fix the public schools, even using competition).
The tax cut was only right, but should have been
accompanied with spending decreases, not spending
increases. It was like the Republicans had already
become half-Democrat. Harry Brown, the Libertarian
candidate for President, at least said *the truth* about
this, that there really wasn't a surplus at all, and
that if spending were still allowed to grow.
Silke:
Some of its ideas are from the right, some
from the left.
In fact, "Left" and "right" and the image of a
*linear* spectrum is far too coarse an instrument
for you to use to understand this politics. The image should
be at least triangular with left and right *both* at
the illberal end of that dimension. And, no, you have
the history just wrong. The Liberal (not Libertarian)
end of the triangle predates left entirely, though it
came about as a reaction to an earlier version
of the right (king and country). It is more apt to say
that some of the left's ideas come from liberalism,
some from the right.
Silke:
It's nowhere near as homogeneous a movement as
you seem to try to make it, anyway,
Huh? I tried to make it or depict it as a homogeneous
movement? I think not. I have only mentioned "Libertarian"
(with a capital "L") as a minority political party which fields
candidates in the United States, and which candidates I vote
for, given the very low quality of the alternatives. I have
sometimes used the word "libertarian" (with a low-case "l")
to designate a political philosophy of maximum freedom
to individuals, perhaps as distinct from "liberalism",
which denotes a political philosophy not of *maximum*
freedom to individuals, but of government limited away
from only certain powers that are rightfully reserved
to individuals. I certainly understand that usage on these
terms is not so well-defined. For instance, Friedrich Hayek's
introduction (or one of them) to _The Road to Serfdom_
uses "liberal" in my sense. So does Dumas Malone in his
intro to his six-volume bio of Jefferson, "Jefferson and
His Time", calling Jefferson "liberal, though not a democrat".
Bernard Bailyn seems to use "libertarian" for this
when he treats of the development of Rights doctrine
in English pamphleteering between the Glorious Revolution
and the American Revolution. Of course, Rush Limbaugh, and
indeed most American media journalists use "liberal" almost
in an opposite sense of "tax and spend on social programs
leftie".
Silke:
and those who call themselves Libertarians
cover a wide spectrum of political stances,
many of them contradictory. But you know this.
What I know is that I do not call myself Libertarian.
But, sure, most political parties in the US *do* cover
a wide range of political stances, many of them
contradictory. Leastways, I can't think of a political party in
the US which isn't made up contradictory factions.
Of course, I know little of the American Communist
Party. Maybe their beliefs are all in logical lockstep.
I said:
And the point of the paragraph remains against you.
It has yet to be shown that a dime of all this money
that corporations dole out to politicos goes to
cause one vote to have been cast other than it was
cast.
Silke:
I already told you it's not about voting,
And I already told you it most certainly *is* about
voting. The system of lobbying, campaign contributions,
and power brokering *predates*, for instance, the last
election. I.e., the people who voted for candidates
in that election knew what sort of system of power and
influence they were voting for. And, within that
polity, a 55% to 45% electoral win is considered a
landslide. It is obvious that the electorate is very
evenly balanced between Democrat and Republican at
present. In a sense, the reason for this is that the
left has made progress in the last twenty years or so,
so that W.'s politics are to the left of where the divide
would have been back then. But, that's the point, the
divide shifts so as to battle over the political center,
and that political center is always defined by the
*way people vote*.
Silke:
it's about what those who've been voted in promise
to do for it behind closed doors, and what they
actually do do.
No, that has *nothing* to do with explaining why
humanities professors would poll 3% Republican and
57% Democrat, which is *extremely* out of joint with
the electorate.
Silke:
Mind, this is not specific to Republicans
or the right, either.
Right, that is the point. Alarmism about
government-for-sale is certainly not specific
or even more pertinent to Republicans than Democrats.
Corporations and unions and advocacy groups pay
into both parties' campaign coffers.
[Off-topic, but it is entirely unclear to me that
it shouldn't be this way. Running ads costs money,
and if you deny or limit contributions, you deny
or limit speech. You also set yourself up as regulator
of speech---does the Green Party candidate deserve
equal time with the Democratic and Republican Party
candidate? In fact, any regulation you make about it
will distort it, and I predict will do so to the
advantage of the two major parties and to the
disadvantage or the minority parties.]
I said:
I.e., the "political spectrum" in the United States
is *exactly* where it would have been had you not had
Enron to cluck over.
Silke:
so what?
So, how voters in the US poll is the *only* relevant
statistic we have for judging the 3% Republican, 57%
Democrat number from the humanities-prof sample. How
Europeans poll is irrelevant, and so are your notions
about closed-room power brokering.
Silke:
But fascism is first and most importantly
predicated upon an extreme level of state
control,
I said:
Gosh. We actually agree about something.
Silke:
But now we need an instance of me calling
Libertarians fascist, or perhaps a retraction
from you.
I thought I just did retract. But, OK, I don't
recall you ever calling Libertarians "fascist".
but I do recall you calling moderate Democrats "right-wing",
and I do regard my rhetorical flourish about
the American Fascist Party (I assume and hope there
isn't such a thing in reality, and that you share
that assumption) as a fully appropriate response
to such an assertion on your part.
I said:
Of course, I go on to remark that this is
kind of like communism, and to note Churchill
again in calling communism and fascism twin
sons of the same mother, but again, why the
hell is it that you can bring yourself to call
the US polity at present right-wing? There is
place on earth with less state control at
present, and this place has never been more
free in practice as well as theory.
Silke:
I actually imagine that you do believe that.
Of course I do. And as usual, you leave it wide
open as to what aspect of what I have just said
you disagree with. But, let's suppose it has to
do with your alarmism about the detentions in
response to Sept. 11. If it does, then I would
rejoin that you are simply historically clueless.
No President in American history has responded to
a threat as enormous as this is with more
civil-libertarian restraint than has W.. Compared
to Lincoln or FDR, or even John Adams in the undeclared
war with France, this guy is a piker. And it has
nothing to do with him being the least bit libertarian---
what it has to do with is the libertarian progress
that has been made in this country in the last
40-50 years.
Silke:
and I don't see anything in
Libertarianism that would support
such a definition.
I said:
Nor do I. But you did just get through calling
moderate Democrats "right-wing".
Silke:
I just got through calling them right of center,
Which subjectively defines the center to be someplace
out of touch with the objective reality of American
politics.
Silke:
which they are from the perspective of a
full political spectrum.
No, the second you insert the word "full", it no
longer is a spectrum. All you are doing is taking
the Democrat-Republican spectrum model and tacking
on world politics in a linear fashion. But, we
know and agree that politics in Europe, and indeed
in many other places, is to the left of the American
polical divide. But, if we are counting heads, then
the American polity is the relevant one, there not
being any such thing as a world polity (there not being
any such thing as a world politeia).
Silke:
This doesn't even strike me as in the least
controversial.
It's euroleft parochial on *your* part.
Of course it is controversial. You have no
license to judge American politics from
a eurocentric vantage point. You have no license
to consider that vantage point "central"---it
perfectly well could be quite shifted from
any sort of political center which could be
depicted on the map of possible political
choices. And the world population of various regions
on that map is simply irrelevant to the American
reality, and to the polling of American humanities
professors. If political theory is to find the
center of the map for us, then, no, you haven't
convinced in the slightest, but if polling is to
define that center, then, no, only the American
polity is relevant.
I said:
This could only
mean that their insufficient leftishness (love
of "state control dedicated to the social good")
by European standards makes them more liberal, more
libertarian, than the European center. Thus, you seem
to be calling anything that smacks of freedom,
"right-wing".
Silke:
This is so silly it's almost baffling. You are
really and truly suggesting that the Bush administration
is giving off the fragrance of
"freedom"?
Huh? We were just talking about "moderate Democrats".
I am wondering why you call them "right-wing" relative
to what you perceive as the (euroleft) center. Since
the center of politics in Europe is socialist-democratic,
I trust that the defining aspect of the center of American
politics relative to European is the greater reluctance
of the Americans to institute governmental social programs
(i.e., government control). So, yes, American moderate
Democrats are more libertarian than the center of
European politics. More free. So, yes, you sound like
you are calling freedom---libertarianism---right-wing.
As for Bush, no, he's not particularly libertarian,
but he's constrained by an extremely libertarian
historical context. I mean, fer chrissakes, we
are arguing about whether the Guantanamo Bay detainees
should get radios or not. This is leaves the civil
libertarian concerns of WWII light-years behind.
I said:
Why liberals and libertarians should
get lumped with fascists and conservatives as
"right-wing", I don't know, but I don't like it.
Silke:
Why don't you find someone who argues the
points you want to argue against?
Excuse me, but less government programs *means* less
government control *means* more individual liberty.
If you come at the US from a euroleft vantage point,
then the center of US politics is *more libertarian*
than the center of European politics, and you are
consigned to calling libertarianism "right-wing".
So, while I gave you a "retraction" above, it's about
time you give me several apologies here.
Silke:
Which doesn't mean that self-declared
Libertarians can't espouse fascist or fascistoid
ideas, or ideas also dear to fascists.
I said:
Of course it doesn't mean that. Any more than
adherence to "social democratism" absolves
one of the taint. Of course, from a liberal/
libertarian perspective, the taint of
state control is and always is the taint
of state control, so the only real spectrum
is the one between liberalism and illiberalism,
and it matters not a jot whether the illiberalism
is enacted in the name of blood and country or
the proletariat.
Silke:
Gosh, the day I see the word "proletariat" used
in a presidential campaign by one of the main
candidates I'll buy you a beer.
On the day I see it, I'll swear off beer and sex and
very rare steaks and chocolate and kiss
the Constitution goodbye.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
tejas
the humanities. That's when you can really get under the old duffer's
dermis.
ObBook: CITIZENS by Simon Schama
Don Tuite
I just finished Glieck' _Genius_, the Feynman biography.
(Recommended) When RPF's son Carl got to MIT, he decided he wanted to
study Philosophy. Drove the old man up the wall. (Carl wound up in
CS, though. Maybe he was softening up his dad for that.)
Don
>
Michael S. Morris
Sunday, the 10th of February, 2002
Ted:
What's going to be fun is when (and if) Morris's
spawn decide to study the humanities. That's when
you can really get under the old duffer's
dermis.
I think you're wrong about this, Ted. I mean,
I think I would applaud them studying the humanities
in the first place, and I think the problem with what
you say is that if they were to adopt thereby some
programme of politics or perhaps philosophy calculated
to "get under my skin", they would have to go pretty
deep to do it. It's like if they got far enough to
hold their own against me in such matters, I'd
be very proud of them indeed.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Stephen Hayes
Richard Harter wrote in a message to All:
RH> Be that as it may your remark about people being left-liberal
RH> because of the books that they read is acute.
Yes, I attribute my left-liberal tendencies to a book I read when I was about 7
or 8.
It was about a country with square people, round people and triangular people.
One of these groups seized power, and made a machine to make the other two
groups look just like them. The oppressed ones staged a revolution, and
adjusted the machine so it would turn everyone back into their proper shapes
again, and everyone lived happily ever after.
Reading Huxley's "Brave new world" and Orwell's "1984" and "Animal farm", which
all had similar themes, just confirmed me in that tendency.
Looking back on it now, I suppose the book I read as a child was Cold War
propaganda. But it influenced me, whether in the way that the authors intended,
I don't know.
Keep well
Steve Hayes
WWW: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/steve.htm
E-mail: haye...@yahoo.com
FamilyNet <> Internet Gated Mail
http://www.fmlynet.org
Michael S. Morris
Sunday, the 10th of February, 2002
S: You're an ass, Morris.
M: I'm sick and tired of hearing those who
oppose governmental power get called
"right-wing" by historically ignorant gits
like you, Weineck.
S: Libertarianism is far too confused to be
labeled "right-wing."
M: I didn't say I am Libertarian.
S: so what?
You brought it up from out of nowhere and
you attacked it as "confused", as somehow
less coherent or less theoretically
sound than some other political stance you think
is not "confused". I think that calling it "confused"
is crazy, since it *does* have more theoretical
coherence than Democrat, Republican, or Reform, and
since its theoretical underpinnings have a longer
and higher pedigree than, say, Marxist-Leninism.
So, when I set out to defend "Libertarian" from
what looks to me like a ridiculous charge, I begin
in time-honored rhetorical fashion by establishing
the exact degree of my competence to talk about it---
i.e. I ain't one but I play one on TV.
S: did I accuse you of being one?
You singled it out as "confused". Compared to what?
You think Libertarian is confused, try reading
some Foucault sometime.
S: in which way does that answer the assness of
your repeated misrepresentation of who I call
right-wing?
OK, it appears (from below) we have a real
terminology mismatch here. I'll address that in
a moment, but when you call moderate Democrats to
the right of center, you *certainly* imply that
libertarianism (less social safety net, more freedom)
is in the rightward direction of socialism
(more social safety net, less freedom). Ergo,
you imply that Libertarians are much, much farther to
the right still. I am aware of you ideological
blindness that says (more social safety net=more freedom),
but it isn't even discussable, you're just wrong.
We were, after all, talking in terms of governmental
control. Governmental money does not happen without
governmental control. Never has, never will.
S: Some of its ideas are from the right, some
from the left.
M: In fact, "Left" and "right" and the image of a
*linear* spectrum is far too coarse an instrument
for you to use to understand this politics.
S: that's rather my point.
No, I'm afraid it was *not* your point. You dismembered
"libertarian" as "confused", and tried to portray historically
as a pastiche (as though its ideas were taken *from* left and
right, rather than the other way around), you did not grant
to it a theoretical coherence outside of the labels
"left" and "right".
S: It's nowhere near as homogeneous a movement as
you seem to try to make it, anyway,
M: Huh? I tried to make it or depict it as a homogeneous
movement?
S: I would have had to think of it as such if I
had called it "right-wing."
Well, since I am now arguing it *is* coherent in
any meaningful sense of coherent for a political
party (compared with, say, Democrats, Republicans,
or Reform Party members), this is a moot point.
S: and those who call themselves Libertarians
cover a wide spectrum of political stances,
many of them contradictory. But you know this.
M: What I know is that I do not call myself Libertarian.
But, sure, most political parties in the US *do* cover
a wide range of political stances, many of them
contradictory. Leastways, I can't think of a political
party in the US which isn't made up contradictory factions.
Of course, I know little of the American Communist
Party. Maybe their beliefs are all in logical lockstep.
S: They're very funny to talk to; at least they were
back in the 80s, when I used to run into them in
Baltimore with my friend Pino who made fun of their
homophobic platform.
I'd be interested in knowing what was homophobic about
the ACP's platform. I mean, given that my kid brother's
gay friends seem to consider W. "homophobic" (I guess
because he's a Republican and they are Democrats and
it makes it easier to consider him so), the question
for me is whether the ACP is "homophobic" in the
same sense.
M: I.e., the "political spectrum" in the United States
is *exactly* where it would have been had you not had
Enron to cluck over.
S: so what?
M: So, how voters in the US poll is the *only* relevant
statistic we have for judging the 3% Republican, 57%
Democrat number from the humanities-prof sample. How
Europeans poll is irrelevant, and so are your notions
about closed-room power brokering.
S: It's highly relevant, since humanities profs are
closer to Europe than "the electorate."
Not really. What they are closer to is American students,
who will grow to be American voters, and some of them,
American politicians and men of power. People like
W. and Al Gore are a product of their classrooms. What
is interesting to me is that these profs seem both to
indoctrinate and fail to indoctrinate. What they succeed
at is in undermining any sort of faith in liberal democracy.
What they fail at is instituting any sort of faith in
socialism. Rather like Nietzsche and the Nazis.
S: To anybody who's familiar with the full spectrum of
Western politics, the Republicans don't appear to
qualify for 'center,' whereas, I presume, many
Republican voters here do think of them as a centrist
force.
I don't, I see them as "right-wing", though close
to the center. And, again, you are defining "the
center of Western politics" as weighted with the
Western electorate. I see no particular reason to
weight it that way. A German citizen and an American
citizen are simply not part of any mutual polity.
S: But fascism is first and most importantly
predicated upon an extreme level of state
control,
M: Gosh. We actually agree about something.
S: But now we need an instance of me calling
Libertarians fascist, or perhaps a retraction
from you.
M: I thought I just did retract. But,
OK, I don't recall you ever calling
Libertarians "fascist". but I do recall
you calling moderate Democrats "right-wing",
S: I recall correcting you on this (right of center
vs. right-wing) several times. Why repeat it? Do
you confuse the two categories?
Yes, I most certainly think that "right-wing"="right of center",
and use the terms interchangeably. If I wanted to imply
*distance* from the center, I would say "far right" or
speak of fascists or monarchists or theocratists.
So, if you want to just take every instance where I
have said "right-wing" and simply translate that as
"right of center", you've probably understood my end
of the argument.
M: and I do regard my rhetorical flourish about
the American Fascist Party (I assume and hope there
isn't such a thing in reality, and that you share
that assumption) as a fully appropriate response
to such an assertion on your part.
S: They certainly appear to be more organized fascist
groups in the US than in Germany, but I agree that
they don't qualify as a "party" in any important sense.
You don't understand. My choice of "AFP" was like
my choosing the elocution American Marxist-Leninist Party if
we were arguing with a mirror flip. It was a conscious
fiction, in other words, on my part, that I expected you
to recognize as such. I am well aware that there *are*
American Nazis and the KKK and similar groups with various
names which are organized in the United States. I trust that
none are named the AFP.
S: But I'm curious -- do you or do you not mourn
the absence of a far right and a far left in the
US?
Absolutely not. The far left and far right most
certainly exist here. And in some ways they are
organized here (I mean in the sense you just said
about American Nazis being more organized here than
in Europe), which is a direct result of greater
American regard for freedom than in Europe.
But, no, I *do not* mourn that American democracy
is not constituted in terms of proportional
representation. That is the most silly-ass
tomfoolery ever to come down the
pike, and is a plague on the political landscape
of much of Europe, and, say, Israel, in my opinion.
In the first place, I think it transparently
obvious (and I think also it one of those proven
mathematical theorems of political science) that *no*
system of proportional representation can
ever truly represent all the individual interests
in the electorate. And the people who are truly
individual are the ones who get most marginalized.
So, I resort to an "original intent", eighteenth-century
understanding of what "representation" is, and should
mean. In particular, I think it should *not* be a translation
of some sort of average over one's constituency to
a vote for or against any given piece of legislation.
In fact, I think if it does *not* involve back-room
dealing and lobbying by "special-interest" groups,
the representative isn't doing his job. I think
it a *good* thing that the interests of, say, Enron
speak louder and more coherently than the anti-corporate
opinions of left-wing babblers. Representatives are there
to *deliberate*. They ought to get and to have more informed
opinions about legislation than mine. They ought not to
guide their decisions by reading opinion polls.
S: It would seem to me that a libertarian would
greet such diversity in principle,
I have no idea why you would believe so. I mean,
diversity in the Knesset means that minority
Orthodox religious parties can dictate repressive
state religious laws to the rest of Israel. I
think minorities should be left free by government
to do their own thing, but I certainly don't think that
minorities ought to be given a slice of the political
pie.
S: and would see the two-party state as the
outcome of institutionalized political
repression (here, the absence of representation)
Absolutely not. The two-party system is wonderful, I
think, even though I like neither of the parties.
It is intrinsically conservative, in that it keeps
the center of government from shifting very far each time.
Whenever it breaks, as it sometimes does, it quickly
stabilizes around two new parties.
M: Of course, I go on to remark that this is
kind of like communism, and to note Churchill
again in calling communism and fascism twin
sons of the same mother, but again, why the
hell is it that you can bring yourself to call
the US polity at present right-wing? There is
place on earth with less state control at
present, and this place has never been more
free in practice as well as theory.
S: I actually imagine that you do believe that.
M: Of course I do. And as usual, you leave it wide
open as to what aspect of what I have just said
you disagree with.
S: the notion that the US is a noteably free country
strikes me as deeply absurd.
I don't understand how. You can go salute swastikas
in the US if you want to, or proselytize for
Marxist-Leninism, or advocate a BDSM lifestyle,
or whatever. As far as I understand, they can
lock you up in Germany for writing Nazi stuff.
S: It's at the very best technically true (even
though I doubt it, but will grant it for ease's
sake); it is certainly not true in
any sense that matters.
In *every* sense of the word, it is more free than
what I've seen in Canada or in the UK, or what I've
heard about in Germany. Theoretically *and* in practice.
You have to twist the word "freedom" into something
that could involve more state control in order to
say otherwise. Now, I perfectly well understand that
Canada and the UK and Germany are very free and that
we are arguing about marginal differences compared with, say,
Egypt or the PRC.
About the only issue I think the US is on the "less
free" side is capital punishment.
S: and I don't see anything in
Libertarianism that would support
such a definition.
M: Nor do I. But you did just get through calling
moderate Democrats "right-wing".
S: I just got through calling them right of center,
M: Which subjectively defines the center to be someplace
out of touch with the objective reality of American
politics.
S: right of center in the context of Western politics,
as I made quite clear.
Which is irrelevant to the people they are teaching, as
I have made clear.
S: Which matters in the context of a discussion
of humanities faculty's politics.
Not at all. It is entirely irrelevant that they
get to jet off to Europe twice a year and deliver
papers on Foucault and other irrelevancies to
academic assemblies, and get applauded there for
their PC cluckings over the American Reich. It might
explain how and where they see themselves, and why
they are where they are, but it certainly does nothing
to dispute my claim that they are simply out of touch with
American political reality. I mean, all one has to do is
read foreign newspapers about American politics and
policies in the world, and you will see that these
professors *exactly* parrot *the same* ignorance and
distance from the American political reality.
S: which they are from the perspective of a
full political spectrum.
M: No, the second you insert the word "full", it no
longer is a spectrum.
S: huh?
The full map of politics isn't linear. It is at least
two-dimensional, with liberalism v. left and right illiberalisms
a much more fundamental divide than that between left and
right. It is an orthogonal dimension.
M: All you are doing is taking
the Democrat-Republican spectrum model and tacking
on world politics in a linear fashion.
S: I'm talking about representational democracy, which
the US doesn't allow. Which makes the claim that this
is country is democratic the usual absurdity.
Your ignoarnce of Liberalism is showing, dear.
I said "free", not democratic. Democratic does *not*
equal free. *Freedom* has to do with how many laws
regulate or control what an individual may choose to
do. "State control", remember?
*Certainly* the US is not particularly democratic.
*Thank God* it isn't. Its democracy is *liberal*
democracy, which is highly limited, the government
constitutionally *forced* to move slowly, because of
those checks and balances
designed to limit what government may do.
M: But, we know and agree that politics in Europe,
and indeed in many other places, is to the left
of the American polical divide. But, if we are
counting heads, then the American polity is the
relevant one, there not being any such thing as a
world polity (there not being any such thing as a
world politeia).
S: But there is such a think as folks who are more
familiar with political possibilities than "the
electorate."
Yeah, and they might be found in the philosophy
department among those who study political philosophy.
They are *not* to be found among those who are out there
reading ideological fashion-plates like Foucault and
Derrida and Barthes and Rigoberta Menchu
in order to be "in" at an MLA meeting.
And proportional representation, even aside from
its being a bad idea, is simply not relevant to
political reality in the United States. In order to
institute it in the first place, you'd have to change the
political reality at a fundamental, constitutional level.
There'd have to be huge consensus to do it.
Heck, I'm one that had at one point considered doing
away with the electoral college and going to direct
popular election of the President, but after this
last election, I think the wisdom and stability
of the system we have is transparent. The Constitution
fsaved us from ourselves, is my take on W.'s election.
S: This doesn't even strike me as in the least
controversial.
M: It's euroleft parochial on *your* part.
Of course it is controversial.
S: You just granted my point -- i.e. that from
the perspective of Western politics, the US
"center" is to the right of the center.
If that is yout point, it never was in dispute.
I just say that "Western politics" is the wrong
perpective, however you slice it.
M: You have no license to judge American
politics from a eurocentric vantage point.
You have no license to consider that vantage
point "central"---it perfectly well could be
quite shifted from any sort of political center
which could be depicted on the map of possible political
choices.
S: Gee, where would I apply for such a license?
I suppose you could apply for citizenship.
S: And do they offer family memberships?
I think so.
M: This could only mean that their insufficient
leftishness (love of "state control dedicated
to the social good") by European standards makes
them more liberal, more libertarian, than the
European center. Thus, you seem to be calling
anything that smacks of freedom,
"right-wing".
S: This is so silly it's almost baffling. You are
really and truly suggesting that the Bush administration
is giving off the fragrance of
"freedom"?
M: Huh? We were just talking about "moderate Democrats".
S: But I didn't call those right-wing, merely 'right of
center.' So?
I'm objecting to the *direction*, not the distance.
I mean, if extremely right-wing is taken to mean
a love of excessive state control, then it seems
to me that right-wing, or even right of center ought
to refer to a love of some state control. So if position
A is to the right of position B, it means that people
at A believe in more state control than people at B.
I don't understand how you figure moderate Democrats
believe in more state control than the European
social-democratic "center".
M: I am wondering why you call them "right-wing"
S: I am wondering why you are incapable of correcting
such obvious misreadings after they have been pointed
out to you. Congenital?
Again, I referred to direction, not distance. Let me
rephrase: I am wondering why you call them to
the *right* of center? Please answer in terms of
state control.
M: Why liberals and libertarians should
get lumped with fascists and conservatives as
"right-wing", I don't know, but I don't like it.
S: Why don't you find someone who argues the
points you want to argue against?
M: Excuse me, but less government programs *means* less
government control *means* more individual liberty.
S: Bollocks.
Nope. Simple and simply true.
S: It means more liberty for those who have
the power to procure more liberty for themselves
in the absence of state regulation.
Nope. You are employing the usual Marxist sophism
about "liberty", relativizing the concept out of
existence. "Freedom is slavery", "ignorance is bliss",
etc.. Drop the word liberty entirely (since you are
incapable of it), and tell me about how
more state control really means less state control.
S: The absence of a decent welfare program either leaves
_individual_ liberty unchanged or diminishes it.
Bullshit. Welfare means money out of the pockets of
those who earn it in the form of taxes. Every dollar
of tax is less individual control. If that dollar percolates through
a governmental bureaucracy and ends up giving $.03 of
individual control to a welfare recipient, I'll eat
my hat. But, also, there are strings attached to each
dollar of welfare, and strings=state control. So, at
both ends a welfare program diminishes both liberty and
ethical responsibility. I.e., it increases state control.
S: Gosh, the day I see the word "proletariat" used
in a presidential campaign by one of the main
candidates I'll buy you a beer.
M: On the day I see it, I'll swear off beer and sex and
very rare steaks and chocolate and kiss
the Constitution goodbye.
S: but will it kiss you back?
It'll be effectively gone when the indoctrination has
proceeded so far.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
tejas
"Don Tuite" <don_...@hotlink.com> wrote in message
news:55gb6usb7j1b1osdk...@4ax.com...
My son will probably political science but he wants to be a musician or a
chef.
But wouldn't it be nice to have a plumber in the family? Or a real mechanic
who can work in rice-burners?
--
Ted Samsel
tbsa...@infi.net
http://home.infi.net/~tbsamsel
Michael Zeleny
My sole memory of Nozick is one of a pleasant chat. I never studied
with him. However I read enough of his writings to appreciate their
lasting value. Beginning and ending your valuation of a man's life
work at contemplating its dregs, is a very foolish practice. Thus a
similar analysis of your Usenet output would lead to an impression of
a life so utterly dedicated to puerile practices of fancy elimination
ranging from spurting athletic come shots to shitting expensive turds,
as to cause your reader to doubt that the balance of your work could
evidence any productive striving, let alone permanent accomplishment.
It is possible for people to change, and should you ever believe
yourself to have changed, I have no doubt of learning about it in this
forum. Until then, your combative postures will merit no concern from
anyone accustomed to swatting gnats.
smw
"Michael S. Morris" wrote:
> S: I recall correcting you on this (right of center
> vs. right-wing) several times. Why repeat it? Do
> you confuse the two categories?
>
> Yes, I most certainly think that "right-wing"="right of center",
> and use the terms interchangeably.
ah, that explains a lot... nah, wings imply a central body. There is no
two-wing structure with nothing in between.
if you want to rephrase your objections bearing this distinction in
mind, feel free. It doesn't make sense wading through a post predicated
on sucha basic misunderstanding.
Kater Moggin
marko_...@hotmail.com (Marko Amnell):
> One way of looking at what Deleuze and Guattari tried to
> do is to read _Anti-Oedipus_ as an attempt to carry out a fusion
> of the ideas of Freud and Marx (something that had been brewing
> in French thought for some time before that) ...
C'est what? It's called ANTI-Oedipus, dude, and that's no
mistake. The Marx-Freud synthesis was already old news.
Marcuse's _Eros and Civilization_ -- to offer an example -- had
come out about two decades before. "There was a certain way
of thinking correctly, a certain style of political
discourse, a certain ethics of the intellectual. One had to be
on familiar terms with Marx, not let one's dreams stray too
far from Freud." (Foucault in the AO preface.) Deleuze and
Guattari said the hell with all that. In Freud, "everything is
ground, squashed, triangulated into Oedipus" (89).
Psychoanalysis, according to them, is "a narcissism, a
monstrous autism" characteristic of the machinery of capitalism.
(313.)
> and they wrote in
> a style that rebelled against what they perceived to be the overly
> rationalistic orthodoxies of their predecessors.
Agreed. I wonder what some of the local Pynchon fans (Ted
or SubG, maybe) think of AO.
-- Moggin