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Larry's World
Short Shots 2
Dispatches from the War on Stupidity
It is now a conventional complaint on the Right that university faculties are dominated by liberals.
It’s true.
A Washington Post story reported on a study that said: “72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative … The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative.”Naturally, Right-wingers claim this is a vast left-wing conspiracy.
There’s a more logical conclusion. A university faculty is home to people whose profession is thinking. To survey such a population is a valid way to select for people who think, as opposed to a random sample of the general population.From that point of view, we see that among people who think, 72% are liberal and 15% conservative. Among elite thinkers, the portion ofliberals goes up 87%.Thinking leads to liberalism. Think about it.
The theory of “The Surge” is that by putting a lot of troops in Baghdad, we can stabilize Baghdad and then everything will become hunky-dory.NPR reported this morning on a military operation in Iraq’s Diyala Province.US troops were removed from Diyala to be part of “The Surge” in Baghdad. The insurgents then moved out of Baghdad and went to Diyala, which is immediately to the northeast.Now the troops have been taken from “The Surge” to go to Diyala.
Who could ever have predicted that?
The Commander in Chief (who doesn’t want other people to micro-manage the war he’s already lost)? The Joint Chiefs of Staff? General Petraeus, the new commander? After all, he has two oxymorons in his resume, he’s the Army’s counter-insurgency expert, and, (according to Washington Post) he "gained fame for his early success in training Iraqi troops.”
Apparently not. But Billy Joel could’ve. “We held the day in the palm of our hand. They ruled the night … We held the coastline, they held the highlands … and we would all go down together.”
That’s from "Goodnight, Saigon."
Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian, and Fog Facts: Searching
for Truth in the Land of Spin. All available at nationbooks.org.
Responses can be sent to beinhart@earthlink.net
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Lorna Tychostup left this comment over 2 years ago
You failed to cite the Washington Post article and I could not find it but perhaps here is some food for thought for you:
In his book, “The Coming Anarchy,” Robert Kaplan writes: “Realists almost always run foreign policy; idealists, I have found, attend academic conferences and write books and articles from the sidelines.”
(FYI: Realists = conservatives [doers?]; Idealists = liberals [thinkers?])
As someone attending an “elite” grad school right now, in my opinion Kaplan seems to have hit the nail on the head. Conservatives should not be so worried about any sort of left-wing conspiracy…
In the chapter entitled, “Was Democracy Just a Moment,” Kaplan writes: “Whereas the liberal mistake is to think that there is a program or policy to alleviate every problem in the world; the conservative flaw is to be vigilant against concentrations of power in government only – not in the private sector, where power can be wielded more secretly and sometimes more dangerously.”
But my favorite passage of his (from the same chapter and admittedly somewhat off topic) is: “I have lived and traveled in many countries with both high voter turnouts and unstable politics; the low voter turnouts in the US do by themselves worry me. The philosopher James Harrington observed that the very indifference of most people allows for a calm and healthy political climate. Apathy, after all, often means that the political situation is healthy enough to be ignored. The last thing America wants is ore voters – particularly badly educated and alienated one – with a passion for politics. But when voter turnout decreases to around 50 percent at the same time the middle class is spending astounding sums in gambling casinos and state lotteries, joining private health clubs, and using large amounts of stimulants and anti-depressants [and I would add smoking lots of dope], one can be legitimately be concerned about the state of American society…. Modern democracy exists within a thin band of social and economic conditions, which include flexible hierarchies that allow people to move up and down the ladder… Democracy is a fraud in many poor countries outside this narrow band: Africans want a better life and instead have been given the right to vote.”
One last thing, one Iraqi friend who lives in Baghdad was about to leave for Jordan until the “surge” hit his community. Now he feels he can stay put because of the added security. Bet you won’t read that in the western media or on the self-serving blogs…
Jeffrey Shapiro left this comment over 2 years ago
Actually there is a more direct demonstration of the flaw in your "logical" conclusion:
A prison is home to people whose profession is crime. To survey such a population is a valid way to select for people with the propensity to commit crime, as opposed to a random sample of the general population. From that point of view, we see that among people who commit crimes, the majority are black as opposed to white. Among elite prisons, (i.e. those housing more violent criminals) the proportion of blacks goes up. Blackness leads to crime.
This obviously absurd result points out the flaw in your cum hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. I won't bother to explain that term, I'm sure an elite thinker already knows what it means. Those stupid right-wingers who want an explanation can go to www.fallacyfiles.org.
Jeffrey Shapiro left this comment over 2 years ago
"A university faculty is home to people whose profession is thinking. To survey such a population is a valid way to select for people who think, as opposed to a random sample of the general population.From that point of view, we see that among people who think, 72% are liberal and 15% conservative. Among elite thinkers, the portion ofliberals goes up 87%.Thinking leads to liberalism.
Until the 1960's, many of our most elite universities had few or no blacks, women or Jews on the faculty. Does this mean that until that time blacks, women and Jews were not good thinkers?