Friday, December 03, 2004
Jacoby the Joker: The weblog Busy, Busy, Busy has a good " shorter" of Jeff Jacoby's latest essay claiming A left-wing monopoly on campuses. Following the link to his op-ed, we were not surprised to see that he cites a number of clearly biased sources. Here they are: - "Virgin" Ben Shapiro, a columnist for the conservative TownHall.com. Shapiro recently praised Ann Coulter's latest book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter. "How to Talk to a Liberal is Ann Coulter at her best."
- A survey published in the American Enterprise magazine that, as we pointed out in an earlier post, classifies all Democrats as liberals.
- A poll conducted by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture - David Horowitz's shop - which has the online magazine Front Page. What's happening over at Front Page magazine? Current essays: Asserting a link between Saddam and TWA flight 800, an attack on liberal Christians, and a pean to Scalia.
- A New York Times report on Republicans in academia, co-authored by Daniel Klein. Who is Daniel Klein? An associate professor of economics at Santa Clara University, who recommends the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Essentially, this guy tilts libertarian-conservative (and likes John Stossel!)
- The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which conducted a survey. What is this outfit? We took a quick look and discovered that the director from 1986 to 1993 was Lynne Cheney (back then it had a different name: National Alumni Forum).
There you have it, Jacoby cites a bunch of suspect data - in a manner that does not inform the reader of the conservative origins.
posted by Quiddity at 12/03/2004 08:02:00 AM
4 comments
Juan Cole had an excellent post on the topic of why there might be a lesser concentration of conservatives on college campuses - namely, that conservatives don't generally want to work in academia. Not enough cash for the little money-grubbing parasites.
http://www.juancole.com/2004/11/shock-of-week-liberals-in-liberal-arts.html
You will find as many conservatives in the academy as you will find Young Republicans volunteering for service in the armed forces - which is to say very few: both jobs require dedication, hard work, and a value system whose currency is not monetary.
There is a libertarian streak running through me and I'm very concerned with the theocratic leanings of the current "conservative" administration. I'm wondering how true libertarians are feeling about being lumped in with them.
The conservatives got the corporate world: Cubicles, hamster-wheel opportunity and stock options that nobody but the executives could actually cash in before they became toilet paper.
We (progressives) got academia: Intellectual freedom, sharing knowledge and opening young minds. If they are suddenly so fucking interested in it (let's face it, they're only interested in it because they want to poison all the impressionable young minds on college campuses in order to close them to learning), let's see some of them bring their shitty ideas back and compete in the marketplace of ideas with ours.
Oh wait. That's why they left in the first place...their ideas suck.
~Patrick
|
