Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Quote of the day at Critical Mass:
From Robert Weissberg:
As the academy grows more stridently left wing, conservatives respond with calls for ideological affirmative action — for schools to hire more right-thinking faculty so students encounter intellectual diversity. This is a seductively alluring scheme, and thanks to wealthy donors, it is proliferating.
It is an ill-advised and ultimately anti-intellectual strategy, even in the unlikely event that it succeeds. The academy can not be, nor should it be, an intellectual version of Noah’s Ark. Sadly, this conservative version of “inclusion” mimics the Left’s subordination of truth to ideology.
The quest should be about insisting that whatever professors teach, content should be truthful, whether this truth is liberal, conservative, reactionary, or Marxist, whether the subject in English or sociology. After all, who wants conservative falsehoods to “balance” radical dishonesty? It is fantasy to insist that if students learn at 9 a.m. that 2+2=3 and at 11 a.m., 2+2=5, they will eat lunch knowing that 2+2=4.
The hunt to hire truth-seekers changes everything. Out with the ideological litmus tests; in with character and temperament. If a Marxist job candidate argues that Africa is poor owing to colonial exploitation, the sharp rejoinder should be, “Can you prove this?” Ditto for the conservative job seeker who insists that only capitalist free markets can solve Africa’s poverty.
Admittedly, abandoning ideological labels complicates life, and may even discourage donors from funding pet projects, but this is what the life of the mind is about.
All true. Also true: it’s quite common to dismiss those who criticize academia’s evident ideological homoegeneity as people who are problematically arguing for affirmative action for conservatives–when they are doing nothing of the kind. It’s happened to me quite a bit, for example. But there is a middle ground that’s ethical all the way around–one that requires people on both ends of the political spectrum to lay off the cheap political point-scoring and to focus on making sure that practice measures up to principle.
If my little darling were going to a higher-ed school and found his young mushy brain being ambushed and avalanched from all directions by doctrinized left-wing thinking — I suppose it would be fair for me to substitute the “if” with a “when” — the education I would hope for him to gain from this would not be how to keep his mouth shut and stay out of trouble, or that professors are dopes, or that the “right” way is the right way, but rather that men are emboldened by their institutions. A little bit of organization, a little bit of prestige, and the players within a circle will boldly brag about their dedication to “free speech” while, in action, doing all they can to bring it to a stop.
I would also hope he learns that human creativity and resourcefulness endure the most determined attacks from their fair-weather friends — those who claim to be championing and defending such assets. Institutions tend to claim to encourage thinking outside of the box, finding new solutions to problems; but most of this work is done before the institution arrives. While it can still be done.
The now-well-established proclivity of institutions to lean left…all sorts of institutions…is a symptom of all this, not a cause. For that alone, I’m in agreement with Weissberg and his reticence toward the “conservative affirmative action.” It wouldn’t work.
But the above points carry a lot of weight with me too. The goal needs to be truth. In the pursuit of such a goal, a conclusion towards liberalism is just as meritorious as a conclusion toward conservatism…or toward nothing at all.
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Here’s another case of “libertarian me” at war with “petty, revenge-seeking me” and “practical me.” In a purely philosophical sense, I agree that “the pursuit of truth” is all that matters. However, knowing ivory tower eggheads as I do — experientially, career-wise, and in the Biblical sense — nothing less than “affirmative action for conservatives” will break the leftist stranglehold on the universities, because the only capital-T Truth academics subscribe to is the notion that there is no capital-T Truth. In other words, everything exists to serve a political end. They’re all “academic freedom yay!” when their privileges are threatened, but left to their own devices they’ll purge right-deviationism with a fervor that Mao could only imagine.
Like most things dreamed up by classical liberals, the Academy — like Representative Government, Constitutionalism., the Rule of Law, the Supreme Court, etc. — only works when people share a commitment to common principles, and are able to put abstract notions of right above their own petty policy preferences. This hasn’t obtained in the academy since at least the 60s, and therefore affirmative action is the only answer.
(ooooh, I’m gonna get flamed for that…..)
- Severian | 10/29/2010 @ 13:00Every college kid should be required to read Bastiat and Hayek. They can take what ever other “_______ studies” classes they want, as long as they read Bastiat and Hayek.
I once heard a parent who told his/her child that their college would be paid for, but any class with the word “studies” in the title would have to be on the kid’s dime.
I thought that was a great solution.
- philmon | 10/29/2010 @ 16:08