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2004-11-18 Home Front: Culture Wars

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Posted by Mark Espinola 2004-11-18 5:13:28 AM|| || Front Page|| [11126 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I love the youth, lol! No matter what the position of their elders, there is a backlash of some magnitude when the choices are few and the voices are strident -- and they look for alternatives. In the academic world, this just happens to be a great thing, since most of the professors are zipperheads from LalaLand and their election screeching has betrayed them to the kids with antennae. Of course these initial reactions are spotty, but in time perhaps it will grow and many will arrive at a common sense realization that they're being sold a load of shit - that doesn't stand up in the real world. Cool. Flipping burgers for a living may help the philsophy and poly-sci majors later.

Posted by .com 2004-11-18 5:23:12 AM|| 2004-11-18 5:23:12 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 From little acorns do mighty oaks grow.

Posted by Tony (UK) 2004-11-18 5:30:54 AM|| 2004-11-18 5:30:54 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 "Those that can, do..."

Posted by eLarson 2004-11-18 11:02:17 AM|| [http://larsonian.blogspot.com] 2004-11-18 11:02:17 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 College is increasingly a kind of finishing school in which one fills time by listening to and laughing at lefty profs before getting serious about life.

As a profession, academe increasingly attracts hardcore partisans who've given up trying to compete in much tougher markets such as business and government, which have effectively been ceded to the Republicans. Academically-inclined Republicans go to Washington and wield influence. Academically-inclined Democrats go to academe and disappear from public view (except for the odd NYT OpEd or other screed that few read or pay attention to).

Posted by lex 2004-11-18 12:01:54 PM|| 2004-11-18 12:01:54 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 I have become convinced that academics have always become the epitome of a generation's failures for the young to gawk at so that as they grow old they don't repeat their parent's mistakes. When academics learn that the now young are laughing with contempt at the beliefs they formed so firmly when they were young, the entire process becomes farce. We're there.

Book recommendation #2 to Albion's Seed is Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069. Another book that makes you look at history in a completely different way.

Posted by Mrs. Davis 2004-11-18 12:14:53 PM|| 2004-11-18 12:14:53 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 Let me second Mrs. D's recommendation of Generations. I read it when it was first published and it's time for me to read it again.

Posted by Seafarious 2004-11-18 12:22:27 PM|| 2004-11-18 12:22:27 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 "Republicans Outnumbered in Academia"

This brought to you by the Center for the Studies of the Completely Obvious.

Posted by BA 2004-11-18 1:07:04 PM|| 2004-11-18 1:07:04 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 A very good friend of mine and the smartest person I ever knew became a philosophy prof. at a prominent university. I was astounded when one day he told me he was a socialist. I thought long and hard about that and concluded that the problem was academia's separation from the real world of messy problems and flawed solutions. They live in an artificial world and convince themselves it's the real world.

When they look out onto the real world, rather than realize those are hard problems, they conclude its stupid bad people that are causing the problems. That incidentally explains MM's (and conspiracy views in general) popularity in universities.

Posted by phil_b 2004-11-18 3:53:11 PM|| 2004-11-18 3:53:11 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 They live in an artificial world and convince themselves it's the real world.

You've nailed it right there.

Posted by Rafael 2004-11-18 5:03:12 PM|| 2004-11-18 5:03:12 PM|| Front Page Top

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