Columnist Robert Novak has ties to Anti-Kerry book

ya know what?

i have finally had enough of this foolishness. the right wingers have whined and cried way too much and too long about the liberal this and the liberal that.

quit yer gawdamm bitchin'.

despite your wishes, america has a multi-party system of government. that's the way it started and that's the way it's gonna stay.

if ya can't deal with it,

then leave.

(PHHTWEEEET!!)
Clear violation of copywrite "America, Love it or Leave It" thinking* conceived by conservatives in the early 60's.

*Okay, so it's not really thinking, but it is an early example of the kind of us/them us/you'all us/or nothing rhetoric* we have come to expect.

*Okay, so it's not really anything that could be described as rhetoric, more like venting or simplistic babbling, but I was trying to be kind.

(phtweeeeet!!!)

I had to blow the whistle on myself for that one: being kind is a sign of sensitivity which is not allowed in discussions such as these, we might find middle ground if everyone acted that way.

Joe

DTOM

That is a funny turn-around. I like it very much. And will steal it.

Book Publishers are liberal...

The Media is liberal...

Acedemia is liberal...

Sounds like the liberals have the whole 'intelligence' thing wrapped up. Why aren't these proffessions conservative? ANyone know?

Cycloptichorn

That the professions noted here are disproportionately populated with people of a liberal political disposition is well documented and doesn't require any additional demonstration from me.

The different professions tend to attract individuals whose natures are compatible with the activities and perspectives they require. We encounter the effects of this natural self-selection everyday. I am puzzled that some here don't appear to acknowledge this.

While publishing, the media, and academic pursuits do indeed require certain forms of intelligence, it would be far from the truth to suggest they represent either its highest manifestations or a particularly broad range of its possibilities. Any discerning person perusing recent publications in a large bookstore, reviewing the journalistic outpourings of the print & electronic media, or even hanging around the faculty club in a major university, will recognize the rather ordinary collection of human possibilities represented there. Plodders, imitators, and careerists, dominate, while occasionally one encounters creative thinking and wise understanding.

(I am reminded of a quip attributed to Henry Kissinger, who, when asked why academic disputes were pursued with such enduring bitterness, replied, "Because the stakes are so low".)

The application of intelligence to action and human enterprise, though frequently undervalued by timid critics and commentators, often requires a good deal more intelligence than does the criticism.

george will never get around to reading the 1954 Pulitzer work of Amerian history by Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life". And that's a good thing because if he did, he'd have to give attribution for and after nearly every post he writes. We'll note in passing (faster, faster!) that there isn't a breath of empiricism to be found directly above this post.

Glad to know that some scribe has (at least in your view) fully captured my essence. However that does not in any way dilute the evident truth of my observations above.

I didn't get the last sentence about empiricism. Do you fault me for the lack of it? or what?

I'll confess I do (in my private fancies) actually see myself as a bit of an intellectual, however one who values action more than theorizing.

Of course, you are an intellectual, you dolt. As is Finn. As are many here on the right. "A love of the life of the mind" is as good a definition of the term as I've come across. Anyone who loves to read or imagine or abstract or reason or learn is such a creature.

But there is a another sense of the word which has a long history of derogation. It's an incredibly interesting history. And more illuminating that you yet realize. The notions that you, and many others, forward regarding the 'intellectual' aren't your ideas...they sit smack in the middle of your culture and you breath them in like air. For a man of action, you are really piss poor at getting your ass to a bookstore. Please please read that goddamn book.

please, be my guest. let anyone that has had enough use it. it's about time we got off our haunches and started fighting back.

i was born and raised in america and i'll be damned if i'm gonna listen to this smug, right-wing self righteousness and dumb it down junk philosophy for another minute without busting them on it.

well yeah, and the republicans are even worse!

Well, that is reassuring.

I know you have tried before to get me to read this book, but I can't overcome the notion that I have encountered the ideas in it before - and rejected them. Abstract reasoning, rationalism and first principles have their place in theology and physics, however I believe they should have a very limited application in politics. There, pragmatism, more or less as William James described it (that means not mere empiricism), should be the rule. I believe this approach has long been a fundamental part of the American political tradition with its emphasis on limiting the power of government; setting its executive, and judicial organs against one another; placing as much power as possible in local, as opposed to national, government; and in the practical common law tradition we inherited from the British.

The American Revolution was profoundly different from its French and Russian successors, in that it offered no abstract notions relating to the perfection of its citizens. Instead it offered limits on the power and action of government. I believe this is the right approach, and if it is found to be lacking in abstract intellectual (or more accurately, rational) content, so much the better. The other, far more rational, systems offered prescriptions for the perfection of society, its various classes and its citizens. They professed to know what was good for people and finally became willing to slaughter those who were judged unwilling to learn or accept the intellectually correct prescription.

To this extent I view anti intellectualism in American political life as a quite wonderful thing.

george

As you yourself are a fine example, the division of people into "intellectual man" or "practical man" is a simplification in thinking which obscures far more than it illuminates. These sorts of dichotomies are a curse, and we fall to them too easily.

This book is a work of historical study, not a screed of some sort, and it won him one of his two Pulitzers for American history. It's an extraordinary work, and he writes with the touch of an angel.

If you were to read the book, and then come back and re-read what you've just written, you'd laugh and slap yourself for the foolishness of the presumptions.

I shan't mention the book again. You will deeply enrich your understanding of America with it, or you will not.

There was s study that showed that at least 70% or more of college professors were liberal and voted democrat. This is indeed proof that colleges are littered with the liberal mindset. When writers like Chomsky are used in classes what else could it mean?

There was a news story about how a teacher failed a student on a paper because she wouldn't write a story about how Bush was a war criminal. There are other such stories in our college campuses. The campus at CU Boulder was going to shut down an Affirmative Action Back sale but backed off after students threatened to sue the school. Every one remembers the university professor who "wished for a thousand Mogadishu's"? Views like his are the ones being shoved down the throats of our children and I would like to see it stop. Thus the reason for The Academic Bill of Rights. When passed it will level the playing field at all colleges and universities.

george -

There's a good article by Deborah De Simone on Hofstadter's book here:

http://historycooperative.press.uiuc.edu/journals/ht/34.3/desimone.html

If you decide to read it (his book, Anti-intellectualism in American Life) be prepared to be a bit depressed.

Is this a study you read? Is this a study you even know anything about, other than hearing someone else say, "there was a study..."?

Chomsky? Do you have even the foggiest notion of what percentage of university students would have him on a reading list? Perhaps one out of every two-five thousand. Do you have any idea what they would be studying? Linguistics.

But let's say it's approximately accurate. What would it tell you? That when you walk out of biology, you are going to vote x instead of y? That when you take a course in physiology or French literature or physics or computer science that political viewpoints will be shoved down your throat between peeks into a microscope or those french verbs? Your lack of familiarity with the university environment is too apparent. And that does some pretty serious damage to any pretence of certainty you have here.

You wish to see the 'academic bill of rights' applied in universities. I like that. Affirmative Action for conservatives and the religious (preferably christian though). And I wish to have communists placed in 50% of all government departments, board offices, and church podiums. Can we make a deal?

Chonmsky? that guy's some kind of liberal communist pig that don't know what side of his bread is buttered on, he needs to wise up and smell the roses. Linguist, what is that, a fellow traveler?

Can you deny that a majorty of college professors are liberal? When was the last time you were in school or even college? I'm there now and happen to see it even in my public speaking class.



While you are right that he is into linguistics, it is his study of politics and socialism that bothers me and it is those books that seem to make it around the university circuit. Nice try with the evade. It won't work, remember I'm there now and have seen this and have heard about it from other students.



You forget about the manadorty humanities classes that people have to take to fulfil requirements for degrees. It is the poly sci classes that have to be taught, the into to soc classes that have to be taken. Don't try and confuse the issue with classes that you know don't require a point of view. There are others that do and you know it.



No because it is the liberal view that already has a voice in such places as the schools. What do you call it when entering freshmen are forced to read a book about Islam and then right a paper on it? Would this same thing have happened for the Bible or even the Torah? No people like you would scream about "Seperation of Church and State".

Here's a article about how liberal schools keep conservatives from teaching certain subjects.

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Mediator's Ruling Favors Conservative Professor in Dispute at U. Montana
By Jennifer Jacobson--Chronicle of Higher Ed--08/27/04

A law professor at the University of Montana who said he had long been denied his wish to teach constitutional law because of his conservative political views will now get a chance to teach it, under a ruling issued by an outside mediator.
The professor, Robert G. Natelson, had appealed the School of Law's most recent decision to deny his request, charging that the administration had allowed only liberal professors to teach the course.
However, Donald C. Robinson, a Montana lawyer who mediated the case this summer, did not consider the question of whether Mr. Natelson had been discriminated against based on his politics. Mr. Robinson found only that the professor had been treated unfairly and decided that he should be permitted to teach constitutional law, on a trial basis.
"The decision of the hearing officer was really a clarion call for fairness," Mr. Natelson told The Chronicle after Mr. Robinson announced his ruling, on Thursday. "If everyone is treated fairly in academia, there will be no political discrimination."
Mr. Natelson, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for governor in 1996 and 2000, said he was "really happy" about the decision. "It's good for the law school," he said. "I really look forward to working with students in constitutional law."
In a letter to Mr. Natelson and E. Edwin Eck, dean of the law school, G.M. Dennison, the university's president, said he accepted Mr. Robinson's recommendations. Those include that Mr. Natelson be allowed to teach constitutional law in the spring semester and that Mr. Eck establish an independent committee to evaluate Mr. Natelson's teaching, scholarship, and service, and to decide whether to assign him to the course permanently.
In his grievance, Mr. Natelson, who has taught courses in property and real-estate law and legal history, argued that allowing senior faculty members to move from courses they have taught into vacant ones was a common practice.
On Thursday he said that he welcomed an objective evaluation of his performance, and that he had struggled for years to get one. Four times the law school had denied his request to fill a vacancy in teaching the course, he said.
Montana officials praised Mr. Robinson for choosing not to judge the dispute's political dimension.
"I was pleased to see the president noting there was no finding of political discrimination," Dean Eck said, referring to Mr. Dennison's letter. In it, the president wrote that Mr. Robinson had found "personal animus" on the part of several law professors toward Mr. Natelson, but not political discrimination.
Even so, "there's no question I am disappointed," said Mr. Eck, who described himself as a conservative Republican. The mediator's recommendations, he said, limited his discretion in considering teaching evaluations in assigning professors to teach courses. Some evaluations, he said, had criticized Mr. Natelson for a lack of collegiality with both students and professors.
Even so, Mr. Eck said that he and his colleagues plan to put the dispute behind them.
"Fairness is a good beginning for building a collegial working relationship," Mr. Natelson said, echoing his dean's sentiment. "My hope is we can go forward at the law school with such a relationship. I'll do everything I can to foster that
--------------------

The same thing could have been said 50 years ago of blacks, just because it wasn't found doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Interesting to see how this one turns out.

He's a blasted anarchist for god's sake! That's like a libertarian on steroids. I mean, he REALLY doesn't trust government not to meddle in our lives. No rules. Anybody can believe whatever the hell they want, worship whatever damned deity they figure is up there, hang out with whomever meets their anarchic tastes and just get along day to day without having the secret police or the not much of a secret police nosing around.

What a bizarre pile of unpatriotic unamerican claptrap.

Blatham - I was just wondering how you REALLY feel.