Yay, nice post Fox
Quote:Am I convinced that your education had nothing to do with your transformation from a normal conservative kid to a rabidly liberal adult? No I am not. (I am fairly safe in classifying you as liberal as you consistently take the liberal point of view on virutally every issue and hold the conservative points of view in virtually complete contempt.)
As I said in the other thread, I think that you think that Moderate positions are actually Liberal positions due to your bias on the right. No offense, just sayin'. To the rest (majority) of Humanity, our Democrats are somewhat conservative. But I'm liberal enough to be called a liberal (though Rabid? Lol okay)
Quote:I will be charitable re your allegience to PNAC and your admission that you have been swayed by the heavily one-sided and frequently incomplete information there. That in itself would suggest other influences at work and I continue to suspect that your recent college experience is a factor. (Many of us explored that site extensively when it first went on line and pretty much have rejected it as being so partisan as to be unreliable.) But I would also be remiss in not acknowledging that there are a great many conservatives who also oppose the war in Iraq and other initiatives of the current administration; however, most conservatives are willing to acknowledge the positive along with the negative and do check out all credible sources. The dedicated 'brain washed' liberal or the right wingnut wacko seem to be incapable of that and accept only that which meshes with his/her chosen ideology.
Well, here's the thing. I don't have
Allegiance to the PNAC. I
HATE the PNAC. I disagree with them completely. And it ISN'T just some 'partisan site.' Present and former members include several prominent members of the Republican Party and Bush Administration, including
Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Richard Perle, Richard Armitage, Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby, William J. Bennett, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Ellen Bork, the wife of Robert Bork.
These are the people running the country. Not some random site promoting policy. These are the beliefs and plans of the Bush administration. And how hard is that to see in what has taken place in the last four years?
I believe in the Conservatism that I grew up believing in: fiscal responsibility, small Gov't, and most importantly, Honor. I feel that we, as a country, are acting without Honor. This is Shameful. I feel that those who run the Republican party are without said Honor. I cannot abide this.
Quote:Now to the issue of whether students are being harmed by a decidedly liberal bias on campus, of course they are. You state the anecdotal experience related here (and included in many postings of various columnists etc who have researched this subject) is not so much a result of liberal bias but of 'bad teaching'. My rationale is that one cannot be so biased as to present only one side of any issue and not be a bad teacher.
I don't follow you exactly here. You say, 'of course the students are being harmed by the liberal bias.' But then I don't think you show how this is true. I'm not trying to say that their is no liberal bias in the
information that is given to the students, just that I don't think the anecdotal, survey, or Pundit opinion that you have cited as evidence show that there IS a bias in that information.
As I stated earlier, the students who complain that their teachers A: talk about the wrong subject to bash Bush, or B: allow no dissent from their opinions, are
bad teachers! It doesn't matter what their deal is (Like I said, my worst one was a greenie) if they are a bad teacher. I have no support for bad profs and will offer none; but, and this I feel is the critical point,
Not all Liberal profs are bad profs! Not all of them teach from a biased position! In fact, we really don't have any info at all on this; none of the evidence supplied shows any pattern as to how many Liberals are in fact Bad Teachers. This link is the true causal link that I feel that your argument is lacking in when it comes to evidence; I think proof of this point would solidify your argument nicely.
Quote:
You cited a word picture:
Prof 1 is a Liberal who loves the South
Prof 2 is a Conservative who loves the South
Prof 3 is a Liberal who hates the South
Prof 4 is a Conservative who hates the South
The problem with your word picture is in a group of four, given the statistics indicated by the various polls, there would likely be no conservative at all. And the four liberals would most likely mostly hold one point of view and that is what the students would hear.
Well, my point was mostly to prove that a teacher could be Liberal and X or Conservative and X, and therefore it isn't easy to say that Biases are all inherent, or that they will be similar, or that they will be effective, or that they will, in fact,
change students.
Quote:Once we agree that a more balanced approach would be conducive to complete and better education, then the solution could be debated and hopefully there would be no need for a Horowitz who is using the sledge hammer approach. But in fairness to Horowitz, many other inequities have been corrected with such sledge hammer approaches in the history of our country. (The equal rights amendment, affirmative action, hate crimes legislation, Roe v Wade, etc.)
I just keep hoping we will mature as a people enough to get to the point that we can reason together and look for win win solutions instead of the one side wins, one side loses mentality that prevails now.
I believe there should be more conservative professors in our schools in order to provide a more balanced view. I've got nothing wrong with that. But let me ask you a question, and see if you have any opinion/data about this:
Are there far more Liberal Professors in our Universities due to a bias Against Conservatives, or due to the fact that Conservatives tend to choose not to be Professors and instead go into the private sector?
Cheers
Cycloptichorn
