Reply to How come right wing people don't have their own Harvards?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "How come right wing people don't have their own Harvards?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here the reason I ask is that the right seems to be fixated on admissions to schools like HYP and affirmative action. Why do they even want to be there? Why not just have right wing school with stellar academics, envy of everyone, plus no affirmative action? My theory is that they are simply incapable of duplicating the same caliber of school. They are loud, but not very patient or hard working. [/quote]

As it's already been pointed out, academics with no real-life experience tend to gravitate to political liberals.  It has more to do with the type of people who gravitate to the life of the university -  and nothing to do with the silly idea that political conservatives have no financial means of supporting a university.  [/quote]

Do you have experience at elite universities? You couldn't be more wrong.

Also, PP wasn't saying conservatives don't have the financial means to support a university; the issue is that right-wing politics (contemporarily conceived -- not right wing in the traditional sense, such as fiscal conservatism) are essentially incompatible with the culture of intellectual inquiry elite universities try to cultivate. [/quote]

Not sure of your point.  Conservatism is incompatible with the intellectual inquiry?  Generally the conservatives are the ones trying to carry on the Western culture which gave rise to the culture of intellectual inquiry you are speaking of.  [/quote]

You aren't understanding the point.

In contemporary US political parlance, "trying to carry on Western culture" means espousing a version of nationalism that rejects the introduction of other cultural influences (anything that isn't steeped in Christianity and those with Western European backgrounds). It has nothing to do with supporting Enlightenment thinking, which I think is what you're implying when you say "Western culture which gave rise to the culture of intellectual inquiry." People who reject the existence of climate change and want to defund the NIH cannot possibly be said to be carrying on the Western tradition of science-based rational thinking, ala Francis Bacon. [/quote]

By "Western culture" I am referring to the amalgam of hellenistic Greek, the Romans, and the principles of judeochristianity that's been passed down to the present.  This is the bedrock of the Western culture.  The world has the right to change its face - and no thinking conservatives are denying this.  Certain postmodernist thinkers like the Frankfurt school thinkers, Derrida, Foucault focus on certain paradoxes to the science-based Enlightenment thinking that was raised as early as Berkeley, Hume, and Kant to point out what has gone on prior in history is totally compatible with any number of ways of continuing - that there is no special need to continue the Western culture as we know it, that non-Western ways of life are just as valid as the western ones.  Again, I don't know any conservative who denies change - or the need to change- and will freely acknowledge that the world has the right to change its face.  What conservatives, going back to Edumund Burke, are saying is that the wholesale cultural change need not happen in next month, next week, or tomorrow because there is a certain structure to changes to avoid the chaos that we saw in the French revolution.

Not steep in the politicizing of the climate change and NIH debates. However, I recall the Y2K problem which turned out to be a huge nothing.  People who raise these issues are are not necessarily science-based rational thinkers.  It was a huge business for the industry that was getting millions, possibly billions, of dollars to "fix" the problem that didn't exist.  You can't rule out the business interest in generating the climate change hysteria.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics