The Relationship Between Higher Education and Liberalism
There is a philosophical conversation that is prominent in present-day America re: liberalism and its strong correlation to higher education. In particular, do universities manufacture liberals, or are better educated people naturally liberal in their belief systems?
My mom and I are talking about Laurence Tribe, Professor Emeritus at Harvard Law (pictured). He’s a distinguished legal scholar, brilliant individual, frequently interviewed in mainstream media. I would put him in the same class as Noam Chomsky, insofar as they both live at the very top of the intellectual, and both extremely progressive.
Yet as far as the right-wing TV “news” shows are concerned, neither of these two people exist. And, to be sure, Fox News and the like take the position that college life is tantamount to brainwashing, insofar as professors are prone to punish their students with conservative viewpoints. How that could possibly operate in math, science, language, music — anything outside of political science and perhaps history — I have no clue.
I guess it’s one of those many things in life that are impossible to prove one way or the other. We all suffer from our cognitive biases, seeking data points that confirm what we already believe.
Moreover, we need to keep in mind that, in a capitalist society, there will always be a supply that rises to meet a demand.
This is really what Fox News is all about. Almost half of American voters are Republicans, and today, that means taking some fairly extreme positions on things like Trump’s honesty, Biden’s senility, abortion, gun rights, and so forth. Fox makes a fortune with programming that appeals to these people, many of them turn Fox on when they get up in the morning and fall asleep to it at night. That’s a lot of eyeballs being sold products like My Pillow, walk-in bathtubs, hearing aids, and food supplements.
There are a great number of theories as to why human civilization has as yet been unable to make contact with other forms of intelligent life.
As illustrated in the meme here, one never knows what news revelations are going to make a real impact on the American people, and which will be forgotten at once, if not entirely overlooked.
Comedian and social critic George Carlin nailed an important point here: very few of us have the resources (even if we have the inclination) to devote any major portion of our lives towards making improvements in human civilization.
Thom: What you say here is fine, but keep in mind that virtually none of the Americans who admire today’s GOP has lived a year in Germany. Most of them couldn’t find Germany on a map.
I note all the “amens” in response to this post on social media.
This certification should be provided for: rejecting science, and, in so doing, raising hospitalization rates, while lowering one’s life expectancies and that of everyone coming into contact.
….Isn’t a multibillionaire who hates wokeism and wants to return Donald Trump to the White House.
No one could have foreseen Trumpism and the vicious attack on our nation’s American democracy it represents. And now, even after the insurrection has been put down and its participants brought to justice, the GOP still has sufficient power to thwart the will of the American people.
