Great Video!!! It is hilarious

Right Wing Eye

Response to Jeff Jacoby (below)

Jeff,

Your misappropriation of the details is grandiose enough to deserve my attention. After re-reading your opinion, I think you might win my coveted "Idiot of the Week Award"--normally reserved for bad blogs . . . . The core of your argument is that everyone is "Liberal" in Universities, and it is not representative of the real world. The rest of your editorial logically dissects the results of this "imbalance."

Please don't get offended if I use a kindergarten teacher's tone. I think you are an idiot for not seeing these fundamental tenets. I'll try to suppress it, but I will use 6th-grader language in order to reach you.

Let's begin with the concept of the University. So, the University is a place where people go to learn. One primary reason for attending college is to make changes: to your own life, to figure out how to change/shape your future industry, to challenge your personal assumptions, and to learn how to think critically in the future. I have a very good friend who begins this argument with, "The definition of a Liberal is any person who seeks to change [. . . . ]" The institution itself is a place that fosters that change. The relationship between Liberals (seekers of change), and the University is a very tangible one. Perhaps there are 6 to 8% of students (to use your number) who are "Conservative" and already know everything. They might be attending University to simply get a paper degree that certifies their knowledge. The rest of the students, however, are there to learn.

In order to make my motives transparent, I must establish my biases. I am an academic who is no longer in academia. I work and live and get funded by my own business, and the fruits of my own labor. But, I vehemently (oooh, sorry, big word--means: aggressively) will defend the Institution of Academia and the role it plays and needs to play in our world. Another friend in Academia states to his students a very succinct definition of the purpose of Academia: "It is my job as a Professor to show you 'Utopia,' or the perfect-world version of our subjects. The real world already exists. It is up to you, the students, to find a balance between the two. If I were to teach you the 'real world' ways, you would certainly be skewed in how you translate the materials you learn here to the future world." While you, Jeff, want the debate between Conservative ideals and Liberal ones to take place within Academia, I believe that is a recipe for disaster. The debate will certainly take place outside of the "Ivory Tower" for the remainder of your life, but if you never learn or practice the skills of questioning the fundamental tenets or your reality you will not have the ability to question any ideals--conservative or liberal.

Lastly, I have an economic argument to challenge your "alarms" that have sounded about Academia. Perhaps the reason why most of Academia voted for Democrats is the history that the party has for financially supporting Academia--and the history the Republican party has for NOT financially supporting the institution. I live in California and voted to recall former Governor Davis (a Democrat that supported Academia heavily), and I voted for now Governor Schwarzenegger because he was, in my opinion, the best leader for our state. One of the first ways that he trimmed the California budget, however, was to cut funding for the California State University system. The 21 campus system is no longer in an expansion mode--they are reducing the number of students they educate each year. Less American's will have a college education as a result.

At a Federal level, our Conservative President or Ultra-Conservative President, or Extremist President, or whatever President has just recently made a HUGE cut in the Student Loan program. Again, a Conservative choice that is going to reduce the number of college degrees in the good ole USA.

Perhaps the Conservative agenda does not find a home on college campuses because conservatives do not want to pay for Academia. If University Professors use the same logic as the rest of the nation, they need to vote in a way that supports and maintains their economic well-being. Namely, if Academia shrinks, they might lose their job, or not get a raise for cost-of-living increases, or might not have as many students in their classes. If we were to zoom out and take a look at the grand scheme of things, perhaps the Liberal agenda on college campuses is not too dissimilar to the Conservative one in the rest of nation. After all, it just may be the economy, stupid.

I love this one . . . .

This is an opinion/editorial republished in full from the Boston Globe.

A left-wing monopoly on campuses

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | December 2, 2004

THE LEFT-WING takeover of American universities is an old story. In 1951, William F. Buckley Jr. created a sensation with "God and Man at Yale," which documented the socialist and atheist worldview that even then prevailed in the classrooms of the Ivy League institution he had just graduated from.

Today campus leftism is not merely prevalent. It is radical, aggressive, and deeply intolerant, as another newly minted graduate of another prominent university -- Ben Shapiro of UCLA -- shows in "Brainwashed," a recent bestseller. "Under higher education's facade of objectivity," Shapiro writes, "lies a grave and overpowering bias" -- a charge he backs up with example after freakish example of academics going to ideological extremes.

No surprise, then, that when researchers checked the voter registration of humanities and social science instructors at 19 universities, they discovered a whopping political imbalance. The results, published in The American Enterprise in 2002, made it clear that for all the talk of diversity in higher education, ideological diversity in the modern college faculty is mostly nonexistent.

So, for example, at Cornell, of the 172 faculty members whose party affiliation was recorded, 166 were liberal (Democrats or Greens) and six were conservative (Republicans or Libertarians). At Stanford the liberal-conservative ratio was 151-17. At San Diego State it was 80-11. At SUNY Binghamton, 35-1. At UCLA, 141-9. At the University of Colorado-Boulder, 116-5. Reflecting on these gross disparities, The American Enterprise's editor, Karl Zinsmeister, remarked: "Today's colleges and universities . . . do not, when it comes to political and cultural ideas, look like America."

At about the same time, a poll of Ivy League professors commissioned by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture found that more than 80 percent of those who voted in 2000 had cast their ballots for Democrat Al Gore while just 9 percent backed Republican George W. Bush. While 64 percent said they were "liberal" or "somewhat liberal," only 6 percent described themselves as "somewhat conservative' -- and none at all as "conservative."

And the evidence continues to mount.

The New York Times reports that a new national survey of more than 1,000 academics shows Democratic professors outnumbering Republicans by at least 7 to 1 in the humanities and social sciences. At Berkeley and Stanford, according to a separate study that included professors of engineering and the hard sciences, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans is even more lopsided: 9 to 1.

Such one-party domination of any major institution is problematic in a nation where Republicans and Democrats can be found in roughly equal numbers. In academia it is scandalous. It strangles dissent, suppresses debate, and causes minorities to be discriminated against. It is certainly antithetical to good scholarship. "Any political position that dominates an institution without dissent," writes Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory and director of research at the National Endowment for the Arts, "deteriorates into smugness, complacency, and blindness. ... Groupthink is an anti-intellectual condition."

Worse yet, it leads faculty members to abuse their authority. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has just released the results of the first survey to measure student perceptions of faculty partisanship. The ACTA findings are striking. Of 658 students polled at the top 50 US colleges, 49 percent said professors "frequently comment on politics in class even though it has nothing to do with the course," 48 percent said some "presentations on political issues seem totally one-sided," and 46 percent said that "professors use the classroom to present their personal political views."

Academic freedom is not only meant to protect professors; it is also supposed to ensure students' right to learn without being molested. When instructors use their classrooms to indoctrinate and propagandize, they cheat those students and betray the academic mission they are entrusted with. That should be intolerable to honest men and women of every stripe -- liberals and conservatives alike.

"If this were a survey of students reporting widespread sexual harassment," says ACTA's president, Anne Neal, "there would be an uproar." That is because universities take sexual harassment seriously. Intellectual harassment, on the other hand -- like the one-party conformity it flows from -- they ignore. Until that changes, the scandal of the campuses will only grow worse.

We Live in Loveless World

But, you didn't have to prove it. So, y'all failed my test, but it doesn't really matter. I am gonna keep writing anyways. I guess that I am going to just have to get a little more caustic in order to illicit a response.

We Need Dialog

Now, more than ever, we need to keep interacting. The deadline is coming for the electors to vote. Kenneth Blackwell is not eveer going to tell us the results of the votes that were counted behind closed and locked doors. So, stay close and stay active. We have a four-year typhoon that is about ready to hit with Biometric Passports, electronic listening, and a further suspension of our personal rights. Do not be lulled into complacency by the media that can only report about their famous anchors retiring . . . .

[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]

Show Me The Love !!!

Okay, I have been posting for nearly a month, and with absolutely no feedback, comments, etc., it is starting to wear thin. How about pressing the little ol' "comments" button at the bottom of this post, give me a shout out, and recharge my public-writing batteries.

Round Two

I went back the next day to the same Coffeeshop, and they offer FREE wireless Internet for their customers.

This chicken has found a new coop!

[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]

An Evening Out

I have been told that we create our own reality. And, I am starting to believe it. Although the coffee shop is not new, it is new to me. The scene is really good. Weather Report is playing in the main room. The coffee is strong. The are copies of poetry-related things and glass bricks. It is cool. In fact, the scene is pretty nice.

The feeling here is academic and open-minded. People are arguing about the value of religion in our world, among people finishing their next paper. It is a great scene

Independent coffeeshops have an inherent disingenuousness that makes them really attractive. While Starbucks has been stone-washed and sterilized into conformity--the very element that makes them a successful business, indie-coffee houses can display graffiti on the walls as art, publicize local art shows, and play alternative (and even offensive) music.

I have found Independent coffee houses to be moody--closer to the human spirit than any other establishment. You know when your favorite barrista is working, and the lattes are just better. While the coffee is consistent in the Other, the workers are faceless and nameless and may express themselves in subtle and corporate-approved forms.

It is sort of the prozac of the industry. The Other gets to be a nice and steady establishment--slightly better than normal. On the other hand, the Independent Coffee shops are like real people. Real moody people. They complain, and kick, and scream, and they are have good days, and bad days. They are, in short human, and it is the inconsistency that makes them interesting.

[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]