The famously ugly ex-sculptor who haunted the Athenian agora asking uncomfortable questions of so-called ‘experts’ some two millennia ago is supposed to have noted that the wisest among us are those who have a sense of how much they don’t know.
I recall one of those marvelous late-night college dorm discussions in which I participated join my return to college just after I’d gotten out of the army in 1971. As expected, it ran quite a gamut. At one point it touched somewhat briefly on education. A guy who’d been quiet up until then spoke up. He said he thought that a good education should allow its recipients to ask serious questions in a number of essential areas, and then at least be able to have a good idea if the answers he/she was getting back were BS or not.
These two thoughts have guided my own thinking for that last 60 or so years of an 80 year old life, mostly spent teaching American history. I have no idea if I would be thought of as a liberal or a conservative, but I do know that I want to be thought of as an American; that is a citizen of the most extraordinary, the most crucial, the riskiest, and the most complex ongoing experiment in human society and government ever attempted, and to be worthy of that citizenship.
I have several degrees, and a focus on political theory during my PhD studies. I have never attended a university that didn’t include viewpoints from conservative intellectuals. This assertion that conservative viewpoints are not included in university curricula is just bogus. Yes, university professors are more liberal than the general public. It’s almost like advancing knowledge means you are willing to embrace change, which is—-gasp!— a liberal perspective.
LGB United can be sketchy sometimes, but read The Scrupulosity of the Woke on this very platform. A young gay man escaping a fundamentalist cult found a cult AS BAD at Columbia. Postmodernist sophistry and full throated victimhood olympics and destruction of society dominated that august temple of new Thought
Young conservatives would really benefit from this. They are like children who know they believe in something but it’s not rooted in good values. They believe the man child is some kind of moral and ethical leader because there is no one else to follow but him and his political henchmen.
The US does not have a conservative tradition. It has a liberal tradition of different colorations for the obvious reason that the country never experienced feudalism. If you want to teach conservative thought then teach conservative thought. But this is not going to be an American tradition. You need De Maistre, De Tocqueville, Burke, Schmitt, Gentile, Maurras and so on. And by the way, these thinkers are already widely taught.
Conservatives are generally libertarians supporting individual rights, freedoms and liberties within a traditional base moral framework. Liberals want to change the moral framework and control and constrain individual rights, freedoms and liberties, and shove their values and ideas down the throats of everyone else. Teaching only the liberal views is that attempt to shove it down everyone else's throats.
Given how crazy “critical theory” progressives are at places like Columbia…this is something a “no longer sure how lefty I am” liberal can embrace. kudos
The famously ugly ex-sculptor who haunted the Athenian agora asking uncomfortable questions of so-called ‘experts’ some two millennia ago is supposed to have noted that the wisest among us are those who have a sense of how much they don’t know.
I recall one of those marvelous late-night college dorm discussions in which I participated join my return to college just after I’d gotten out of the army in 1971. As expected, it ran quite a gamut. At one point it touched somewhat briefly on education. A guy who’d been quiet up until then spoke up. He said he thought that a good education should allow its recipients to ask serious questions in a number of essential areas, and then at least be able to have a good idea if the answers he/she was getting back were BS or not.
These two thoughts have guided my own thinking for that last 60 or so years of an 80 year old life, mostly spent teaching American history. I have no idea if I would be thought of as a liberal or a conservative, but I do know that I want to be thought of as an American; that is a citizen of the most extraordinary, the most crucial, the riskiest, and the most complex ongoing experiment in human society and government ever attempted, and to be worthy of that citizenship.
I have several degrees, and a focus on political theory during my PhD studies. I have never attended a university that didn’t include viewpoints from conservative intellectuals. This assertion that conservative viewpoints are not included in university curricula is just bogus. Yes, university professors are more liberal than the general public. It’s almost like advancing knowledge means you are willing to embrace change, which is—-gasp!— a liberal perspective.
LGB United can be sketchy sometimes, but read The Scrupulosity of the Woke on this very platform. A young gay man escaping a fundamentalist cult found a cult AS BAD at Columbia. Postmodernist sophistry and full throated victimhood olympics and destruction of society dominated that august temple of new Thought
Young conservatives would really benefit from this. They are like children who know they believe in something but it’s not rooted in good values. They believe the man child is some kind of moral and ethical leader because there is no one else to follow but him and his political henchmen.
The US does not have a conservative tradition. It has a liberal tradition of different colorations for the obvious reason that the country never experienced feudalism. If you want to teach conservative thought then teach conservative thought. But this is not going to be an American tradition. You need De Maistre, De Tocqueville, Burke, Schmitt, Gentile, Maurras and so on. And by the way, these thinkers are already widely taught.
Conservatives are generally libertarians supporting individual rights, freedoms and liberties within a traditional base moral framework. Liberals want to change the moral framework and control and constrain individual rights, freedoms and liberties, and shove their values and ideas down the throats of everyone else. Teaching only the liberal views is that attempt to shove it down everyone else's throats.
Given how crazy “critical theory” progressives are at places like Columbia…this is something a “no longer sure how lefty I am” liberal can embrace. kudos