Liberals see no issue with liberal hegemony
A Sunday column by Mike Jacobs pointed out how few conservatives are employed in the University of North Carolina system - ans, specifically, at UNC-Chapel Hill.
In 1970, Democrat voter registration among university faculty across the country outnumbered Republicans by 3.5 to one. Nationally, that disparity has soared to 11 to 1. At UNC, there are 23 registered Democrats for every Republican in the departments that address political and social issues, according to Econ Journal Watch.
The reactions to this information is illustrative.
Some do not accept the data is accurate...
He appears to equate Democrats with “liberalism” and, therefore of the same “world view.”
... others admit the data might be correct, but it's conservatives who are to blame.
Empirical studies show with hard data that people who really have an interest in advanced education are more liberal . It’s also worth noting that in the last couple of decades conservative disdain for and suspicion of the expertise assumed with advanced degrees and an academic career have grown, making it even more difficult for those of a conservative bent to enter teaching careers without having to defend the choice to family and friends, especially given the high cost of getting to a PhD.
I point all this out to push back against the notion that academia is one big conspiracy to exclude conservative thought from the classroom. There is some of that, but it’s far from being all that.
But Jacobs exposed the inconsistency of postmodernist leftism in simply pointing out the reality.
Take this response:
He likely has no idea what his faculty colleagues are actually espousing in class, but a species of “guilt by association” apparently suffices for his purposes.
So, just because Democrats outnumber Republicans 23-to-1 Chapel Hill, we should not assume that all of these Democrats have a similar world view. Yet, we ARE to assume that all people of a certain class (race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc.) all do.
If, as Jacobs necessarily is suggesting, simple political-party registration must be among the criteria for judging the professional bona fides of a candidate for faculty membership, then a quota system – affirmative action for Republican scholars – is the only possible way to achieve his touted “critical mass of nationally-recognized conservative scholars.”
Jacobs does not suggest party affiliation be used to determine hiring, of course. He actually focuses mainly on getting academia to acknowledge that there's a problem.
You can see the same dynamic in media, too.
What's good for D'Souza it's good for O'Donnell
Well, well, well...
Rosie O’Donnell made illegally over-sized campaign donations to at least five Democratic federal candidates, according to a Post analysis of campaign filings.
The liberal comedian has regularly broken Federal Election Commission rules limiting the total any one person can give to an individual candidate at $2,700 per election. The limit applies separately to primaries, runoffs and general elections.
O'Donnell says she assumed that candidates would not accept donations that were over the limit.
This is an argument to which I'd be sympathetic... if she didn't use different names to make the donations.
Filings show O’Donnell gave a combined $5,400 in contributions over the limit to the five candidates, and used five different New York addresses and four variations of her name.
Cue Dinesh D'Souza...
Oh! I went to Texas
Last week, my wife and I went to Austin, TX. We took a tour of the state capitol.
This prompted a reply from International Film and Award-Winning TV Star Nick Searcy: