Marches, Protests, and Petitions

[mclay18]

In lieu of marching or protesting, I'm taking part in the "5 Calls in 5 Minutes" campaign. Left five voicemails for Senator Richard Burr about various issues, while Thom Tillis' voicemail box is full.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Question: I know that protests can do good and petitions ect. I know they also can just as easily simply be "political therapy". Again, recent history doesn't show them as some overwhelmingly successful way to actually change things. There were quite a few protests over W. Bush's Iraq invasion but as even Jon Stewart said, in the end it all still went forward anyway.

That said, has anyone here, and I especially mean those in districts where Trump did well in, made the effort to call your Senator or Rep. or gone to a town hall or other such constituency meet and greets? Have you taken the time to calmly but forcefully call their offices and make it known that you wish to see full investigations and a release of the President's finances and taxes? I think it would behoove us all to do just that. That is the sort of direct pressure that can let our elected officials know that we expect them to do their duty to protect and defend our nation from threats both foreign and domestic.

In today's world the information to do so is at our fingertips. Go online and get the phone numbers and other contact info and get your voice heard. Our own engagement is important. Do you want the people in congress to have a spine? You have to let them know that you support further investigation. You want to let the GOP members know that you consider recent news a lot more important that another investigation of Libya or other nonsense? Let them know you find lack of inquiry unacceptable. Be calm but forceful. Make it clear you consider this a priority for the sake of our nation.


Again, has anyone done this? If you haven't I say get to it. If you have, I actually think you should do so again and again until a thorough accounting of the facts has happened.

 

[Kelly]

It depends on how the protests are used.

For instance, protests that took to the town hall meetings worked very well to usher in the majority in both the House and Senate for Republicans.

It looks like Dems are taking a page out of that book.

 

[mclay18]

The demonstrations are still going strong a month into Trump's presidency:

http://www.wral.com/thousands-of-demonstrators-across-us-say-not-my-president-/16540638/

 

[Sithborg]

I do wish I could attend the "where's congressman" event in town. See if my congressman actually shows up. But, I have class.

 

[Braggis]

The one good thing is that the protests are now more civil and less violent. There is a fine line between protest and domestic terrorism.

I was so repulsed seeing a bunch of Liberal college kids dressing up like members of ISIS with scary looking masks and attacking people on the street and spraying mace into random people's faces who just happened to have a different opinion than them. And that isn't even counting the thousands of damage they caused by vandalizing property.

I'm not a Liberal or a Conservative but the Alt Left aren't looking good after that.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Its a good thing the extreme Left in this country is actually quite small and has little or no actual governmental power, nor has it ever, despite the rantings of certain commentators. The RIGHT in this country... That's another story.

 

[Ouch]

Its a good thing the extreme Left in this country is actually quite small and has little or no actual governmental power, nor has it ever, despite the rantings of certain commentators. The RIGHT in this country... That's another story.

There is no left in America. There is center-right (Democrats) and far-right (Republicans) and that's it. There are people that are leftists but no political institution with any power.

 

[Braggis]

There is no left in America. There is center-right (Democrats) and far-right (Republicans) and that's it. There are people that are leftists but no political institution with any power.

Dude, pretty much every college campus in America has been taken over by the extreme Left. Most of the professors and teachers are ultra Liberal prognosticators who are out to convert and brainwash the minds of the younger generation. This has been going on for years. It's a known fact.

 

[Sithborg]

Do you think that maybe, just maybe, there is a connection between left wing thinking and getting educated?

 

[Braggis]

No. It's not left wing thinking that has a correlation to education. It's that you have young people who graduate from high school and then go to college which just so happens to be infested with radical left wing professors who are hell bent on converting impressionable young people with their rhetoric. And they have an advantage in doing so because they are authority figures.

Like I said, I am neither Liberal nor Conservative but the far left is way, way scarier now days. They preach freedom and equality and anti-bullying but, man, the second they don't get their way it is nothing but violence and terrorism and viciousness.

 

[Donner]

No. It's not left wing thinking that has a correlation to education. It's that you have young people who graduate from high school and then go to college which just so happens to be infested with radical left wing professors who are hell bent on converting impressionable young people with their rhetoric. And they have an advantage in doing so because they are authority figures.

Like I said, I am neither Liberal nor Conservative but the far left is way, way scarier now days. They preach freedom and equality and anti-bullying but, man, the second they don't get their way it is nothing but violence and terrorism and viciousness.

What is the rhetoric?

 

[DeadPresident]

What is the rhetoric?

Cultural marxism and having a pathological and unreasonable revulsion towards the status quo based on arbitrary characteristics.

Also opposing anything vaguely resembling conservative ideology just out of principle, whether it is sensible or not.

 

[Donner]

And the proof of that is where? Also, what classes is this being taught in? I doubt that med students or engineers are learning about "cultural Marxism", so it must just be in the Arts studies right? Sociology classes? Anthropology?

 

[DeadPresident]

And the proof of that is where? Also, what classes is this being taught in? I doubt that med students or engineers are learning about "cultural Marxism", so it must just be in the Arts studies right? Sociology classes? Anthropology?

As someone who was taught at a very left-leaning university I can attest to the prevalence of the bias to at least some degree in particular faculties. The rampant rise in rather radical liberal ideology would seem to provide evidence of it too, but I think the previous poster overstates its prevalence. That said, many universities are known for their intrinsic left-leaning preferences, it's not all that unusual, they're just following suit with the flavor of the month social issues to get bent out of shape about. The whole "76 different genders" example being an outlying, extreme example.

RE: the bold, yeah, categorizing university curricula along the political divide would likely point towards humanities faculties almost exclusively.

Also, the rise of the (pejoratively referred to) "Social Justice Warrior" discourse has its roots in liberal academia, there's no beating around the bush on that particular topic. Its prevalence is just overblown by everyone not marching to that beat.

 

[Donner]

It just seems odd to me. I spent 4 years in Sociology at a university in Canada. Some of the things we learned are very left leaning: harsher/longer prison sentences do not serve as a deterrent, treating criminals like human beings and not animals means they have a greater chance of being productive members of society when they are released, poverty breeds crime and street crime is more a product of environment than poor personal choices, being gay is not a lifestyle choice, race is a social construct, not a biological one, etc etc. But these ideas are all backed by fact. We did the research ourselves and still found it to be true. And it made a lot of people uncomfortable (especially with crime), but that didn't change the facts.

So I think what Sithborg said has a ring of truth to it. Being educated and left leaning are correlated.

 

[The Overlord]

No. It's not left wing thinking that has a correlation to education. It's that you have young people who graduate from high school and then go to college which just so happens to be infested with radical left wing professors who are hell bent on converting impressionable young people with their rhetoric. And they have an advantage in doing so because they are authority figures.

Like I said, I am neither Liberal nor Conservative but the far left is way, way scarier now days. They preach freedom and equality and anti-bullying but, man, the second they don't get their way it is nothing but violence and terrorism and viciousness.

Even if this were true, who has more power, some kids and professors on a college campus or the President?

You seem to demand more accountability for these professors then you do the President, which seems totally out of whack with common sense.

The GOP will present a neo liberal empyt suit like Hillary Clinton as being too left wing, I am beginning to think parts of the GOP think anyone to the left of Francisco Franco is too left wing.

 

[DeadPresident]

It just seems odd to me. I spent 4 years in Sociology at a university in Canada. Some of the things we learned are very left leaning: harsher/longer prison sentences do not serve as a deterrent, treating criminals like human beings and not animals means they have a greater chance of being productive members of society when they are released, poverty breeds crime and street crime is more a product of environment than poor personal choices, being gay is not a lifestyle choice, race is a social construct, not a biological one, etc etc. But these ideas are all backed by fact. We did the research ourselves and still found it to be true. And it made a lot of people uncomfortable (especially with crime), but that didn't change the facts.

So I think what Sithborg said has a ring of truth to it. Being educated and left leaning are correlated.

Oh, definitely, I'd agree. That being said, there are certain statements (very recently) made by left-leaning academics that are not factually based. For instance, sexual orientation being exclusively biological, that's being further investigated and it's been found to be false. The current research suggests that there's closer to a 50/50 or 60/40 relationship between biology and environmental factors that determine someone's likely sexual orientation, so some of the outcome is determined by social environment.

The issue is the humanities faculties are more and more trying to make scientific claims, but they're doing so by excluding the relevant scientific domains from the research. I covered quite a lot of sociological and and psychological material discussing sexuality and gender specifically, and a lot of academics in those areas are making sweeping statements about human behavior while completely omitting the biological components. The issue is that cross-sectional research isn't that common, and each side of the argument wants to research these phenomena exclusively instead of collaboratively.

A lot of people are conflating left-leaning opinions with objectively true opinions, which is getting murkier and murkier the more identity politics is included in what is supposed to be empirical academic research. Although I'd agree being educated and generally left-leaning are correlated, but there are a lot of left-leaning and educated people who are quite zealous and unreasonable about their beliefs. Being educated doesn't equate to being reasonable, necessarily.

 

[Donner]

I agree with your statements. The humanities don't really have a methodology like the sciences do when it comes to testing their theories. And if they wanted real world testing, the Ethics Committees of the schools would have a field day. It's kind of a lose-lose so you will get people who are so grounded in their beliefs that they make sweeping generalizations because they're so convinced that they're right without really being able to test their ideas. And based on what I learned from my social research methods class, you can't trust statistics without knowing the full methodology behind how the statistics were formed.

And perhaps part of it comes from the thought that they can make those statements and claim them to be true because them being true doesn't cause a lot of damage or harm. It won't be used to cut funding for areas or be used to discriminate or anything like that. So perhaps to them, the means justify the ends.

 

[DeadPresident]

I agree with your statements. The humanities don't really have a methodology like the sciences do when it comes to testing their theories. And if they wanted real world testing, the Ethics Committees of the schools would have a field day. It's kind of a lose-lose so you will get people who are so grounded in their beliefs that they make sweeping generalizations because they're so convinced that they're right without really being able to test their ideas.

And perhaps part of it comes from the thought that they can make those statements and claim them to be true because them being true doesn't cause a lot of damage or harm. It won't be used to cut funding for areas or be used to discriminate or anything like that. So perhaps to them, the means justify the ends.

Yeah, exactly, this is academia in a nutshell, unfortunately. There are few areas of life as tribalistic as academic faculties, you'd probably get more sense discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than you would asking people from different academic backgrounds to compromise on explaining the same phenomenon.

If you ask people to explain poverty you're going to get psychologists explaining it one way, lawyers another, sociologists another, philosophers another, economists another, social workers another, etc, etc. Each and every faculty wants to have sole claim over a particular issue, and at the moment the humanities and social issue topics are incredibly sexy and everyone has an opinion, every millennial is a casual critical race theorist or gender expert, so these faculties in academics have a lot of tacit social support, while the faculties in the STEM areas don't. So if someone asks the question of "How many genders exist?" the answer that comes out of the humanities is going to be readily accepted because it's seen to have some intrinsic morality, and because it's incredibly popular at the moment.

Make no mistake, the left-leaning social sciences faculties are taking good advantage of their current popularity by pushing specific narratives because they know the public will likely accept them out of hand. It's very appealing to paint homosexuals as people with no agency and whose lifestyle is a biological imperative, it's much more difficult and tricky to suggest that sexual orientation is a far more complex and intricate topic and may require input from various other experts to figure out how it truly works. Getting more and more interdisciplinary research on various topics is a hugely needed, it's impossible to correctly engage with a lot of human behavior using only one academic lens.

 

[Donner]

It seems so counter productive to have a narrative that isn't complete.

I think that people enjoy being a part of a specific group. "I'm a sociologist so I think this..." "We scientists believe..." It speaks to a larger problem in society of people forming groups and sticking to group mentality, regardless of whether it's correct. It's hard to expect disciplines at university levels to collaborate when you can't even get kids in high school to mingle outside of their social groups. It's frustrating.

 

[chaseter]

And the proof of that is where? Also, what classes is this being taught in? I doubt that med students or engineers are learning about "cultural Marxism", so it must just be in the Arts studies right? Sociology classes? Anthropology?

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/6/liberal-professors-outnumber-conservatives-12-1/

https://www.google.com/amp/www.lati...ng-20160520-snap-story,amp.html?client=safari

 

[Donner]

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/6/liberal-professors-outnumber-conservatives-12-1/

https://www.google.com/amp/www.lati...ng-20160520-snap-story,amp.html?client=safari

The study quoted in the Washington Times article already has the issues pointed out. As well, I'd like to point out that their method was to take the voter registration of the professors as the defining factor of whether they are liberal or conservative. This is narrow minded at the very least and outright stupid at the worst. Voting Democrat does not necessarily make someone liberal. And vice versa. My husband is conservative economically but very liberal when it comes to social issues. Pigeon-holing people into two categories and then using those two categories to make assumptions about the person on an individual level is not the best way to make a point.

As for the second article, I find it funny that "affirmative action" is touted as a solution by critics of left leaning universities, as if they would support it for evening out the ratio of minority students to white students. But I digress. Here is a quote from the article:

Colleges and universities should expose students to a diverse array of ideas. But — here’s the first misunderstanding — just because most professors are liberal doesn’t mean the average student is being force-fed liberal ideology.
In interviews I conducted with professors, I found that a large number teach on highly technical subjects where it would be downright weird to let politics enter the classroom. As one engineering professor put it when asked how politics factored into his work, “a chunk of metal doesn’t have politics.”
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-e...vative-affirmative-action-20160320-story.html
In the social sciences and humanities, where political views are more relevant, I found very few academics whose stated goal was to sway students to their side of the political aisle. The vast majority of professors focus on teaching students the subject matter of their fields as well as basic skills such as analytical reading, writing and critical thinking. If current events do come up in classroom discussions, the usual pattern is for professors to promote what they see as open conversation.

The facts just aren't there for this idea that universities are brainwashing students into believing in their radical left leaning ideology.

After all, if they wanted to be successful, they would need access to the students before the age of 12 (and before reason starts to set in). That's why it's easier for the religious to convert children.

 

[Charlatan]

No. It's not left wing thinking that has a correlation to education. It's that you have young people who graduate from high school and then go to college which just so happens to be infested with radical left wing professors who are hell bent on converting impressionable young people with their rhetoric. And they have an advantage in doing so because they are authority figures.

Like I said, I am neither Liberal nor Conservative but the far left is way, way scarier now days. They preach freedom and equality and anti-bullying but, man, the second they don't get their way it is nothing but violence and terrorism and viciousness.

You're new here. Do you expect us to believe your impartiality when it's couched in that hyper-partisan viewpoint?

 

[chaseter]

The study quoted in the Washington Times article already has the issues pointed out. As well, I'd like to point out that their method was to take the voter registration of the professors as the defining factor of whether they are liberal or conservative. This is narrow minded at the very least and outright stupid at the worst. Voting Democrat does not necessarily make someone liberal. And vice versa. My husband is conservative economically but very liberal when it comes to social issues. Pigeon-holing people into two categories and then using those two categories to make assumptions about the person on an individual level is not the best way to make a point.

As for the second article, I find it funny that "affirmative action" is touted as a solution by critics of left leaning universities, as if they would support it for evening out the ratio of minority students to white students. But I digress. Here is a quote from the article:



The facts just aren't there for this idea that universities are brainwashing students into believing in their radical left leaning ideology.

After all, if they wanted to be successful, they would need access to the students before the age of 12 (and before reason starts to set in). That's why it's easier for the religious to convert children.

So you don't deny that there are more liberal teachers than conservative?

Do you also not deny that therefore, it is more likely for liberal bias to seap through?

I never said anything about brainwashing. I do think however that they show bias as I've experienced that first hand. I went to college...I had liberal teachers.