[lbo-talk] posh as fuck

[Wojtek S]

[WS:] I am not against academia, I just do not think this institution
is particularly helpful for the cause of advancement of liberal ideas,
at least under current circumstances.  Undoubtedly there are liberally
minded faculty and students, especially in the liberal arts
departments ;) but in business, law, management, engineering, medical
etc departments it is pretty mainstream if not outright conservative.
If I were to pick only one bastion of liberal thinking I would pick
government workers before I would pick academia.

This is not to say that academia is insignificant for development of
liberal ideas, but that it also is a significant source of very
illiberal ideas.  Standardized testing craze, for example.  It would
be a hard sell if it were not demanded by college admission offices.

I also happen to think that the rule "an enemy of my enemy is my
friend" is not necessarily a very useful one.  Conservatives tend to
attack academics because they need scapegoats to make good impression
of themselves as fierce warriors for conservative causes, and by the
very definition of the term a scapegoat is someone without real power
and teeth, for otherwise scapegoating would turn an actual fight
instead of mere posturing. If they went after people with real power,
they would risk getting their asses kicked.

Wojtek

On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 2:30 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 6, 2011, at 2:25 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
>
>> Doug: "The right hates academia because it's their political enemy"
>>
>> [WS:] So there are no liberals outside academia?
>
> What kind of question is that? Of course there are.
>
> This is odd coming from someone who's always railing against the yahoos.
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