Thanks. Sorry I misread you. You did say, though, that TC’s tend towards academia. . .

You’re right: the intellectual “entrepreneurs” are few and far between. But there is indoctrination. It’s just that it’s very subtle. No one—at least not yet—gets subjected to Chinese Water Torture. So unless you’re a genius and a hero, you’re more likely than not to get sucked in.

Thanks for a stimulating exchange and go get ‘em.

Adrian

So much of what you said is true, and you have done a good job of elucidating your points. However, I did not say there were thinkers & do-ers, but that there where thinkers and chatterers, and thinkers and do-ers. To your point, thinking first is the essential starting point for both classes–that then launches into either chattering or doing.

Those that pursue knowledge (thinking raised to the nth power) are to be commended, and that is best done in universities, research firms and think tank environments. These are the true academics, despeartely needed in our world. They are the Newtons, Bacons, & Jeffersons. However, folks of that ilk are generally not fooled by indoctrination of any kind, and they are not the people we are talking about, because they represent a minor fraction of the full academic population.

If truth were the goal of academia, and these folks pursue it relentlessly regardless of it’s outcome, why are they so easily indoctrinated? I don’t know, but I accept your belief that at some point they are.

I’ve enjoyed this exchange, and you have made some excellent points and observations. But I think we have reached the point of arguing angels on a pinhead. I don’t have time to do much more. I’m a red-stater and an unapologetic capitalist red-voter, and have to get back to producing something concrete! I don’t want to be out on the next wave of restructuring!

Thanks again. Perhaps you and I can start helping our like-minded peers to understand each other better. You are not an idiotic, brain-dead moron and neither am I. We are both intelligent and thinking people with differing views on some things. Hurray for diversity of thought! Good luck to you in your endeavors.

The reason for this disparity isn’t discrimination, it’s that people of a liberal mindset are more inclined to seek careers in academia than those of a conservative mindset.

I’m fairly certain of this.

The cause?

It may be, because among conservatives in general, there is a distrust of academia, with the occasional exceptions for Hillsdale, Texas A&M, Brigham Young, etc.

I don’t know. Just a theory, and I’d be very interested in others opinions on this.

Thanks for your clear (re)statement of your position.

I agree with you in part. There is a difference between thinkers and doers. I disagree, though, that thinkers are just doers who couldn’t do.

To put it another way: Plato and Aristotle distinguised action (doing) and contemplation (thinking). But, unlike most moderns, they thought that contemplation was actually better than action.

Now, one can disagree with that. My point is simply that your somewhat disparaging remarks about thinking aren’t just obviously true. They need argument.

But perhaps the problem has to do with what we mean by thinking. If thinking means sitting around daydreaming, then you’re right. But if thinking means understanding the world in which we live, then we need it even more than we need food and air, because thinking in this second sense is what makes us human. Gorillas and squirrels can and do figure out strategies for meeting their animal needs. But they can’t understand the world in which they live.

Now, the main value of understanding isn’t instrumental. It’s value is in itself.

It’s tempting to dismiss the idea that certain things are valuable in themselves. But just think what would happen if we didn’t have a connection with anything that was valuable in itself. We wouldn’t have any reason to “do” anything.

Think of it like this: the successful entrepreneurs whom I know aren’t people who are “in it” just for the money. They’re in it because they enjoy what they’re doing. The creativity that enables them to innovate comes out of this enjoyment. But what does it mean that they enjoy what they’re doing? It means that, by doing what they do, they get a certain connection with reality, a certain intimacy with the world. They get, in other words, a certain kind of understanding. True, this understanding is wrapped up in, and inseparable from, the actual practise of their enterpreneurial work. But it is a form of understanding nonetheless. As Ignatius of Loyola said, there’s a certain contemplative aspect in the middle of their action.

Even for entrepreneurs, then, a certain form of understanding the world is a value in itself for the sake of which they do what they do. Of course, not all entrepreneurs would put it exactly like this. Some might even laugh if you told them that they were closet contemplatives. But, in order to give a coherent account of what they’re doing, you have to say something like what I’m saying.

Understanding, not money, makes the world go round.

The university is supposed to be a place for the cultivation of understanding. Unfortunately, as we know, the reality is different: it’s become intellectually monolithic. But the reason isn’t that the academic life is less responsive to the market.

As I tried to explain just now, people who are thinkers aren’t just wimps who chickened out of the market. They’re people who have a calling to devote their lives to understanding. As I see it, then, the cause of the problem we’re discussing is this: it’s not that the universities attract chickens who are too lame to “do,” but that they attract people with real vocations to be thinkers—and then corrupt them. How? By indoctrinating them, without telling them they’re being indoctrinated, into a certain worldview, the worldview that, supposedly, all enlightened people hold.

I’ve tried to describe that worldview in an earlier post, so, if I may, I’ll just refer you to that.

How did this happen? Well, to quote Richard Weaver: ideas have consequences. They shape cultures and drive men’s lives, often without their even knowing it. The modern, market-driven world in which we live wasn’t just a natural development. It was created in part by thinkers, by people like Bacon and Descartes, Locke and Adam Smith—people who substituted the old ideal of contemplation for the modern ideal of transforming the world through technical innovation.

Cordially,

Adrian

I appreciate the sincerity of your arguments, and do not disagree wholly. The question we were discussing is why there are so many liberal/left leaning people in the academic fields. My take is that it is a more cocooned environment, it is an easier environment in which to survive long-term, and does not require the constant re-education, re-training & ongoing diversity of thought and applied skills that private enterprise does. This will tend to attract people to academia who would not perform well in that more competitive and demanding private enterprise environment, and for some reason many of those seem to be on the left side of spectrum.

There are thinkers and chatters (TCs), and there are thinkers & do-ers (TDs)in this world. TCs tend toward academia, TDs tend toward private enterprise. Alot of this goes back to the old adage “Those who can, do. And those who can’t, teach”.

Academia has it’s own set of requirements, challenges, and difficulties. I am not arguing that. I am stating my thesis as to why academia appeals to the blue left, and why private enterprise and the marketplace appeal to the red right. Academics pride themselves on being intelligent, open minded, diverse people. But if you compare academia to private enterprise, you will find far more of those qualities in business and the marketplace than you will in the university. This is out of the necessity of surviving in the marketplace–it requires constant updating and rethinking and new strategies. I don’t see that in todays university environment. It existed in the past, but not today.

As with all generalized theories, this does not hold true for all cases. Thanks for your thoughts on this, and I do appreciate this discussion.

“can’t you concede that it’s just possible that they’ve used their critical faculties to arrive at those opinions?”

We can concede that it’s 100% accurate that they’ve used their critical faculties to arrive at their opinions. But their opinion was no more accurate than mine. And just because they are a teacher of Psychology or Critical Thinking or Economics doesn’t give them the know it all better that I think you think that they have.

For instance. If a professor is a professor does it make his/her opinion more valid just because he/she is a professor when they teach that tax cuts don’t help the economy? Empirical evidence is out there that shows that tax cuts do help the economy because more money is held by the people to spend on goods and services. When more goods and services are purchased from companies there is more goods and services that the company must produce and that creates economic activity. Liberals argue that the government takes the money and then turns around and spends it so that there must be the same economic output as if they government didn’t take it. That assumes the same amount of efficiency. I’ll break it down this way.

If 50% earn income from the private sector and 50% earn money from the public sector due to the confiscation of taxes from the other 50%, it is such a drain on the first 50% that their ability to afford more than the basic necessities is difficult. Let’s say the private sector 50% earns 50,000 each. In order for the government to pay the other 50% $25,000 each the private sector people have to be taxed at 50%. I am going with the assumption that the private sector 50% is providing needed government services.

Now that we broke it down that way, what you have to consider is what services the 50% public sector people are providing.
Even if they are providing health care, roads, DMV, education, defense of country, police, fire, library services and equal opportunity enforcement people start to legitimately question why it costs so much to provide these services and can’t the private sector do it better and cheaper. In example after example there is evidence that the private sector can provide the same services better and cheaper. And when the government gets out of the way, lets the people keep more of their own money and allows the private sector to provide the service the economy goes through a boom.

It is clear by the constitution what the federal government must do. Provide for the common defense. It is clear that the states are responsible for most other things and that is why each state spends about 50% of it’s budget on education. The other 50% gets spent on police, fire, and this and that. But both the states and federal government spend way more on entitlement programs. They go way beyond helping the non-able-bodied and elderly.

The debate in this country to me should center on why the federal and state governments have spent more every year for 54 years (moving left). The federal government has not spent less any one of these years.

To tie it back to the topic on hand:
Professors aren’t exposed to market forces and they have a certain amount of idealism about redistribution of wealth so that nobody is poor. Unfortunately their opinion due to their lack of exposure Richard, but many years of opining doesn’t make their opinion more valid just because they’ve been in academia.

I have no idea what this academy is that you are writing about. Most people I know in higher education work more than your standard 9 to 5. Some of them have to do that just to get by at a very low wage, as adjuncts or grad students.

I think you picture the academy as tenured professors smoking pipes in a lounge. Thats not what it looks like — which is not to say that its out there.

The last one is the only one that looks like an engineering course. Is diversity that liberal a topic? The Armed forces and major corporations filed Amici briefs in support of affirmative action because they saw the need for racial diversity in their ranks. Are the Armed forces and major corporations also ‘liberal’?

My point, then, is not that the universities shouldn’t be testing-grounds for ideas, but that the only way they can be that is if everyone agrees from the get-go that there’s such a thing as truth, that it’s possible to come to know it, and that it’s worth doing that.

In that sense, the university HAS to be different from the market, at least as the market is conventionally understood.

Adrian

I could ask you the same question.

Look, nobody’s saying that the academy is the same as the business enterprise in every respect. The point is that the academy isn’t as market-unpresponsive as non-academics think.

On your way to tenure, for example, your effectiveness as a teacher and researcher gets measured constantly in all kinds of ways that will determine whether or not you keep your job. One of the ways that plays a huge role is customer satisfaction, meaning: student evaluations.

Now, I actually think that this is a problem. In business, the key is whether people want, or can be persuaded to want, what you’re selling. Strictly speaking, it doesn’t matter whether they should want what you’re selling or not. You can be as successful selling porn as you can selling Bibles. But when it comes to education, the whole idea is that the customers have to be brought to want what they should want, to believe what’s right to believe, etc. In other words, the whole point of education is NOT to equip people to succeed, but to equip them to seek and find the truth.

So, it doesn’t matter to me if the business world is more market-responsive than the academy. It’s enough that the universities conceive of themselves on market lines at all—enough, that is, to be concern for worry.

Cordially,

Adrian

There is nothing like job survival to guide ones ‘pontification’ toward ‘performance’ every time. Guarantee a job and watch ones self-interest begin to trump the interest of those being served everytime.

Communist governments have been experimenting with the idea of ‘tenure for all’ for a long time.

No doubt there are some level of requirements in academia, as there are in any job. Especially at the very top and in the research departments, producing is required. But the vast majority of the 90% of academics have it far easier in their cocooned envirnoment of lock-step thinking and culture, than those in private enterprise who have to deliver day in and day out, or not get paid. Its a demanding environment, requiring true diversity of thought and action. The environment changes continually, and you either learn to change and leverage the momentum, or look for work elsewhere.

I am a 4th year engineering student at UVA and I have encountered numerous cases of off-topic liberal indoctrination in my courses. For example, in STS 200, a writing course all engineers are required to take, the teacher regularly lectured on the Iraq war, despite the fact that the course was about the industrial revolution. Currently I am in STS 401, which features a completely biased reading list (just read Fast Food Nation, previously read Things Fall Apart, and also Retooling, by an ultra liberal prof. at MIT.) Last, in a thermodynamics course I was in the professor regularly lamented on the “lack of diversity” present in the class. There was 2 out of about 30 black students in the course. Despite his lamentations, there were plenty of “diverse” students.