(ext time, put a link to Phil's comments, please)

I appreciate your confidence in the individuality of college students. I went to a state University, and obviously failed to emerge as a liberal. I can tell you though, it wasn't for lack of their trying. The pressure to conform is not organized, or some "conspiracy," but rather a general peer-pressure-type thing where one does not want to be the only one to stand out in the crowd. Some professors will make a student's political position part of their grade, particularly in the "fuzzy subjects," but I think they are few and far between, or at least are subtle enough not to be caught at it.

We have a problem with balance on some of our campuses. I suggest you look at why. Do we not have enough conservative professors? Perhaps conservatives with the intellectual qualifications are working for for-profit organizations, which more closely conform to their personal ideals of not working for the government. Or perhaps they are working for the government, but in the halls of power, where the paychecks are bigger.



I read a lot of complaints about the education establishment on this board. Of course you are more likely to find more liberals and leftists in education: they are there because they believe in it so much that they're willing not to be paid what their talents are worth, but to work for the work's sake alone. (State universities don't pay the way Ivy League schools do, either.) Conservatives, generally, don't do that because they understand that, according to their philosophy, when the economic chips are down, we're all on our own. They don't teach because they don't believe they can afford to. The liberals teach because, even though the wages suck compared to other professions, they don't believe (big-picture thinking here) they can afford not to.



Whoa. And I thought I was famous for tossing the stereotypes around. Heck, since conservatives apparently are selfish bastards who don't do anything unless there's money in it, and think that the poor should just go fuck themselves, I should go tell the scholars at the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and dozens of other non-profit think tanks that they're being screwed and rather than working on teaching their ideas they should go get the big bucks. I should inform the corporations and the rich people who dump hundreds of millions into charitable causes--and historically did so in huge numbers decades before there even WAS an income tax--that they are wasting their time since only liberals care about anyone else. Hell, I might as well put on my top hat, diamond stickpin, and black tails and go sit on my huge bag of money (with a dollar sign on it) while smoking my cigar and muching on my bucket of Kentucky Fried Infants.

Your viewpoint is almost as cynical as the idea that leftist university faculty members are working at universities because their twisted views of reality and inflated sense of entitlement* render them unfit for almost every kind of work out in the real world with real people, and they have had to retreat to the protected sanctuary of tenured positions on university campuses where they can survive unscathed by the external realities of our society. Kind of like the polar bears at the San Diego zoo.

I believe the main reason there aren't many conservatives at universities is that the people who do the hiring at universities are almost exclusively hard liberal, and would rather eat a large, steaming plate of catshit than give tenure to an academic who is a proud conservative. My own experience has taught me that there are a number of "don't ask, don't tell" conservatives teaching on campus, but of course they are not much use for spreading conservative ideas.

Oh, by the way, you're right. There are plenty of leftists at universities for whom money and position mean nothing, but who are only looking at education as a way to bring about the socialist/progressive ideal society that exists only in their fevered brains.

These are the guys--the ones with the glass-marble eyes, that you want to keep an eye on, and keep your kids away from.

*when "the economic chips are down," you can always pull a gun and take someone else's money.