Since Phil referenced his post, I didn't feel the need. Sorry.

I still don't see conservatives battering down the doors of educational institutions demanding to get tenure, and drawing attention to this bias in hiring that is so plain to you. I don't see them petitioning the boards of these institutions or going to talk to major donors. They queue up to get positions at Pepperdine and other schools in which they constitute a majority, however, and don't have to waste their time arguing with left-leaning faculty in public, or putting up a spirited minority defense of conservatism in departmental meetings.

Find me one person in the Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation who had to give up a career in schoolteaching in favor of repaving people's driveways to be able to afford to put a kid through college and pay the mortgage on a three-bedroom house, and I'll take it all back.

I didn't say all conservatives were selfish, or all liberals were selfless. I said that conservatives were less likely to take poorly paid positions in education when they can make a living elsewhere, and that liberals, because of their outlook of "putting a gun in someone's mouth", to use your quaint phrase, were more likely to take a job that doesn't pay well but which fills a demonstrated need. The conservative outlook is to take care of yourself and your own first, and then give what you can from what's left over. The liberal outlook is to try to provide for everyone, and trust that society will do the same for you.

Pity the poor conservatives. They have money and power, yet, like Rodney Dangerfield, they can't get no respect. Perhaps if they would stop talking to each other, they would discover common ground with those whose respect they would like to have.

Regards to you, Tom--
Mary Anne