Comments on: Safer than San Francisco

By: virgil xenophon

virgil xenophon — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:47:48 +0000

Laurie,

Another quick read as partial jumping off point@ “A Commonplace Blog” at:

http://www.dgnyers.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-universitiy-is-dominated-by-left.html

Blog is run by PhD in English at Texas A & M

By: claudio

claudio — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:11:39 +0000

Hello Laurie and Welcome.

I started a response here, but before I got too far along I decided that I have to join Virgil in taking my time a little and work on it a bit.

I think your question is probably one of the best ones in a while. What is Postive Americanism? Wow, books could be written.

To me it’s everything that is great about America. But there’s more. So I’ll work on it.

Welcome again

Claudio

By: P-3W

P-3W — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:23:03 +0000

I work in an institute of higher learning in the PacNW (to remain nameless). I’m a computer tech, but I interact with the students some. From my perspective, the students are very liberal because that’s what they know and have been taught. We discussed current events as the elections came upon us and some of the past presidents, and most were completely ignorant of this country’s history — current history, let alone our greater history. We’ve had discussions about the Vietnam war and history of the war, Clinton’s presidency, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and the Iranian hostages, and they have no clue how those events really happened. They know the sound bites and slogans. Granted, they didn’t learn all that here, but in high school, too, but it’s a problem. A big problem.

Somehow, teachers have quit teaching history as the wonderful and messy story of our past and are teaching it as a painful litany of our failures. Who wants to remember that stuff? Dates and names and failures — ick. There’s so much more to history than that.

By: XBradTC

XBradTC — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:06:26 +0000

Perhaps this link will illustrate some of my concerns with the issue of ideological uniformity in academia.

http://proteinwisdom.com/pub/?p=2577

By: david foster

david foster — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:09:07 +0000

Laurie…one thing academics should bear in mind is that they aren’t the only ones who get beaten up verbally–EVERYBODY gets beaten up verbally. Imagine being an oil company exec, or a UAW official, or an elected official or government employee.

When Peter Drucker came to the US from Austria in the 1930s, he was struck by the degree to which every single group in American society–businessmen, labor, professors, etc–felt that it was uniquely criticized and unappreciated. He thought this was a very good thing, because it demonstrated that no single group had the upper hand.

By: geo6

geo6 — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:41:30 +0000

“A large section of the Intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of Intelligence.”
G. K. Chesterton- The Apostle of Common Sense