Should the public subsidize Left-wing curriculum at colleges

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Orwell
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21 Aug 2015, 8:23 am

MarketAndChurch wrote:
How does law enforcement operate with an anti-black bias considering how much crime blacks engage in against fellow blacks, as well as other non-whites?

Blacks and whites smoke pot at approximately the same rate, yet blacks are more likely to be arrested for it. Blacks also tend to receive harsher sentences for the same crimes. The experience of routine traffic stops are very different for blacks and whites. All of this is well documented.

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Yeah but how do you account for all the liberals that think America is a racist country, who think that everyone who opposes same-sex marriage is a hateful bigot, who believe in zero population growth, who believe that there is a rape culture on college campuses, who think that there is a war by men against women to keep them down, that the rich got rich by stealing money from the poor, who view Israel as the great villain in the world outside of America? They don't constitute the majority? The majority of liberals don't hold the majority of those points?

Most of these are distortions. The only two positions that are likely to find majority support among liberals as stated by you are that same-sex marriage opponents are bigots and that rape culture is real.

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Liberals wouldn't hold those convictions so strongly if they entertained ideas and views that ran counter to their own thinking. You can only hold all of those views simultaneously, by insulating yourself from differing points of views, and by only entertaining caricatures and strawmen articulations of conservative views.

And why is that? Are you arguing that those views are somehow inconsistent with each other?

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I don't know if global warming is proven fact, and the climate changes.

It is.

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And evolution doesn't warrant the attention we give it since most of the body of currently known science doesn't depend on it or is predicated on the theory. Science would survive without it. It's mostly irrelevant and opposing it doesn't make you anti-science.

You can't study biology without it. And yes, opposing it does make you anti-science.

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The leftwing opposition to vaccines and gmo's is more frightening, and I'm not even a fan of GMO's or vaccines myself.

Failing to acknowledge the crisis of climate change is literally an existential threat to the survival of humanity. Anti-GMO activism is responsible for millions of needless deaths, and that is profoundly evil, but it's not on the same level as causing a mass extinction and ending our own species in the process.

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Have you seen the anti-nuclear power crowd or the GMO folks and how they slander those who disagree with them?

Those people suck.

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We're bad people, yet those of us who don't agree with you on evolution or climate change merely think you're wrong or mistaken.

LOL. The anti-evolution folks think biologists are all part of some vast atheist conspiracy to undermine Christianity. Climate change denialists also tend to adopt bizarre conspiracy theories, usually involving some giant scam to get a few extra scraps of grant money. :roll:

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Conservatives will always dive into delusional crazyland so long as anything they say that goes counter to your beliefs is delusional, and crazy. Maybe it isn’t a “them” problem.

As I said, I fully believe there are intelligent right-wing arguments to be made on any number of issues. I just haven't seen people making them. It's entirely reasonable to disagree, for example, on whether certain provisions of the ACA are a good idea. It's insane to outright disagree on what the provisions of the ACA are when it's possible to go read it.

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Well that's nice for a change. The obsession with Israel in academia can only come down to bigotry. There's no basis for the preoccupation with the Palestinians and the hatred expressed against the Jewish state.

You think academia is filled with anti-Semitism?


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21 Aug 2015, 8:31 am

Dox47 wrote:
Sounds like my search for the well informed gun controller, equally fruitless. Are you talking social conservatives here, or any old kind? I mean, SoCons really are the bottom of the barrel, but economic conservatives are pretty rational in general. According to Haidt, they're the most likely to pass ideological Turing tests, an impressive feat of reasoning, and something liberals fail spectacularly at, more so the more liberal they are.

The strongest gun control arguments I've seen have been data-driven, and usually acknowledge the difficulty of drawing conclusions about causation from observational correlation.

Well, economic conservatives will still misstate the most basic facts - eg railing against high taxes under Obama when actual tax burdens are at historic lows. I don't necessarily have a problem with someone arguing that taxes are still too high, but you have to start out by at least being right on basic facts.

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That seems like a bit of a red herring, considering the vast sea of leftwing activism that regularly bursts forth from academia, a lone firing for anti-Israel activism is more of an aberration than indicative of anything. I mean, have you really missed the whole social justice movement that's been brewing on campuses for some years now that's recently spilled into the mainstream? Or all the other similarly lockstep liberal movements that have proceeded it? Where is the conservative equivalent? I think you know full well that academia is attractive to a particular subset of people, and not the kind who grew up hunting and farming, and that biases don't have to be blatantly stated in order to have substantial effects, similar to what goes on with the media. It's not a conspiracy or anything, it's just demographics, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.

Oh, I wasn't claiming that academia isn't liberal. Of course it is, and almost all academics are left-wing. I was disagreeing with the persecution complex mentality. We don't typically see people fired for expressing right-wing views; the most recent high-profile firing for having "wrong" political views was the guy who spoke against Israel.


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21 Aug 2015, 8:40 am

The public should stop subsidizing any kind of education. Problem solved.


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21 Aug 2015, 8:51 am

I don't put much stock in the list linked in the OP. There's absolutely no indication of how it is compiled.

If students want to study Advanced Marxism or Invisible Hand 101, let them.

Obviously I cannot speak for every American university, but I've only encountered political ideas when they were necessary to understand a topic (e.g. "the government tried to do this to fix this problem but it didn't work"), with staff tiptoeing around subjects where there is an undeniable scientific consensus which have been politicised by idiocy (climate change, GE, evolution) - statements like "lots of people are really worried about GE, but if you examine the concerns, there's really no need...", or "I'm sorry if you don't believe in evolution, but this is clear evidence..."

OK, I'm a scientist, so social issues aren't particularly integral to my course. Looking at economics modules offered which have social elements, they all emphasise critical thinking and talk of the benefits and drawbacks of both private and public interventions. Most economic modules avoid social issues at all. A course on black literature encourages critical analysis and engagement with the themes and ideas presented. A course on feminism emphasises rationality, consistency, considering other viewpoints, and the extent to which government intervention in problem solving is justified.

Now, it's possible, even likely, that these things are very different in America. After all, your Higher Education setup is completely different. But with your high tuition fees, surely there should be even more emphasis on objectivity and skills-based outcomes? If a student is treated unfairly because of their political views, they can quite rightly say "hang on, I'm paying $50,000 a year to be here!"



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21 Aug 2015, 8:52 am

Spiderpig wrote:
The public should stop subsidizing any kind of education. Problem solved.

New problem: widespread under-education, a huge skills shortage, and subsequent economic collapse.



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21 Aug 2015, 9:12 am

Spiderpig wrote:
The public should stop subsidizing any kind of education. Problem solved.

The reason why education is subsidized has to do with the overall quality of life in a civilization. Think of all the ways you have benefited. What if it were left solely to your parents without help from anyone? Where do you think you would be now?



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21 Aug 2015, 10:38 am

Orwell wrote:
Oh, I wasn't claiming that academia isn't liberal. Of course it is, and almost all academics are left-wing. I was disagreeing with the persecution complex mentality. We don't typically see people fired for expressing right-wing views; the most recent high-profile firing for having "wrong" political views was the guy who spoke against Israel.


I think you're being a bit hasty in dismissing the persecution thing, in an environment where the staff and students are often politically homogeneous, it would be weirder if the out group were not being persecuted in some way, at the least feeling compelled to hide their true beliefs due to hearing them being constantly mocked and belittled. Throw in the current activist climate and the way the universities are appeasing it with speech codes and trigger warnings and kangaroo courts for Title IX stuff, and it starts looking like a pretty hostile environment for those outside the dominant campus political alignment.


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21 Aug 2015, 10:42 am

MarketAndChurch wrote:
Those fascists weren't going to land-invade us. They started a bloody war that massacred millions of Asians and raped almost as many. You're granting a victim status that you probably would never afford the Nazis. The only way to beat them and make sure they never start another such war was to defeat them. Not to beat them back to their Island and leave them be but to get peace on our terms, which included demilitarization and an end to their empire-building campaign. The british bombed mostly German civilians, but those dead civilians were the fault of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, not the allied powers fighting him. The responsibility for the death of each and every single Japanese lies with the Emperor and his military generals. The small numbered killed by those atomic bombs, as horrific as their deaths were, saved us hundreds of thousands of men, and saved Japan millions of civilians. Sometimes in life, your options aren't between a good moral choice and an evil choice, but rather one evil choice, and a far greater evil, and as adults, have to choose between the two. If we didn't take care of Japan, the carnage they would have continued to spread across Asia would also be our fault, because we had the chance to stop them and didn't.

Maybe you didn't notice the bias because you happen to either agree with most of those opinions or find them to be incontrovertible uncontested fact. You know most people on the Left polled by Pew(I think) said the mainstream media was pretty non-biased, and felt that when the media was being biased, was doing so on behalf of corporations or doing the bidding of the radical right. But most conservatives polled said that the media is biased. So I think this is just a case of where you happen to agree with opinions put out by the media or voiced in academia, and therefore don't feel that there's any bias involved.



That what everyone who supports the the nuclear bombing says...but where is the proof that it saved millions of life? Its a nice theory that makes it seem a lot more justified, but its not a fact no one knows exactly what the outcome would have been had that particular action not been taken. It is probably good to adress what would lead a country to decide deliberately targeting thousands of civilians rather than any military targets is the best way to make the enemy surrender. There is also some talk of how it was somewhat of an 'experiment' to sort of see what these bombs would do so there was more too it then 'Oh its the only way to end the war'. Of course German civilians got bombed, british civilians got bombed....there are always causulties but deliberately targeting civilians is not something I'd ever defend so I see no issue with criticizing/analizing that event in history in an attempt to have it never happen again. I don't see what is particularly 'liberal' about that I imagine there are people with more right wing leanings that also find that particular event very disturbing and not something to be 'prideful' of.

Also if you knew anything about me you'd know I am one of the first people to criticize people for relying on the mainstream media....both left and right wing biased mainstream media, not to mention they don't even report on half the stuff going on in the world. I mean Fox News and CNN are both crap and I don't even remember what the rest are since I prefer more independent news sources.

But thank you for assuming I agree with all the opinions put out by mainstream media and blindly believe whatever any college professor says or expresses. Either way I would like to see this poll that shows most who identify as liberal say the mainstream media is not biased and that most who identify as conservative say the opposite do you have a link?
Thing is seems a lot of conservatives rely on Fox News does it occur to them that is a mainstream news source just like any left leaning ones that might exist? At least the left doesn't want to have religion infused with legal policy, eradicate the poor or at least pull out what support they do have out from under them and turn this into a 3rd world country for everyone except the small % of individuals who keep most of the nations wealth to themselves.


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21 Aug 2015, 11:00 am

I think it comes down to some people think they are being persecuted if they can't go around talking like a bigot without someone criticizing it. Sure in a classroom most students may disapprove of a comment like 'we should kick all the mexicans out of our country' not really sure that is the same as an epidemic of poor right leaning students being oppressed by the status quo....also some subjects never even go into social issues let alone any biased views of them. But yes when social issues are discussed its a given it goes into ideas of solutions for certain problems, positive changes that could be made to improve/fix a problem ect so that is going to be a little liberal/progressive by nature because fresh ideas/perspectives are encouraged rather than keeping things the same old way....if one doesn't like it one doesn't have to take those classes.


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21 Aug 2015, 11:22 am

The vast majority of colleges & professors these days are nothing more than indoctrination-centres. Students these days are taught to memorise & regurgitate what was written in a book as being the correct answer.

Back in the day, when we still had guilds & trade-systems as the norm, you learned what worked versus what doesn't via actually doing the activity, rather than getting virtually all knowledge from a book...

This idea that obtaining a College-Degree is somehow the only way to make money is utter stupidity.

recynd77 (il y a 11 mois) wrote:
"public education" = "tax-supported indoctrination"

Stefan Verstappen (il y a 11 mois) wrote:
College Degree: Certified incapable of individual thought.

agitbeats (il y a 11 mois) wrote:
War on terror = Terrorising innocent civilians.

PissedFechtmeister (il y a 11 mois) wrote:
Election=Illusion of choice
Food stamps and reality TV=Bread and circuses
Protect and serve=Assault and enslave
Tragedy=Opportunity for expansion of power

TheKgr1967 (il y a 11 mois) wrote:
American democracy = "fear, lies corruption and serious amounts of bombing"

corbettreport Partagé sur Google+ · (il y a 11 mois) wrote:
...And remember, folks, War Is Peace! Freedom Is Slavery! Ignorance Is Strength!

Also, for good measure, I am going to add an additional Book-Smarts versus Street-Smarts clip...


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21 Aug 2015, 12:04 pm

This is BS

Richard Wolf at Harvard had to do independent studies to learn about marxist economics. The school didn't offer any of the material at all. In school we are all told markets and central planning are the only options and still are indoctrinated with old and debunked arguments like "tragedy of the commons".



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21 Aug 2015, 12:48 pm

MarketAndChurch wrote:
If we didn't take care of Japan, the carnage they would have continued to spread across Asia would also be our fault, because we had the chance to stop them and didn't.


Blaming the US for not stopping them, as long as they didn't attack the US, would involve ignoring the huge moral difference between killing and letting die. This would also mean you have a duty to get involved in any fight you witness, helping the one who was initially attacked, and even to feed someone you find about to starve to death. You have a right to deny anyone your help, let alone anything that costs money, and not to give a s**t about their plight.


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22 Aug 2015, 2:18 am

The_Walrus wrote:
I don't put much stock in the list linked in the OP. There's absolutely no indication of how it is compiled. If students want to study Advanced Marxism or Invisible Hand 101, let them.


It was compiled by a graduate student of International Studies at NYU's Russian Institute, and his 40+ years of dealing with the Left both in academia and in public life. Dennis Prager is one of the brightest minds of this century and his insights stretch well beyond politics, to classical music(he conducts occasionally with the LA Philharmonic), to being one of the finest teachers of the Torah, male-female relations, etc.

The_Walrus wrote:
Obviously I cannot speak for every American university, but I've only encountered political ideas when they were necessary to understand a topic (e.g. "the government tried to do this to fix this problem but it didn't work"), with staff tiptoeing around subjects where there is an undeniable scientific consensus which have been politicised by idiocy (climate change, GE, evolution) - statements like "lots of people are really worried about GE, but if you examine the concerns, there's really no need...", or "I'm sorry if you don't believe in evolution, but this is clear evidence..."

OK, I'm a scientist, so social issues aren't particularly integral to my course. Looking at economics modules offered which have social elements, they all emphasise critical thinking and talk of the benefits and drawbacks of both private and public interventions. Most economic modules avoid social issues at all. A course on black literature encourages critical analysis and engagement with the themes and ideas presented. A course on feminism emphasises rationality, consistency, considering other viewpoints, and the extent to which government intervention in problem solving is justified.


The disparity between the hard sciences and the social sciences is shrinking daily from the way in which the former is prostituted to help the latter achieve social ends. They occupy an insular world, anyone who dissents from their perverted orthodox, what we call the "narrative," is ousted and ostracized. Can't mess with their story arc, can't dirty their victims, and you certainly can't lend the villains in their tale good intentions, decency, or humanity.

Rationality in a Feminism course would not divide the world by power or make the non-scientific claim that men and women are biologically equal.

Consistency in Feminism would mean that they not put their politics ahead of human lives by not speaking out against the abuse of women, even if that abuse is being carried out by a member of the Left's victim groups(angry black men, angry muslim men, angry native american men, angry palestinian men).

Considering other viewpoints would make womens studies departments toxic and bitter because that would require bringing in dissenting voices. You can't trust them to be impartial in presenting views they frame and caricature into strawmen at best and outright lies at worst.

The_Walrus wrote:
Now, it's possible, even likely, that these things are very different in America. After all, your Higher Education setup is completely different. But with your high tuition fees, surely there should be even more emphasis on objectivity and skills-based outcomes? If a student is treated unfairly because of their political views, they can quite rightly say "hang on, I'm paying $50,000 a year to be here!"


Your entire post only makes sense reading this last paragraph. And I appreciate the views of outsiders looking in, but unfortunately, you may not always have the best picture of the happenings on the ground. And no, the perversion of the American Left on the fronts of gender and race put the world Left, including the European Left, to shame. They're perhaps more radical given the obstacles they have to overcome to fundamentally transform(destroy) society. And I don't think you understand, the American public education system leans Left if it leans in any direction, and when students come to college, they not only don't know any better since - for a large majority of them - they have never been taught any of these things before, but also because they expect College to be impartial and objective, free of bias and a political agenda. That's why the majority of students leaving college believes the things mentioned on that list. One doesn't just arrive at those conclusions on their own, for the most part, it has to be learned, and college is where they're learning it. Mostly the inebriated through college or those who didn't attend college at all are the ones who either don't know of the positions on that list, or hold them as their own.


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22 Aug 2015, 2:28 am

Ban-Dodger wrote:
This idea that obtaining a College-Degree is somehow the only way to make money is utter stupidity.


Not to mention that most undergraduates don't even make that money employed in their field of study.

I think you'll enjoy this read lol

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the- ... rts-degree


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22 Aug 2015, 2:38 am

Orwell wrote:
That seems like a bit of a red herring, considering the vast sea of leftwing activism that regularly bursts forth from academia, a lone firing for anti-Israel activism is more of an aberration than indicative of anything. I mean, have you really missed the whole social justice movement that's been brewing on campuses for some years now that's recently spilled into the mainstream? Or all the other similarly lockstep liberal movements that have proceeded it? Where is the conservative equivalent? I think you know full well that academia is attractive to a particular subset of people, and not the kind who grew up hunting and farming, and that biases don't have to be blatantly stated in order to have substantial effects, similar to what goes on with the media. It's not a conspiracy or anything, it's just demographics, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.

Oh, I wasn't claiming that academia isn't liberal. Of course it is, and almost all academics are left-wing. I was disagreeing with the persecution complex mentality. We don't typically see people fired for expressing right-wing views; the most recent high-profile firing for having "wrong" political views was the guy who spoke against Israel.[/quote]


I don't know. Where are these "right-wing" professors for you to fire in the first place? You know, they don't even invite right-wingers to give commencement addresses, and right-wingers don't even constitute a majority in most business departments(which as a department doesn't constitute a majority in terms of influencing the student body). What % of most state schools employ conservative republicans...

Now you can say that Republicans don't generally enter academia and the kind of person who would be interested in researching 17th century German Literature tends to naturally be a democrat, but I don't know if that's true.

That person who spoke out against Israel was a selective bigot who doesn't actually believe the charges she libels the Jewish state with.


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22 Aug 2015, 4:20 am

Orwell wrote:
MarketAndChurch wrote:
How does law enforcement operate with an anti-black bias considering how much crime blacks engage in against fellow blacks, as well as other non-whites?

Blacks and whites smoke pot at approximately the same rate, yet blacks are more likely to be arrested for it. Blacks also tend to receive harsher sentences for the same crimes. The experience of routine traffic stops are very different for blacks and whites. All of this is well documented.


I think whites smoke even more pot then blacks. In California many years back, legalizing pot legislation was shot down not by whites, who were actually the majority who supported legalization, but by blacks and other minority groups. I think the reason for blacks receiving higher sentences, which is true and undeniable, is to proactively dissuade other blacks from engaging in these same crimes, not to mention that to let these blacks off would just be a headache not only for law enforcement whose runins with these repeat criminals are incredibly high(runins that often add up anyways to the same exxagerated prison sentence except now they've had a chance to hurt more people), but more importantly, to keep them away from the larger (Black) public who they'll likely hurt and corrupt.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but blacks of slave ancestry punch well above their weight in terms of crimes committed, most of which aimed at fellow blacks. I mean, 13% of the population, and almost 50% of the murders. This isn't a healthy group, and the state solution to this, inadequate as it has been, has been to just incarcerate them, as the only way to keep them from cannibalizing their own. It isn't right, and it will need a non-police solution to this problem, but that's just the reality on the ground. And this has nothing to do with racism.

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Yeah but how do you account for all the liberals that think America is a racist country, who think that everyone who opposes same-sex marriage is a hateful bigot, who believe in zero population growth, who believe that there is a rape culture on college campuses, who think that there is a war by men against women to keep them down, that the rich got rich by stealing money from the poor, who view Israel as the great villain in the world outside of America? They don't constitute the majority? The majority of liberals don't hold the majority of those points?

Most of these are distortions. The only two positions that are likely to find majority support among liberals as stated by you are that same-sex marriage opponents are bigots and that rape culture is real.


Point out the distortions.

And the two you cite as being real aren't an example of Liberal insularity? You have to live in a bubble to believe that rape culture on the college campus is real, that 1:5 women are the victims of sexual assault. If you didn't live in an echo-chamber, you may have had one someone point out the fact that no one is stupid enough to send their child somewhere where they have a 1:5 chance of being raped, so you, the believer in this myth, don't even believe your own myth. And if this myth in fact a reality, well then why is the University still open, given the dangerous environment it has become lol. I mean 1:5 man... that's a ton of sexual assault.

You also have to manufacture a perverted caricature of conservatives to believe that those of us who oppose same-sex marriage only do so because of hate. We're just all haters, there's no rational case against changing the societal ideal that has guided Western civilization for 1,200 years.

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Liberals wouldn't hold those convictions so strongly if they entertained ideas and views that ran counter to their own thinking. You can only hold all of those views simultaneously, by insulating yourself from differing points of views, and by only entertaining caricatures and straw-men articulations of conservative views.

And why is that? Are you arguing that those views are somehow inconsistent with each other?


No, that you hold all of them simultaneously means that - for as long as you've held all of those positions simultaneously - you've only heard a liberal angle on everything in life, that once you've bought in wholly to progressive values and thought, you've rarely, if ever, entertained opposing arguments. I can understand a leftie who accepts 3/4 of core progressive values and positions and dissents ideologically(not just on tactics) with 1/4 of the rest, which itself is rare amongst progressives because, well, then you'd no longer be a progressive. Folk of that variety are much more believable to have actually struggled with dissenting view points, then someone who is an ideologue, towing the orthodoxy on every point where progressive thought differs from alternative views.

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I don't know if global warming is proven fact, and the climate changes.

It is.


Yeah but the globe warms and cools, like, throughout its entire history. The global warming theory is threefold anyways, and I'm not sure if we're the primary contributor to this warming, or that it will lead to disaster. If any of these three things are not true, well then theory is pointless/irrelevant and/or untrue.

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And evolution doesn't warrant the attention we give it since most of the body of currently known science doesn't depend on it or is predicated on the theory. Science would survive without it. It's mostly irrelevant and opposing it doesn't make you anti-science.

You can't study biology without it. And yes, opposing it does make you anti-science.


Biology is only one of the three branches of the hard sciences. Opposing one theory in biology does not make you anti-science.


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The leftwing opposition to vaccines and gmo's is more frightening, and I'm not even a fan of GMO's or vaccines myself.

Failing to acknowledge the crisis of climate change is literally an existential threat to the survival of humanity. Anti-GMO activism is responsible for millions of needless deaths, and that is profoundly evil, but it's not on the same level as causing a mass extinction and ending our own species in the process.


Yes but climate change is based on forecasts of what may happen 80 years from now.

And while you're obsessing about what may happen 80 years from now(as if we won't have invented and engineered a solution within the next 20 years), theoretical evil off in the distance, the climate change and DestroyMonsanto and SaveTheWhales and anti-Nuclear power and Rape Culture crowd won't fight real evil today, in our time, around the world and here at home. It seems that when you focus on distant or trivial/manufactured evils, it preoccupies too much of your time to the point where you don't have the time to speak out against women/girls/boys being raped and gays being hanged and children being abused into being child soldiers and rapists, throughout the world, today, during the times in which we live. I mean, the intensity, the passion, it just isn't there, but we bring up nuclear power plants or global warming or the opening up of a Walmart somewhere in America, and suddenly you're battle-ready to form the frontlines in squaring down that evil.


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Have you seen the anti-nuclear power crowd or the GMO folks and how they slander those who disagree with them?

Those people suck.


That's true, but virtually all of them are also all global warming believers, also engaging in the same tactics of dehumanizing climate-change dissenters.

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We're bad people, yet those of us who don't agree with you on evolution or climate change merely think you're wrong or mistaken.

LOL. The anti-evolution folks think biologists are all part of some vast atheist conspiracy to undermine Christianity. Climate change denialists also tend to adopt bizarre conspiracy theories, usually involving some giant scam to get a few extra scraps of grant money. :roll:


I personally don't think that's an issue, we don't dehumanize you anywhere near what Leftists do to those who oppose them. You're just people who are wrong, and at worst, even idiotic or delusional. But we don't think you're inherently bad, acting out of bad intentions in order to screw over the world and the innocent living in it. I mean come on now lol, bizarre conspiracy theories holds a candle to "you don't care if your children have clean drinking water."? Conspiracy theories about biologists trying to undermine Christianity is anything comparable to "you were paid off by big-oil," or "you just want children to go to bed hungry at night."?

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Conservatives will always dive into delusional crazyland so long as anything they say that goes counter to your beliefs is delusional, and crazy. Maybe it isn’t a “them” problem.

As I said, I fully believe there are intelligent right-wing arguments to be made on any number of issues. I just haven't seen people making them. It's entirely reasonable to disagree, for example, on whether certain provisions of the ACA are a good idea. It's insane to outright disagree on what the provisions of the ACA are when it's possible to go read it.


Well I read the NYTimes, TheNation, MotherJones, GoodIs, the DailyKos. I both have to, and it's also a hobby. It may help your chances of running into persuasive right-wing thought if you read the WSJ editorial, Commentary, TheAmericanThinker, The American Interest, The Weekly Standard, occasionally NationalReview, etc. You may not always agree with the opinions given, but the works done by people at the Manhattan Institute, Hoover, AEI, CATO, Hertog/Tikvah, etc are actually pretty decent. I use a feedly account to quickly browse through a ton of articles in my mourning commute.

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Well that's nice for a change. The obsession with Israel in academia can only come down to bigotry. There's no basis for the preoccupation with the Palestinians and the hatred expressed against the Jewish state.

You think academia is filled with anti-Semitism?


How are they not? When they focus all of their attention on Israel for the reasons they cite, and say nothing about wherever else those same offenses occur, especially in the Middle East, plus say nothing about the antisemitic libels against the Jewish state, then yes. They are bigoted against the Jewish state, precisely because they are Jewish(European), and the victim of this Jewish State(European outpost) are brown muslim easterners.


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It is not up to you to finish the task, nor are you free to desist from trying.