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Comment by jchanimal | Hacker News Reader

I think it’s the old canard where conservatives don’t realize that the reason their viewpoints are not represented on campus is because they don’t hold up to intellectual scrutiny.

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Interesting blanket statement if not completely false. The only thing you can sort of assume is that those with liberal/left leanings are more likely to be teachers.

Is this true across the board? I can think of a handful of popular tropes where this is true, like climate change skepticism, but even this comes in degrees ranging from conservatives who agree that climate change is real and needs action to those who agree it's real but are skeptical about the long term consequences to those who think that climate change is real but not man-made to those who think it's not real at all. Other popular examples are just evangelical beliefs projected to conservatives en masse (e.g., creationism). I guess conservatives seem pretty ideologically diverse, so maybe it would be helpful to specify which ideas in particular are keeping conservatives out of the academy?

Ok I’ll bite. Another unsubstantiated conservative canard: taxes are bad. When in fact highly redistributive polices are correlated with all-boats-rising economic tides. “But who cares if we are all worse off, taxes are theft,” whines the conservative. Cry me a river, it was always already the government’s money.

> it was always already the government’s money

Sounds like you went to the same fallacious economic school Elizabeth Warren did

I'm not the one choosing to fetishize some government's money.

You're the one choosing to fetishize a soundbite that most consider to be clearly wrong, if not completely insane. Merely repeating it is not a good persuasion tactic.

> “But who cares if we are all worse off, taxes are theft,” whines the conservative

You're proving my point. This is a fringe conservative position (conservatives are okay with taxes for critical infrastructure, national defense, some minimal social safety net, etc), but you're using that brush to paint all conservatives. Sadly, portraying moderates as extremists has become a goto debate tactic for the left wing, and it's frankly _boring_ never mind morally repugnant.

You can't say that and keep Grover Norquist as a standard-bearer and treat "starve the beast" as a legitimate governing philosophy...

I don't know any conservatives who consider Norquist a standard-bearer. And there's no dichotomy between believing some taxes are necessary and believing the current tax levels are excessive. 'Taxation is theft' is fringe libertarianism; 'taxation in moderation' probably does a good job of representing the budget hawk position (and not all conservatives are budget hawks!).

Why do you think Grover Norquist is a standard bearer for weberc2?

You seem to be willing to lump all conservatives together, but not willing to listen at all...

I’m not even a conservative :) Just a fan of honest dialog and intellectual consistency.

Are you using the argument that because current conservative policy is to deny the existence of man made climate change that every other conservative position is unscientific?

Well, what defensible prepositions have ya got?

You've pointed out exactly the issue. It's a lack of diversity in thought and consideration of ideas that you disagree with. That should be the whole point of college. (An understanding of where the knowledge came from, how it's formed, and how to work with new ideas [even if they're wrong]

If someone's idea doesn't hold up to scrutiny, academically speaking, you should identify it as such.

The danger of labeling and avoiding ideas you don't like, in this case: conservatives, you're being intellectually dishonest and you're prone to basis.

Weird, since typically the issue is seen in reverse where leftist views don't hold up to statistics and logic. Check out some of Ben Shapiro's talks, or Crowder's 'Change my mind' series

Ah, yes. Let's review a few classic "leftist" views, and see if they hold up:

1. Single payer healthcare is both more effective and cheaper than the for-profit model we have now. [1]

2. Climate change is both actually happening and is largely caused by human activity. [I really hope I don't need to cite this...]

3. Gun control tends to lower gun violence. [2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/upshot/why-single-payer-h...

[2] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/4/16418754/g...

> 1. Single payer healthcare is both more effective and cheaper than the for-profit model we have now. [1]

Personally, I agree with this one, if they're done right. (I think Germany is the best one in the western world) [One conservative view] This won't be done right in the context of the US given it's size and demand on it's people. (That also is where the anti-big gov arguement comes from as well) There is also a bit of FUD in reguards to it's change to the economy after implementation. [Higher taxes and a higher COL] (There are many other _good_ arguements against it.. such as the right to conduct business without government interference.. but see Ben Shapiro for that)

> 2. Climate change is both actually happening and is largely caused by human activity.

Most of the anti-climate change arguments that I've seen on this stem on weird twisting of data. I haven't seen a lot of solutions on the otherside. So that's equally weird and it just seems that people are yelling to convince some government body to "do something." (Whether it's effective or not.. that's a VERY big concern)

> 3. Gun control tends to lower gun violence.

It depends on context. There are many cases where this fails. (IL being one of those [it's easier to buy in IN].. since you can get and transport a firearm with different gun control requirements across the border). This goes for Canada, US, and Mexico. (Although if you enforce the borders strictly you can maintain gun control) The issue with this: Gun control is more restrictive on those who wish to legally use firearms, but barely does much to inhibit those who intend to use them illegally.

1. call the current way healthcare is delivered in this country "for-profit" is stealing a base. It's truer to say it's a heavily regulated sector with public and private elements. If you're not happy with the status quo you could increase the public part of increase the private part. It seems unfair to increase the public role, continue to complain about the situation and then propose increasing the public part still more to fix those problems.

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