I’ve railed against the racket that higher education has become on this page before. I think more people should be able to abstain from going to college and I think the government should stop “helping” students.
That being said, I also think Rick Santorum’s populist revulsion towards academia is based on faulty thinking. Michael Medved did a sufficient job of explaining why this is the case in an opinion piece pub’d by the Journal last week.
But it seems to go beyond that. Rick Satorum’s professors, who remember the young Santorum, have recently come out to protest his claims about his time at Penn State:
“I can tell you professor after professor who docked my grades because of the viewpoints I expressed and the papers that I wrote. There’s no question that happened,” Santorum said. He added: “I used to go to war with some of my professors, who thought I was out of the pale, these are just not proper ideas,” noting, “There is clearly a bias at the university.”
… “I never received a complaint from any students that a professor had downgraded them because they were conservative and the professor was too liberal, or a student was too liberal with a conservative professor,” Robert Friedman told me. He served as chair of the political science department in the late 1970s when Santorum was a student. “Any problem he had with his grades had nothing to do with the fact that he was politically conservative.”
Penn State wasn’t liberal. “I find it amazing that anyone would see this as some kind of a leftist bastion, the Berkeley of Pennsylvania,” said Robert O’Connor, who taught or supervised Santorum in four courses.
Santorum campaigned for John Heinz, the late senator whom Friedman deems “a centrist of the old kind that was very common back then in Pennsylvania.”
Heinz was the sort of candidate who couldn’t win a Republican primary in this state today, as Arlen Specter can attest, and whom the adult Santorum would never support.
“Any problem Santorum had with his grades had nothing to do with the fact that he was politically conservative,” Friedman said. “He wasn’t a very serious student.”
I believe Friedman’s account. I think there would be far more stories about Santorum’s collegiate activism, and definitely better-detailed stories, if he really was fighting tooth-and-nail with the professors at Penn State.
It’s my second semester in my senior year, which is as good of a time as any to cite my own reasons for why I don’t care for anyone who would retroactively claim “bias” in their university:
1. It’s lame. In general, yes, most professors are left-leaning, but that does not mean all professors are jerks. I’ve met many über-liberal professors, but none of them were unwilling to give me a good grade if I played by the rules and wrote a decent paper related to the prompt. (If I had to claim a “bias” at Cornell, it would be one towards Cornell Realism, which I find far more offensive than political liberalism.) Some of my best friends in the government department at Cornell are conservatives who, if anything, make far more articulate defenses of their beliefs because they’re oftentimes surrounded by liberal thinkers. I have, however, also met some people who cry bias because their rather poorly-written papers were not well received by someone who happens to have a different ideology – on both sides of the aisle, no less.
2. It’s hurtful to those who are picked on. This belief that nobody can survive in academia if they aren’t card-carrying makes people take things less seriously when discrimination on the basis of political beliefs actually does come to light. People like Rick Santorum make it easier for the left to discredit people like my colleague Charles Johnson, who actually has found incidences of severe discrimination on his campus. I have no doubt that there are some professors who conservatives and liberals alike should be disgusted by, but it’s awfully hard to parse them out when they lie amidst a cohort of exaggerated ones.
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I graduated from Penn State not to long after Mr. Santorum. It is a very big campus, some forty thousand students. One students griping about his grades would not have made that much of a ripple, especially pre-internet days. Although not as bad as today, the school faculty (in general)was pretty left leaning.
Was Rick a serious student? I don’t know but for Friedman to claim he wasn’t (some thirty to thirty-five years after the fact) is a claim pretty hard to swallow.
Santorum was involved with student politics on campus, which would already make him more well-known among professors in the PoliSci department. The tenured professors I know have pretty good memories for people they taught 2+ classes with, and I suspect they would try to hold onto those memories if one of those students was elected to public office. If nothing else, it would make for good cocktail party conversation.
Depends on the class. Some of these courses have upwards of two hundred people in them. Also, is it really his memory talking or his political slant. If Rick was liberal or centrist like Senator Heinz, would the professor be saying he wasn’t a serious student or would he be praising his school effort?
It would be interesting to know if Sante was a member of The Federalist Society, which is one of the few Conservative groups that have existed for long in law schools.
Oh, the bias is real, alright. It’s just that most professors are professional enough not to test to it. And, the smarter students don’t need to force everybody of their acquaintance to acknowledge their personal political views.
I encountered two such professors, one in undergraduate school who thought that chemistry majors had no right to take advanced English courses, and one in law school, who had a more conventional, political bias.
The english professor forced me to drop his class by giving me unjustified bad grades that I could not afford at the time. I had a chat with the registrar when I turned in my drop notice, and an “A” quality paper that had drawn a “C” on a take-home exam.
Later, when I took a class from a notoriously political, liberal professor known to talk badly about women and engineers in class, I could afford to take the hit on my grade. He said in class that he had no political bias with respect to test answers, so I wrote an “A” exam that set out his views respectfully and yet disagreed with them. I got a “C” for that exam, and as far as I was concerned, he’d flunked my test. I did not choose to take the matter up with the school, because he was a well-known nut, I had chosen to bait him, and I was not going to waste any more time on him.
I graduated cum laude.
My experience was that the preponderance of my law school professors were avowed Collectivists, and NONE of them had any compunction about liberally (heh!) including their dogma along with the subject-matter they were teaching.
A few…and I mean very few…were known to me to be conservatives, but they very scrupulously avoided trying to salt their teaching with anything political or ideological.
Being an “old guy”, and notoriously NOT needing to make law review, I regularly challenged the dogmatic drivel of some of my instructors. Some of them respected that, much to their credit.
This would explain why almost every Democrat member in the House and Senate have law degrees and why they so often implement policy which undermines the Constitution.
If there is Justice in America-the land overbloated with lawyers-why then do so many Marxists lawyers have all the power?
hehe…
damn lawyers…
oops sorry Prof 🙂 🙂
Right. Everyone has those stories. I had a professor in an advanced philosophy course call me out on a piece I wrote about the healthcare bill before it passed — how that was related to Heidegger I will never know. Point is, the professors who are outlandishly aggressive tend to be the exception and not the rule.That shouldn’t exclude them from criticism, but it weakens the critiques against them when they’re posited as just cogs in a system that systemically can’t be civil to those who disagree with them.
It’s brave of people to confront their professors, but there is definitely an art to it.
I was in graduate school in 1984, at a large state university in the Midwest. My thesis proposal was for a philosophically- and historically-based analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s works. I had no interest whatsoever in the critical fashion of the day–“deconstructing” Poe into a bad white racist homophobic man with a mommy complex who was responsible for all the world’s ills.
Every single faculty member refused to be my thesis advisor because I would not do politically-correct research. Every. Single. One. Needless to say, I did not bend to their will and left. It took me 14 more years, but I eventually did get a master’s degree. On MY terms.
Just because professors don’t advertise their prejudice does not mean they don’t use it like a shellelagh. Sorry, but you need to do more research on this issue. Check thefire.org to see just how badly non-PC students and faculty are treated by the supposedly “few-and-far-between” radical profs who base grades on conformity to their ideologies.
A few weeks ago, Professor Jacobson posted this background piece on Rick Santorum, which interestingly details his very close association (and debt to) Newt Gingrich back in the day: http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/PhillyMagSantorum.pdf
The article states that Santorum and his wife were at least more liberal and pro-choice back then. His transformation to conservative was principled and probably the result of some serious and perhaps painful soul-searching, unlike Romney’s flip-flopping and chameleon-like positions, sometimes in the same election campaign…or week of Governorship.
Rick, like the rest of us, has a right to make mistakes… and I greatly respect his firm stand on social issues.
With Santorum – I am concerned that he has not stated any desire to deal with, rein in/reform either Big Labor or the FED and currency instability/manipulations, congressional term limits, insider trading, and other corruptions.
Newt’s the most willing and able to take it all on…
(Sarah Palin would too, if Newt, Ryan, Perry, Bachmann and the rest of the Tea Party conservative teem stood with her.)
It is my fondest dream/wish/hope that the Tea Party is meeting/planning/strategizing behind the scenes to skin, skunk, scare the living hell/daylights out of the RINOs and Marx/Islamist cabals.
I question prestigious universites which produce a plethora of uninformed students such as President Barack Obama or Sandra Fluke.
I also question why Universites establish “free-speech zones” when Universites are suppose to be pluralistic environmnents where students go to learn the value in ‘free exchange of ideas’
I also question why it is that where a Conservative speaker speaks they are always met with a gang of obnoxious students who shout-down, disrupt, throw pies, rush the stage whereby preventing pluralism’s free exchange of ideas.
I have no need to question the nutcase professors as listed in David Horowitz’s The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America however I do question how such dangerous academics receive the life-time benefits of tenure.
Lastly; today’s students have a greater problem than lack of pluralism within the Institutions of Higher Learning, that being, over $1 trillion in student loan debts facing a lost future in which the value of the degree received does not match the value in the job acquired.
Further adding; today’s students will have to find work which will not only pay off burdensome student loans acquired on behalf of worthless degrees while buying a place to live and raising a family,they will have to find work which will pay the burdensome cost of supporting the retirement of 77 million Babyboomers who-over the next thirty years or so- will be expecting Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare they were promised.
Dear College Students, good luck in your Lost Generation.
Ten likes packed into my one alloted like.
Ditto.
There is just something quite nasty about Rick Santorum that doesn’t fit into his theme of being a good Christian. He’s just a little b*tchy to me. I’d love to access old video or written work of Santorum’s that acknowledges the leadership of Speaker Gingrich- I’m sure there are things out there, but Santorum represents himself as having “sprung full-blown from the head of Zeus.”
I do know that the younger voters I know don’t want Santorum in ANY office anywhere near the Presidency. He is too self-righteous even for me.
We already have a President who is self-righteous and angry, why would I want another?
I take it you are not familiar with the picture of Jesus in the Christian gospels: cursing the tree for not bearing fruit, called the religious leaders of his day “whited sepulchers,” for starters.
And then there is “Saints” Peter and Paul getting into theological quarrels, and Paul saying that a group of Christians who wanted other converts to be circumcised should emasculate themselves.
Still, a bit of gratitude and humility becomes us all, even Santorum.
Hi Amanda,
PolitiJim wrote an article that features some of what you stated here:
http://www.politijim.com/2012/03/slutss-for-santorum-part-1-truth.html
It is an interesting read.
Thanks, Terri, this link confirms what I’ve felt about Santorum, but gives me facts to back up my opposition to him.
Rick has a good side too…a loving father and husband, but he has not acknowledged how much Newt did for him and taught him…as the article I linked revealed. And, he comes off sour at times, when he expresses a particular view without documenting it. It’s best to let data and research do the convincing in an argument…opinion is usually rebuffed and resented.
Perhaps it’s a lack of forgiveness, or perhaps Newt embarrassed, hurt or betrayed Rick somehow during his wild/wooly period, before he repented and got his life in order.
Hi Uncle Samuel,
Rick Santorum: I Adopted Newt’s Vision for Conservative Governance
http://youtu.be/pS7Bs0Ymi0s
I don’t think he is angry with Newt, I just think he is being dishonest in alot of what he says to do what it takes to win.
I am still trying to figure out which one is my second choice (Santorum or Romney) I don’t know if there are others like me, but I have a collection of links etc… on Romney, Santorum etc… I would love to share. We need a open forum of some sort, so that maybe it could help those like me who are having a hard time deciding.
not sure if this is tos violation, sorry if it is.
http://www.davemacleod.net
can join there, post the links in politics-general forum I would like to see them.
facebook connect is broken right now (FB made changes ) but twitter connect or normal account creation work.
just me and afew conservative friends there, few people from here too iirc.
again if this is tos violation I apologize Professor.
Obama also appears to be a loving husband and father,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Jimmy Carter was a loving husband and father……………Ronald Reagan was a divorced and remarried man at a time when divorce was uncommon…………Just saying…
1. My understanding of Kathleen’s post:
a. Notwithstanding the leftist attitudes of most faculty, with a little common sense a conservative attending a decent college can get a good education there.
b. For two reasons, pleading unfair treatment should only be done as a last resort. First, such excuses, valid or not, tend to reduce one’s sense of personal responsibility. Second, today’s ambience of inflated grievances (which popular culture encourages) distracts from the minority of grievances that are legitimate.
2. I do wonder whether college degrees are as economically helpful as they were in previous decades. Santorum could have phrased his critique that way, but he did not.
(If I misunderstand Santorum, I welcome corrective hyperlinks.)
3. Clicking through in Kathleen’s link, I found this:
The anti-libertarian Santorum has attracted a constituency which opposes the erosion of American freedom.
The irony would be more amusing if it weren’t so important to disenfranchise the current Administration.
It’s an indication of how muddled politics has become: IMO, muddled deliberately by amoral practitioners.
As far as I am concerned, higher education as a means of increasing one’s income is simply one alternative.
There is absolutely no doubt that a doctorate in a demanding field will net a huge increase in income, and for the person who is academically inclined (likes to read, write, and speak), it’s wonderful. But, it takes a LOT of time that could be used in other ways.
While I spent an extra eight years (and took a 100K lost-oppurtunity hit on my income) to get a doctorate and eventually a law license, my cousin learned a trade, and he and his buddies built each others’ houses.
My bother spent 4 years in college, and then took a job as a salesman, and eventually bid into his own business territory.
I don’t think any of us would trade places with the other.
The premise of this posting annoys me. She approaches Mr. Santorum as though he has no personal history of lying or telling the truth. Although originally unfamiliar with him, except generally he was a senator from Pennsylvania, last summer I began watching the Republican debates and listened closely. Then I began searching for and watching any video of him I could find. Based upon what I have seen thus far, with me, he has a well-earned reputation for veracity upon which I comfortably rely.
There are many other public figures I can name upon whom I would NEVER rely. “Reputation” is a valuable asset and is an appropriate basis for evaluation.
That said, I’m sure he has a better recollection of his college days than his professors do. Furthermore, on the basis of my own personal experience with professors, department chairs and college presidents, they definitely protect their institutions.
Basically, she argues the professor should be believed over Mr. Santorum’s version of events. Poppycock. I had a professor give me a bad grade because I wouldn’t have lunch, dinner, whatever, with him. Another tried to take liberties with me, although he didn’t dock my grade.
At another school, I complained to the political science head about the material a professor was teaching and to the president of the university. No one else knew at the school. I didn’t think to hire a band to do it. It was an office visit and a chance meeting at an event. I didn’t write a letter to the editor or make a banner.
At law school, I had an insecure liberal professor corner me in the law library over a note I had left him. A few people wondered what was going on, but other than that, no one took note.
I find it troubling when a man with a proven track record of veracity has to satisfy the rambling pondering of a student with no track record of accomplishment. It’s not like he’s Mitt Romney, who has contradicting video and text of him popping up every day.
Furthermore, Mr. Santorum doesn’t suffer from “populist revulsion” towards academia. He’s simply pointing out what is damn obvious: Alot of these pointy headed intellectuals in the universities are teaching toxic or useless material to students, whose parents are paying unjustifiable sums of money for such useless “education.” Or the students are taking out loans to pay for a useless education. I know one college grad now working at a golf course, with $100k in student loans! Useless! Useless!
Furthermore, he’s obviously right, that many people’s skills are with skilled trades in which case a liberal arts education is contraindicated. And we need the skilled trades, because alot of pointy headed intellectuals haven’t a CLUE about how to use a wrench, crowbar, multimeter, oscilloscope, et cetera, et cetera.
So, to have this bias in favor of old school liberal arts degrees is wrongheaded in too many ways to count. I thank goodness every day for those friends of mine who know how to trouble shoot a problem with cars, septic tanks, phone lines, etc. I don’t think it would have helped if they had listened to that Marxist I had at Emory.
You hit on something that really bothers me about Rick. It seems nothing is ever Rick’s fault, it is always somebody else’s fault. It appears he doesn’t like taking personal responsibility for his past votes or positions, and now it seems, even for any lower grades he may have received in college. IMO that is a character flaw.
Newt will admit he is wrong and apologize if appropriate. That is a man with real character.
“You hit on something that really bothers me about Rick. It seems nothing is ever Rick’s fault, it is always somebody else’s fault. It appears he doesn’t like taking personal responsibility for his past votes or positions, and now it seems, even for any lower grades he may have received in college. IMO that is a character flaw.”
You’ve just explained how I feel about him as well.
Both Romney and Santorum have a phoniness to them that turns me off. They both pretend to be perfect, and I’d rather have a candidate who has acknowledged his flaws.
“Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” Luke 15:7
I’m confused how you look at two versions of the same events, one from a first-person perspective, and one from an “I don’t know of any complaints” third hand perspective, and from this you conclude Santorum must be wrong?!??!!!
What kind of logic is that ?
I graduated with a liberal arts degree a very long time ago. I was fortunate that I never had to borrow a dime for my college expenses. Back then, before the government started “helping” college students, college was actually affordable. Sure, I worked part time jobs throughout college but I finished in less than 4 years.
I want my kids to go to college but the idea of encouraging them to borrow $25,000 (this was the average sum owed by students graduating in 2010) or more to get a degree is insanity. It could take decades to pay off those debts, assuming they are able to find jobs in an economy with little signs of emerging from recession…
The more government meddles in the economy, the more bubbles they create and distort the marketplace. We don’t need that kind of “help” considering it is all borrowed money in the first place.
Government does nothing well and should therefore do little. This is the entire purpose of the enumerated powers assigned to the central government to begin with!
Penn State wasn’t liberal. “I find it amazing that anyone would see this as some kind of a leftist bastion, the Berkeley of Pennsylvania,” said Robert O’Connor, who taught or supervised Santorum in four courses.
Blowback from the University of NAMBLA
I think this post truely misses the point. It’s not primarily that the profs in higher ed are biased against “Conservatives” and much as they’re biased against people who don’t hold their particular world view in general. Follow that up with the fact many are liberal and that’s where the percieved bias comes from. But I’ve seen (admittedly far fewer) Conservative professors get all angsty and grade harsher when liberals start going off (Insert slam against Liberal thought here.)
It gets particularly strange when you drift out of the political discussion per say and into more general moral theory. So I’ve been in classes where I dare speak out against the victimization and “not my fault” style culture we live in (specifically I had the audacity to say that of an alcoholic couldn’t sober up they’d have trouble holding down a job and contributing to society, I didn’t even touch upon where the help with that should come from, or speak about charitable/government services to said poor soul, just a simple observation.) In any case since this goes against the typical liberal narrative I had to face an onslaught of ad hominem attacks and strange misreprentings of what I said without any interceding by the left leaning teacher. (FWIW, I someone else, who didn’t feel comfortable commenting in the class complained to a higher up on my behalf and I recieved an apology. I didn’t really care either way since I’m capable of defending against ad homenims.)
Another class I was in may provide a better example. The teacher was a big fan of Dorthy Day (founder of the Catholic Worker Movement). The kind of person who that Day should be made a saint. I wrote a paper not so much against Day herself, but an assessment of her approach to poverty and how it wouldn’t be very useful in a post-industrial economy (like we largely have now.) This alone was enough to merit a C. I was not the first to come up against this (I knew a person in the previous year’s class who didn’t find Day all that inspiring, wrote as such also got a C). Luckily this was a Co-taught (Theology/Philosophy) class, the Philosophy professor disagreed and bumped my grade to a B. Yes the teacher was liberal, but I don’t think that mattered as much as her obsession with Day and how challenging that worldview led to bad grades.
It appears the most important point in Santorum’s latest tirade has been lost in a sea of personal anecdotes about academia, suggesting that Santorum *could* be correct. Yes, of course he could be. Yes, of course, academia generally suffers from a left bias (particularly in the humanities, social sciences and fine arts). Nobody is denying that. But whether Santorum’s depiction is accurate or not, his anecdote, both in tone and manner, illustrates yet again, why I have serious reservations about him.
I have no doubt Santorum is genuine and sincere, more so than Romney (my unabashed choice). But he seems to have limited ability in articulating many of his positions in a detailed and subtle manner which will appeal to individuals who aren’t already in his camp. Rather, when trying to elucidate his position on controversial issues, he throws bombs:
That an overzealous judiciary has pushed the concept of “separation of church and state” to a degree where any public expression of faith is called into question, to where secularism in some form is almost mandated in the public square cannot be denied. How did Santorum elucidate this? By declaring that a speech by one of America’s most beloved presidents (rightly or wrongly) made him want to vomit.
That the costs of a college education and the debt burden it often imposes are out of control and bringing about ever increasingly diminishing returns, particularly as many academic fields descend further into obscurantism, offering less and less useful knowledge and practical skills is a sad but obvious fact. How did Santorum broach this topic? By calling the present administration a bunch of elitist snobs for saying that everyone should go to college.
That there is a left-wing bias in many colleges and universities and that certain professors expect ideological conformity if not downright sycophancy from their students (and will base their grades accordingly) is sadly true. How does Santorum discuss the matter? By going on a tirade about how he was personally afflicted 30 years ago.
I am not a fan of Newt, as everyone on this blog knows. Newt loves to make provocative, controversial comments just as much as Santorum, if not more so. Newt also overstates and overgeneralizes legitimate problems. However, even Newt’s most heated, bomb throwing rhetoric tends to be much more intricate and well prepared, with a logical and cohesive argument to back it up. You may not agree with him in the end, but you have to respect his intellectual prowess.
Santorum seems much more like the grumpy guy at the end of the bar. The fellow who is endlessly spouting off about everything but mostly in angry platitudes which, while I agree with what he is trying to get at, come off as rather simplistic.
Hi BurkeanBadger — you said:
I am not a fan of Newt, as everyone on this blog knows. Newt loves to make provocative, controversial comments just as much as Santorum, if not more so. Newt also overstates and overgeneralizes legitimate problems. However, even Newt’s most heated, bomb throwing rhetoric tends to be much more intricate and well prepared, with a logical and cohesive argument to back it up. You may not agree with him in the end, but you have to respect his intellectual prowess.
— the words you use tell me again that you haven’t taken the time to actually listen to NEwt. Newt’s words, in speeches. Your comments reflect a person of intellect and accomplishment. You COULD know better. You choose not to.
Newt’s ideas are coherent and big enough to actually make a difference.
Newt’s description of reality is right-on-target accurate.
Newt’s solutions are practical & effective.
We’re staring into an economic abyss. Doesn’t that motivate you? Have you seen the video in front of the oil rig? Have you taken the time to watch “AMERICAN ENERGY NOW”?
We will restore our economy quite fast. Wouldn’t it be great to leave a debt-free country to our children? We can.
The current administration is engaged in ripping off our freedoms and usurping the power of Congress and the American People. Don’t you find that an urgent issue?
The solutions to restore the Constitution are here.
Newt is smart and tough. Newt is the only candidate with the requisite understanding and experience.
I wish you would watch enough to tell me in detail why I’m wrong. I don’t think you can do it. Because these ideas will work, and if Newt is the nominee, Newt will win.
And if you say, oh give it a rest: I say, wake up. The election is not next fall. The election is now.
I think anyone who had no links to Paterno & Sandusky did just fine at Penn.
I think Santorum’s words have had resonance in Michigan Ohio Kansas Oklahoma non -urban Colorado , Tennessee etc.
is not exactly working class out there & maybe many would like their children to go to college . However an alternative trade college / community college route would be more economical & confidence giving for the parents (voters )
I think you are seeing politics when it might just be ea case of affordability. Even in this case I am guessing Penn State was more affordable the Univ of Penn.
One of the things you learn in college is how to properly express informational “bits” to people who do not share your opinions, or in other words, how to Lie. Other words such as Betraying Your Moral Compass can be used, but when you leave the warm fuzzy environment of higher education, you will sooner or later hit a occasion where you must express an opinion that you may not fully believe in, and some Liberal (and few Conservative) profs are willing to offer training in this exotic artform. We’ve all been there, done that.
In Politics, this skill appears to be more valuable than any other.
“Some of my best friends in the government department at Cornell are conservatives who, if anything, make far more articulate defenses of their beliefs because they’re oftentimes surrounded by liberal thinkers.”
Are any of those friends faculty members?
Why didn’t Santorum attend a Christian university? Then he couldn’t have claimed bias as a reason for his less than stellar grades. BTW…how about releasing your college transcripts Santorum and we’ll see how they stack up to Gingrich the Professor…..
“I also think Rick Santorum’s populist revulsion towards academia is based on faulty thinking.”
February 28, 2012 4:00 P.M.
Santorum: The Anti-Snob
The former senator makes his blue-collar pitch.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/292183/santorum-anti-snob-robert-costa
This article was about Santorum’s appeal to those who “work with their hands”, this resonated with Michiganders because many live middle class lifestyles by this means and it fits with Santorum’s economic policy toward Manufacturing.
THIS IS THE RETAIL END OF RUNNING A POLITICAL CAMPAIGN.
“Some of my best friends in the government department at Cornell are conservatives who, if anything, make far more articulate defenses of their beliefs because they’re oftentimes surrounded by liberal thinkers.”
Correct, if you’re conservative and surrounded by leftists you probably have a good understanding of the corrosiveness of liberalism.
I’m a Newt supporter, but if institutional academics are going to use second and third tier bliggity blogs to flesh out candidates with their superior wordsmith abilities to articulate defenses of their (our) conservative beliefs lets be fair.
How about fleshing out Newts comments on ending foreign aid subsidies and spending them “right here in Iowa”, in support of ethanol (and other alternative energy source) subsidy deemed by many as the one of single worst public policy decisions in US history.
THIS IS THE RETAIL END OF RUNNING A POLITICAL CAMPAIGN.
Newt Gingrich’s Unemployment Plan
http://www.decodedscience.com/newt-gingrich-economic-financial-business-strategy-proposals-decoded/5519
Criticism of this type public policy is fleshing itself out in various news articles right now, with the British Governments Work Experience placement scheme.
21 February 2012
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2104027/Stacking-shelves-better-dreaming-stardom-X-Factor-says-Iain-Duncan-Smith.html
I believe all the Republican candidates have some desirable attributes and as a diehard supporter of the populist constitutionalism of the wonderful Sarah Palin, I also believe fleshing out the policy positions of the various candidates is good thing.
So after you’ve expelled copious amounts of energy breaching such hot topics such as “thighgate” and “slutgate” and want to dedicate some of your superior wordsmithing abilities to articulate defenses of their (our) conservative beliefs in relation to candidates retail end statements and actual public policy proposals I’m all for it because the liberals are going to do it anyway.
Lets just stop making stuff up and doing the leftists job of attacking our own candidates.
I’ve come across engineering professors who thought that women should not be in engineering, math professors who thought that mathematics majors should have nothing to do with computer science, but the worst far and away was the professor who refused to show the class how to do the homework in metallurgy.