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UCLA Students Urged to Expose 'Radical' Professors
rts008 writes to tell us Reuters is reporting that a conservative alumni group is working hard to expose 'radical professors'. The group is a creation of 2003 UCLA graduate, Andrew Jones, who stated that he runs the organization on his own with $22,000 in private donations. From the article: "Jones told Reuters he is out to 'restore an atmosphere of respectful political discourse on campus' and says his efforts are aimed at academics who proselytize students from either side of the ideological spectrum, conservative or liberal. 'We are concerned solely with indoctrination, one-sided presentation of ideological controversies and unprofessional classroom behavior,' Jones said on his Web site." The tactics used by Jones and his group are raising quite a few questions, however, offering to pay students for recordings or teaching materials that could provide 'evidence' against professors in question.
...does not include the right to speak without criticism.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
As I've noted elsewhere, it's OK to argue for more intellectual diversity on faculties, and it's okay to complain about faculty members who bully students with different views. But the UCLA effort sloppily confuses the two and winds up looking like a blacklist, blowing its credibility in the process.
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a way to balance classrooms as much as it's a witchhunt for "undesirables" and those who aren't quite right-of-center (Academia is considered to be more liberal than conservative, or at least it's presented as such). It shouldn't be allowed - What ever happened to the time when you could disagree with someone, but still respect their opinion? It's gotten disgusting in America - to the point now that you're either with us or just some asshole...
But this kind of crap shouldn't be allowed. So you disagree with your professor? Big deal - take it like an adult and agree to disagree.
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
You know, I'm generally against tenure, because, well, it lets lousy teachers stick around long after their sell-by date. But this is exactly what it's for. Screw this guy and the nutjobs who are sponsoring him, once you have tenure, there's jack-all people can do to you. Which (in this case) is as it should be.
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
The Nazis didn't start out in control of the government. They and the groups that they sprang from (nationlist right-wingers with a good deal of support from the military) started out by intimidating opposition and those who spoke against them.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
While most professors encourage honest debate and discourse in their classes, there are always some who use their captive audiences, and discretion in grading, to further their political agendas.
You're paying for your education. You have a right to critique your professors.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Indeed, it should be taken as an honour to be "exposed" by this fellow and his group. These are the kind of people that it's good to piss off. They're the sort who either have a vested (often financial) interest in the status quo, or are completely incapable of peacefully accepting the views of others (which in itself is completely anti-American).
If I were a university student, I would think of this sort of group as a blessing. They'd show which professors have the guts to provide their views without trying to self-censor. Those are the sorts of professors who are worth learning from.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I always find it strange when people accuse academia of unfair bias. When the majority of the best and brightest in the country all lean towards a particular political philosophy, what should that tell you? (Hint: It's not that they were brainwashed and indoctrinated...)
You can argue that academics are too detached from reality, but I think that's wishful thinking from bitter people. All the people I know in academia are well-informed, widely-read, and thoughtful voters. A lot of universities also have many international scholars, which contributes to a wider perspective on politics. They tend to take a less simplified view of things, and to be more open to ideas coming from Europe and elsewhere. And if all that taken together leads one to a more socialist stance, that view should be taken seriously.
Now, if a professor were to mark down a student for expressing a different view (assuming they were able to defend their reasoning), that would be beyond the pale. But the things this group is talking about hardly rises to that level. There's nothing wrong with talking about your opinions in a university class where everyone is assumed to be a rational adult.
this group is not affiliated with the government
When colleges were paid for primarily by the student or private funds, you KNEW what type of college you were attending. The best schools even had professors who still worked in the industry "Those who can't do, teach" was not really an accurate cliche.
Now we have primarily public funding in college. What do you expect but State-loving socialists instead of true masters of academia? Is college even necessary if you're to go on to a non-science profession?
One of the few professors I still admire is Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who had something to say about the system and the garbage bin it has fallen into. I'm not sure we'll see any real changes until we remove the federal funding of education from all education, especially the college grants and loans that the government seems to happy to dole out.
Here's a bit from the article itself (for those that haven't read it..)
" The Web site of the Bruin Alumni Association also includes a "Dirty Thirty" list of professors considered by the group to be the most extreme left-wing members of the UCLA faculty, as well as profiles on their political activities and writings."
This story was covered a few days ago by one of the local radio programs here. Despite what the slashdot headline says about these guys going after "both sides," in reality it's a conservative witch-hunt... McCarthy would be proud of these clowns. Someone should send them a stuffed jesus doll to cuddle up with at night.
Considering the behavior of the present government, please don't mind me while I remain skeptical. The peddling of influence sufficiently blurs the line as to just where the government stops nowadays.
Is it fascism yet?
Please do not confuse Republicans and their followers with conservatives. Indeed, they are very different groups holding very different beliefs.
Conservatives stand for freedom, liberty, individual responsibility, honest prosperity, and peace.
Republicans (and many Democrats, too) stand for the supression of liberties and freedoms (often in the name of "security"), do not promote responsibility, and often resort to corruption and illegal means of obtaining wealth. These days, they obtain much of their wealth via wars, which contradicts directly with peace.
Today it is Republicans who are moving towards (if they're not already in) a state of fascism. It is conservatives around the US who are taking a stand against such anti-American nonsense.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I've noticed that the professors who come from industry are pretty conservative. Professors who have been in the ivory tower of academia their whole lives, however, are very liberal.
Dr. Godwin, you have a call on the white courtesy phone.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Don't delude yourself: people will always have a political agenda, and it will always be a part of whatever they're doing.
More importantly, it's irrelevant if a professor holds such views, and expresses them to his or her students. Any truly intelligent student (you know, this is at the university level!) should be able to recognize such bias, and take it into account while taking a particular course.
University often isn't about sitting there and accepting what the professors say as fact. It's about hearing ideas that may differ from yours, so as to make you think a little bit harder than you normally would. It takes real responsibility to partake in and make use of a university-level education.
And the worst possible thing to do is either believe or insist that professors not involve their personal, biased views. That's the whole point of getting an education! To be bombarded by views you wouldn't have even bothered to consider, even if you do happen to disagree with them in the end.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Yay, another Witch Hunt to keep track of. Finding people to blame is so much easier than trying to be an example to everyone else. Better yet, claiming to be oppressed is better than actually accomplishing something. Damn, which to be... I'll just claim to be a persecuted persecutor of persecuted people who do bad things (imho - and yours too if I have my way).
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Are they more learned or are they just able to fit in successfully with another group of liberal academics? It could be the more learned have moved into the private sector? You could play this game all day long. :-) My experiance is that for some of the professors I ran into, the academic setting is the only setting they would survive in.
Academia is very biased. Bias is not necessarily a bad thing. It is hard to study a topic for years and not end of taking a stand on it. The issue is when your bias prevents you from teaching people who have a different bias. In 95% of the schools out there, it is completely and utterly impossible to go through the sociology program as a fiscal and/or moral conservative. At best, you will get poor grades, constantly have to defend your every breath, and receive little to no supporting reading material to back up your views. At worst you will be failed multiple times.
My girlfriend is a sociologist. The worst case of abuse I have seen was when she took a class called "Capitalism and the Environment". Every single book and handout that she had was without exception Marxist. How in the hell you can justify teaching a class with the word 'capitalism' in it without reading a single pro-capitalist thinker is utterly beyond me. Not even addressing the opposition is the absolutely most dishonest form of teaching that you can do.
The worst part about this is that it insulates an entire field of thinking from any sort of opposition thinking. A brain dead liberal can make it through the sociology program that my girlfriend made it through. Hell, my girlfriends best friend is sweet, but dumber then a sack full of bricks and made it through with a B. A conservative or libertarian on the other hand would have to fight every single step of the way. Teachers teach nothing but a single side and challenge conservative students every step of the way. I am sure the few conservatives that make it through are as tough as nails, but you shouldn't need an iron will and lead skin to make it through a sociology program.
I am not sure that UCLA's methods are right or effective, but I am glad that they at least acknowledge a problem. A liberal kid should be able to learn economics. A conservative kid should be able to learn sociobiology. Certainly they should be challenged, but they shouldn't have to fight tooth and nail while others float past by simply nodding their heads in agreement with the subjective opinions of their teachers. Liberals have interest in economics and conservative have interest in sociology. It is a travesty that these programs at some school intentionally try and convert or fail the few brave souls willing to cross the lines.
Perfectly Capitaslistic plan to me.
There are a lot of nut job professors... think Churchill Hell when I was at Stony Brook I tangled with some nutjob in Womyn's Studies and almost got throw out of school. Ultimately SUSB saw it my way and they gave me an A a I never went back but I'll bet a lot of kids forced into that class just got bullied or thrown out of it.
Fuck them. Do you job. Don't waste the student's time telling them America is a corrupt regime of facists and that GWB should be impeached for stealing the last 3 elections, and being AWOL, and Katrina, and Plame, and Iraq, and the 9/11 was inside job, yadda fucking yadda. Or that Bill Clinton's Penis (Clenis) is evil and that the Left hates America, is shrill, is on the wrong side of history, is responsible for Wellstone's death, yadda yadda fucking yadda.
You know what? If a professor is doing their job they have nothing to worry about.
This
It seems you didn't read the rest of my post. The Democratic party is best viewed as a "Republican-lite" party.
These days, actual conservatives tend to vote for independent or libertarian candidates. They don't vote for the Democrats, and they sure don't vote for the Republicans, because neither party truly represents the views and ideals of conservatism.
Remember, if somebody votes Republican they are not a conservative. They are a Republican. Likewise, if somebody votes Democrat, they are not a liberal. They are a Democrat. "Republican" and "Democrat" are two political ideologies, much like conservative or liberal. As such the Republicans do not represent conservatism, nor do the Democrats represent liberalism.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Actually, it's more of the case of academics surrounding themselves with people they agree with politically, and black-balling those who don't. If you spent any time in an academic environment and actually sat on some of the hiring commitees as I have, you'd be quite surprised at what tenured professors get away with.
I know of a department that had a professor that didn't get tenure because of that. The professor I'm talking about is a well-known person that co-authored a book that's quite popular. (I'm not going to say what it is, because this guy's been through enough crap already). When I say "quite popular", I mean, it's damn near required reading in nearly every department I'm aware of. The reason he didn't get tenure? Black-balled for his political views. He was a popular professor, his book is well known, as is his reputation in the field he's in, yet he wasn't granted tenure because of his poltical views. He was by no means a radical either. He just happen to mention to the wrong person who he voted for in when they elected the last governor. After that, all hell broke lose as word got around. The guy wasn't treated the same after that.
Seven years wasted, and he's gone to another university now. I think if they would have known his political views before he was hired, he never would have been hired in the first place. He probably would have been better off.
When my professors said something I disagreed with, I spoke up. When a teacher was obviously giving a politicized speech, I spoke up. When the first thing a teacher said went something like, "if you believe in God, get out of my class" ..... guess what, I SPOKE UP.
This "organization" is another version of the thought police. At the college level, teachers can say anything they want. Its up to the students to filter out the BS (which, I'd estimate, is about 90% of what I've been taught).
-dave
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of professors that get labeled as radical would wear the term as a badge of pride.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
So, you think that conservatives are uneducated, eh?
I am a libertarian (a.k.a. small government conservative). There is a lot of theory and books written by all sorts of conservatives, and many of them have valid arguments to back up their beliefs. I disagree with social conservatives and neoconservatives, but I wouldn't say something like "the more learned members of society disagree with conservative values."
Just because you're not a leftist doesn't mean that you're uneducated.
I expect I'll be flamed for this, but...
As a political term, radical refers to those who critique the roots (hence "radical") of society. Since ours/yours is a capitalist society, this entails a critique of capitalism. Liberals, on the other hand, follow in the Enlightenment tradition of pluralist democracy, capitalist free markets, etc. Hence, the main position the radicals critique is liberalism - or neoliberalism, which is inclined more towards laissez-faire and minimal government intervention. While in an American context their sympathies will almost always lie more with Democrats than Republicans, radicals are hardly knee-jerk supporters of the US government. Liberalism is not a left-wing position - except in the US, where it has been redefined to be both center/center-right in practice and leftist by reputation.
Pretending to lack a bias is utter hypocrisy, not to mention unattainable and hence useless. A good professor will encourage thought and dialogue not by bland neutrality but by respect. That said, Andrew Jones' tactics recall the tactics of the most totalitarian governments, and his methods say a lot about his true understanding or regard for freedom.
That said, I've had self-described Constitutionalist conservatives and John Birchers for teachers and professors, and I've yet to see anything like them in academia for idealogical intolerance. The curious and fair-minded are probably not going to call blasphemy at the opposition.
He just adds a "signing statement."
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
The free enterprise system at work or Adam Smith's invisible boot stamping on a human face -- for ever?
"The tactics used by Jones and his group are raising quite a few questions, however, offering to pay students for recordings or teaching materials that could provide 'evidence' against professors in question."
/. today:
Here is the link to the web site of Jones' organization for those interested:
http://www.bruinalumni.com/
This has got to be one of the best examples of what is wrong in America today. On the one side we have professors (usually liberal Democrats) that we are trusting with the higher education of our children abusing their power and influence. Then, we have on the other side, a pissed off (usually republican) man that is going to fix the problem by paying these young adults to spy on their teachers. What a mess. What an "Us against Them" attitude we are setting as an example for these young adults.
But hey, why should it be any different on the college campuses of America then it is in Congress? This article and the information in this article is another example of the "Left-Side of the isle Right-Side of the isle"; or, "us against them" mentality that is ramped-up in America today.
Now that i am done with the rant part, I'll give an opinion on the issue. The professors are only marginally better in their behavior then the group that is paying cash for spying. I say marginally because i find them wrong but not as wrong as paying students to be spies. This has a complete and total ring from the 1950's called McCarthy-ism. For those that do not remember, McCarthy-ism is a period in our history when everyone was afraid to say anything against government (or say anything else for that matter) else they might end up on "The Black List" and called communist.
This black list was nothing to joke about. People lost their lives, lost their businesses, lost their homes, and were falsely jailed. Some even committed suicide due to the finger pointing and mass hysteria caused in this country by McCarthyism. And guess what? During McCarthyism we saw Americans being asked to spying on each other in similar fashion that we see in this article. What a disgrace.
So I'll add up what i read on
1)Two groups file Domestic Spying Lawsuit
2)censorship in the workplace
3)Old men and Old women at Quaker Church spied on, asks for congressional hearing and gets it
4)Google being threatened if it does not fork up private information.
5)Censorship of web pages
6)Various related topics too numerous to list
When ya add it all up, it reeks with censorship,spying, and finger pointing called McCarthyism.
This has been another valuable and informative opinion from:
Catahoula!
Please RTFA.
As a university student, I hate professors who go off-topic with politics. They spend entire lecture sessions discussing how Bush has ruined the country. If this was a political science class, I could understand some leftist speeches. For crying out loud though, this was a CS course!
Small government conservatism is personified by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and is also represented by libertarians. However, there are other types of conservatives. You have social conservatives, who deeply belive in the government protection of morality. (That strand of conservatism flies in the face of Goldwater conservatism; Goldwater's catchphrase is "You can't legislate morality," after all).
You had me at Goldwater, you lost me at Reagan. Reagan was a social conservative who deeply believed in the government protection of morality. Reagan might not have been a Religious Right Winger by personal conviction, but he was certainly beloved by them. The Social Conservatives and the Neo-Conservative imperialists have hijacked "Conservatism." Conservatism wants to preserve what works, like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the use of the National Guard and the Armed Forces Reserves primarily to handle domestic disasters and public enemies. Theirs is not Conservatism. Theirs is a radicalism of the Right.
Reagan started it all. If he wasn't a believer in what the Social-Cons and Neo-Cons were selling, he used their resources and their monies like he was. And ultimately he advanced their cause. He certainly didn't advance the cause of fiscal conservatism: he ran the deficit up to record heights now only topped by George W. Bush's hideously unbalanced budgets.
You are probably too young to know what it was like living during the Reagan Presidency, when it looked like nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union was right around the corner all the time. I don't know whether these troubled times are as bad or worse. But it sure feels the same or worse.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Now, it seems to me that the parallels are clear and factual. Leader worship? check. Patriotic symbolism? Check. Common enemy? Check, disdain for human rights? Check. etc, etc, etc.
They don't say that the government is completely facist, only that it's headed that way. It looks to me as though you're willfully distorting the content of the (implied) argument. The name calling crap (far left-wing/liberal pansies) is sad and unpleasant. I mark anyone who responds this way as incapable of facing evidence of facts undermining their beliefs, intellectually brittle and insecure.
BTW, as a far left-wing/liberal pansy I can give you at least a few better practices/methods than our current government. How about "never start a war with falsified intelligence?" or maybe "torture sucks as a way of winning hearts and minds"? or "If you're going to do a drug plan, consider the needs of the people taking the drugs before the needs of the people selling them"? Try turning down the Rush Limbaugh.
How did this post get modded down? Nothing vulgar/wrong/over-controversial in it...
But to the point - this guy's making a group to find out who's mixing far-left (radical) politics with their lectures. An admirable goal, although politics of any kind should be kept from the lecture. (Barring classes on politics of course.)
It isn't really "fascism" because:
DATABASE WOW WOW
OK, on reading TFA, this is not tech, science, internet or geek related, except in the remotest sense.
God danm you ScuttleMonkey.
May the Maths Be with you!
But once you got someone pegged as radical, what do you do then? Just warn kids picking classes about him? Or what?
You encourage, strongly encourage, people to take his/her courses. It's a university for crying out loud - students need to have their beliefs challenged and learn how to form and support their own opinions. A university without radicals is a waste of your time.
Hey, if you won't read the damned student handbook, don't go crying. I thought conservatives were all big, muscular types who disdained liberals for treating the state like a nanny to suckle them. It seems you're just a whiny-ass titty baby, waiting for someone to protect you. That is also of course assuming that such an appeal system would even work. I'd put money on it NOT working.
Yes, well, don't bother doing anything so rash as actually trying to find out. Principles are far better than facts.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Statistically speaking more than half of students at four-year colleges -- and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges -- lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers.
These are people who are attending college, not college graduates. It is a distinct possibility that these illiterate college students will never graduate. Without further data, whether they will be conservative or liberal after dropping out is a matter of speculation. In either case, they won't be counted among the number of college-degree holders who are conservative, liberal, or something else.
blog
Go ahead and mod the parent as "insightful". Ignorant would be better. I go to a Baptist school and every single subject, no matter what the content veers into creationism or bigotry. It's a private school, so why do I go? Know thy enemy. Trust me, I know the politics of public schools, I've been to them. But, in my school they don't read poems that are controversial . . . controversial because the authors were African American.
That this is more than conjecture is attested to by this report.
The article includes the results of a number of studies. In addition, consider this statement:
And finally, some here will find it irresistable to attack the messenger (which is a rightist organization dedicated to attacking political correctness on campus). I would suggest that responses should address the issues and data raised. Ad hominem attacks, while having a long history on Slashdot and before that on Usenet, are mere failed arguments.
The only good weather is bad weather.
As a current student at UCLA I've found that most of the professors are left-leaning and do indeed every now and then tell a Bush joke or make a reference to politics. But you know what? That's to be expected. Hell, in high school during senior year they teach you in AP Econ that people who go to college become more left-leaning, and that a better education correlates to becoming more liberal. I expected there to be more liberalism at UCLA, and I was right. As a liberal on social issues and conservative on economic issues, I think it's important to get information from both political sides, but I don't think the appropriate way to do that is to go about slandering the other. I realize that being a Bush supporter and attending a class where the teacher jabs at the President may be demoralizing, but isn't part of the college experience to learn how to cope with people who don't believe in the same thing as you do? Granted you shouldn't bring in too much politics into a classroom where it doesn't belong (like CS), but I think it's important for the professor to be able to say what they feel. Even if you disagree it at least gives him or her more personallity and they become more interesting.
Do you have examples of forceful tactics being employed? If not, I don't think the analogy holds.
In fact, if it's only words and pictures, it seems like mostly valid criticism. Of course we don't want anyone to resort to harassment (or worse), but I see no evidence of that yet.
Many political groups do engage in various forms of harassment, such as posting names/addresses online to encourage a barrage of hate mail upon the person. However, that's not happening here, unless you have information to the contrary.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
So Bush is the "smartest, most well adapted individual"? He must be to have gotten to be President. It couldnt have been his father's influence and his money, he was such a studious student all his life, no boozing at all
yup, our system is the best, no flaws at all
Not saying it's not true, but when I "look it up" at places like Merriam-Webster, I see a lot about "government" and nothing about "corporate".
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
UCLA should not be (nor do I think it is) the left wing equivalent of Pepperdine or Biola.
While I question the need (and the motives) of the "tape recorder gang", a professor at a public university should be happy to have their views broadcast and not feel they must hide them from those paying their salaries. There is a risk of "out of context" quotes, but the risk is even greater when the only record is hand written notes. Also, I would expect that professors may choose to record their own classes also to make sure that if a claim is made that is untrue, that they can refute it.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
But it's a cash bounty for actual evidence. What's wrong with that?
I'll take a stab at this one. But first, yes - the student can offer his bounty if he wants and I'm kind of glad to see people here arguing the rights of this from first principles rather than breaking up on partisan lines. That said, I'll explain what is wrong about this.
Presumably, after outing a professor who has expressed some unapproved opinion, the intention is to follow it up with pressure to stop or a PR campaign for "the other side" (whatever that will be). $22,000 has a purpose and whoever is donating this clearly has an agenda. The arguments for this student's right to do what he's doing have all centered on "Freedom of Speech" but clearly the intention is to curb the professor's freedom to promote her own views. Maybe it's only to present students leaving the lectures with pro-Intelligent Design or pro-Capitalism or pro-whatever leaflets, but I think that's highly unlikely.
The arguments for pressuring the professor not to give unapproved opinions in his lectures are that (a) he is paid to teach a particular subject and not another; and (b) the students don't have much choice to avoid his opinions if they have to go to that class.
Counter-argument A. applies to anything else that impairs the professor's teaching as well. There should be a system in place to check if students are suffering from poor teaching and if they are not, then there is no problem here to be addressed. Bear in mind that in many cases, the professor's individual views may be tied up with the subject they are teaching. It would be hard not to give views on ID if teaching biology, difficult not to explain socialism in economics.
Counter-argument B. has to do with whether he is misinforming the students. The intention to "out" the professor suggests that the opinions are minority or dissenting opinions. The students are over 18 now however, and have plenty of opportunities to hear the other side and make up their own mind. Whether or not the professor's opinions are considered "subversive" by others in the community has historically been a poor guide to whether those opinions are valid. Essentially this student with the bounty is attempting to bring pressure to bear on the proffesor to curb his Freedom of Speech. Powerful or numerous individuals ramping up the efforts to drive out opposing viewpoints.
So illegal? No the bounty may not be that and attempting to curb it with legislation would be misguided. But harmful and chilling effect? Yes.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"but clearly the intention is to curb the professor's freedom to promote her own views. "
i dont care LESS if a professor wants to PROMOTE their views. Its when they force their views on students, who are there to learn, be moulded, are open to plug in your ideals. If a professor held a debate with an opposing person, or gave a lecture in a public area, great, more power to him!
It is when the professor assigns an essay where you must talk about [insert political party], and anything else will get you a lesser, or in extreme cases, failing grade, even if you did A+ work on the essay itself. Stuff like this happens in ENGLISH class, no less! what does grammar have to do with political view?
yap
I think many would claim that overall, the public school systems ARE neutral.
As long as by neutral, you are referring to the average ideology of the entire nation. In fact, by definition, when you include the entire population in a statistical analysis, the mean is considered the 'center'.
So are these are more right wing extremists accusing the 'center' of being 'radical leftists'?
At what point in our socio-political history did our bell curve split in two?