In America, Most Republicans Think Colleges Are Bad for the Country (chronicle.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the Chronicle of Higher Education: A majority of Republicans and right-leaning independents think higher education has a negative effect on the country, according to a new study released by the Pew Research Center on Monday. The same study has found a consistent increase in distrust of colleges and universities since 2010, when negative perceptions among Republicans was measured at 32 percent. That number now stands at 58 percent. By comparison, 72 percent of Democrats or left-leaning Independents in the study said colleges and universities have a positive impact on the United States... In the Pew Research Center's study, distrust of colleges was strongest in the highest income bracket and the oldest age group, with approval levels of just 31 percent among respondents whose family income exceeds $75,000 a year and 27 percent among those older than 65.

Comments

Evergreen State

[Rockoon]

Proof by example.

Re:Evergreen State

[Grishnakh]

One example isn't proof of anything. By that dumb logic, I could point to LIberty University as "proof" that colleges are all ultra-conservative hellholes, but obviously they're not. One example is only good for disproving something, like this assertion I just made here is obviously disproved by Evergreen State.

Re:Evergreen State

[Daemonik]

First of all, our schools have been "failing" our students because moronic Republicans on the education boards insist on "teaching the controversy" of their invisible sky man over evolution, and insisting that there has been no debate over climate change. Then throw in the numerous tax cuts that under fund the schools while they try to smooth talk us into believing that charter schools will be more than ponzi schemes to milk even more wealth out of the system. I'm seriously waiting for the conservative push to teach the Flat Earth "controversy".

Your biased lecture against colleges neglect that there are quite a number of alternative conservative colleges which are still quite happy to indoctrinate students and teach women that they are lesser beings to be raped and tossed aside as whores if they dare to question their role in the conservative lifestyle.

The truth is that conservatives hate education. Educated people ask questions and conservatism doesn't like to be questioned. It's an article of faith, like religion, and questions highlight the many conflicting inconsistencies that patch it together. Plus kids go to college, get a degree and then look back at the rural economic wasteland their conservative parents have surrounded themselves with and immediately go live somewhere they can get a job, typically the big scary liberal city.

Re: Evergreen State

[WindBourne]

Yeah, only right wing fascist indoctrination camps should be funded. Sheesh.

Re: Evergreen State

[Bartles]

You can call it progressive or commie, but please do not bastardize the word liberal so terribly. There is nothing liberal about them.

Re: Evergreen State

[Anonymous Coward]

Church

Re:Evergreen State

[Nikkos]

moronic Republicans on the education boards insist on "teaching the controversy" of their invisible sky man over evolution

Yes, because adding one small thing regarding the evolution debate just kills all other subjects in school. If you think _THAT_ is the dealbreaker you're just as clueless as the rest.

I'm conservative, and I'm all for evolution, and I don't have anything against the invisible sky-man. I'll even think less of schools that don't teach evolution.

But that doesn't mean that the rest of the curriculum - history, math, english/language - is going to be shit. What's shit is schools that hold kids back so that the idiot glue-eaters can 'catch up'. My father was a 5th-grade teacher for 30+ years. By the time he retired, he was teaching stuff in his class that was 3rd-grade material when he started. He had countless kids that could barely read or handle basic mat - the teachers in the earlier grades would simply pass the kids with high because they didn't want to deal with parents. And of course the administration didn't care, nor did the school board - that is until standardized testing exposed how terrible the teachers were.

Do you know what happened then? The teachers started stealing the tests before the exams and had special 'study' sessions. Again the administration looked the other way - the better testing scores looked good, and the union made any type of punishment impossible anyway. My father couldn't get out of their fast enough.

The unions and the touchy-feely 'everyone gets a trophy' and 'everyone is special' crowd have completely fucked up our education system, not the republicans.

Re:Evergreen State

[Nikkos]

fixes: marks, math, and there.

Dad didn't teach language and typing.

Re:Evergreen State

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Don't confuse anti-US College with anti-education

Really? Have you ever learned about the Age of Enlightenment? It's that era that went hand in hand with the scientific revolution and took the western world out of the dark ages of medieval thinking, for good. It's also the reason why the west has been steering human progress for the last 300 years. The dark ages on the other hand where dominated by religious thought, superstition and fraught with prejudice towards critical thinking. Religious fanatics would rather burn progressive thinkers like Galileo Galilei on the stake rather than listen to reason.

I'm sorry, but the conservative right in the US with the denial of climate change supported by the *vast* majority of scientist, their antipathy towards the theory of evolution and efforts to teach creationism in schools, their tactics of spreading fear and uncertainty among the populace to legitimatize their crackdowns on civil rights and their boosting in defense spending, even though in reality terrorism is a marginal threat. All of this looks like steps of a counter-enlightenment movement, a return to the dark ages to me.

Re:Evergreen State

[brianerst]

Except, of course, that Liberty University has a long history of having leading figures on the left come and speak to its student body. Ted Kennedy was a frequent speaker, and last year, students were required to go to a Bernie Sanders speech.

The students were respectful and listened, even though they disagreed with Sanders on most points.

I wouldn't go to or send my child to Liberty U, but the differences between a Liberty University and a Berkeley or Evergreen or Yale or Middlebury are pretty stark. Liberty U expects a respectful audience and gets one, the others have let the inmates run the asylum.

Re:Evergreen State

[TsuruchiBrian]

Colleges are also how we end up with electrical engineers and doctors. It's too bad that what happened at evergreen state was so insanely terrible that it is not outweighed by the good colleges in general do for our country.

Sure I can get an MRI and have a super computer in my pocket, but I'd trade it all to stop some leftist students from disrupting operations on a leftist college campus, where they where taught their leftist ideology by the leftist faculty.

Re:Evergreen State

[Voyager529]

See, this is why we can't have nice things: getting past the headlines to see the spectrum that truly exists takes effort.

Get past "earth was created in 6,000 years and fossils exist to test us because god hates fags" flavor of creationism, and you'll find far more nuanced interpretations. Some believe that "days" in the Genesis account mean lengthy eras of time. Others believe that the earth was created halfway through its lifecycle (Adam and Eve were unlikely to be created as infants, after all). Others believe something along the lines that God is simply the initial cause of the Big Bang, with God opting to have a much less influential role in the course of the development of life. Are people with a more sensible view of creationism building massive arks and trying to change textbooks? Generally not. More to the point, they're more apt to learn more about the information regarding what is observed, rather than turning it into a political battle.

On the topic of climate change, again, we've got a spectrum that doesn't get headlines because the folks insisting the climate isn't changing have that market cornered. Get past it, and the questions are more sensible: Is the primary way to stave it off really to increase taxes? Is it sensible to make certain things unaffordable to the most cost sensitive people in order to save the planet? If the manufacturing of a hybrid is more environmentally unfriendly than an ICE car, is it really helpful to fervently pitch their manufacture and purchase? Same for solar panels - if their production is very toxic to the environment, are we doing any long-term favors just because China is willing to make them affordably at the expense of their environmental state? Obviously, these questions and many more are present on the topic, and some do have viable answers, but the problem is the lack of any middle ground - say "maybe we should see if it's possible to have more environmentally friendly solar panels before giving tax incentives for them", and you're a corporatist republican who doesn't care about the environment. Say, "perhaps it would make sense to use the more resource intensive panels for larger buildings so that the air conditioners will at least be mostly solar powered and their impact will be negated quicker", and you're a tree hugging Al Gore groupie who cares more about mother earth than the children who live in it.

Is it possible for there to be a return to the dark ages? Anything is possible. Is the best way to fight it by forcing both sides further to the extremes and engage in a battle of attrition? I think not.

Re: Evergreen State

[Darinbob]

Well, it's the Breitbart era of news, just make up stories that appeal to the base, because only the hated elites would be so distrusting as to actually think about the news and look up the facts. Misdirection is alive and well.

But anyway... Does this make the ultra conservative neo Nazis the new-new-socialists and thus actually socialists? Or two the two "new"s cancel out the socialist part? Or maybe they were conservative all along ans the "socialist" is just misdirection...

The whole reason for the switcheroo is the lack of thinking. The world is comples and people want a black and white view of it that's easy to understand after having a few too many drinks at the bar. That means Hitler was the evilest guy ever, and the Nazis were the most evil group ever, and because liberals are evil (because the radio said so), liberals must really be Nazis. It makes sense when you drink instead of think.

There's an obvious reason

[SmaryJerry]

It's because colleges are the most left leaning places in America. I'd bet more American flags are burned at American colleges than in Russia and all middle eastern countries combined. It's not that republicans hate education.

Re:There's an obvious reason

[beelsebob]

Actually, I expect it is all that Engineering, math, biology etc that they regard as bad. Damn filthy heathens talking about evolution, and some such. What's in the bible is good enough for me, and it can damn well be good enough for everyone else in the country if I have to ram it down their throats.

Re:There's an obvious reason

[Grishnakh]

I doubt Republicans consider engineering, math, biology, English and such as bad.

That's incorrect; it depends which Republicans you're talking to. If you mean the old-style Barry Goldwater fiscal conservatives, you're correct. If you mean religious conservatives, like the ones who voted for Ted Cruz or Mike Huckabee, you're wrong: they see biology classes as evil because they teach evolution. With the Trump supporters, it's probably a mixed bag. But there is a very, very large fraction of Republican voters who don't believe in evolution, so science classes are a sore point for them. Even worse, it looks like some Republicans are turning to flat Earth-ism.

Re:There's an obvious reason

[apoc.famine]

A large part of the issue stems from STEM threatening religious beliefs, directly or indirectly. While climate change, evolution, and the origin of life and the universe are the common hot-button issues, where religion might directly contradict science, the entire process of questioning understanding, checking for facts, and drawing logical conclusions is antithetical to belief. With a sizable percentage of republicans relying on a base where religion is a very prominent core of their being, it's not surprising that they would be against something that threatens it.
 
As a whole, the education has the potential to give people the tools to question belief, but more critically, question authority. Given the extreme shift to authoritarian positions by the current crop of republicans, I can definitely see how education can be a threat.

Re:There's an obvious reason

[dunkelfalke]

You are also hypocrites - you have zero problems with killing humans. It is only the unborn that are, for some reason, sacred.

Re:There's an obvious reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Educated people tend to be less afraid of exploring ideas and thus less afraid of new ideas. That's liberalism in a nutshell. If conservitards weren't afraid of education GENERALLY they'd probably go much further and be deeper people. But they don't.

Re:There's an obvious reason

[nine-times]

I disagree somewhat with both you and the person you're responding to. I don't think it's explicitly the engineering or math that is upsetting them, and I don't think it's "brainwashing". The real problem is that, when you get a broad education and actually learn about the world we live in, modern Republican ideology is revealed to be complete insanity.

Evolution and global warming are real. Government isn't inherently evil. You can't always increase tax revenue by cutting taxes. The American "founding fathers" were not trying to create a "Christian nation". The Constitution does not work the way Republicans say it does. Muslims do have the right to practice their religion. There's no "historical proof" that Jesus was a real guy who was really the Messiah. The Bible doesn't say, "Poor people are just lazy. Fuck'em."

So these ignorant morons send their kids to college, and their kids come back saying, "Ummm... Yeah, so... that part of the Bible that says you should kill gay people...? That's roughly the same part of the Bible that says you can't eat bacon. So since you're not completely adhering to the rules in the Bible, maybe it's ok to not-kill gay people?"

And now they're upset. Their kids are using big words, and talking like murdering gay people isn't cool. The only conclusion their tiny minds can reach is that college is evil, and brainwashing their kids against "good ol'fashioned 'Merican values!" At some point, we might just need to find a way to stop listening to those people.

Re: There's an obvious reason

[Bartles]

Your straw man conception of modern Republican ideology was written by vox and think progress. It's not anywhere close to reality.

Re:There's an obvious reason

[tgrigsby]

I grew up being taught about the Bible as well, but then I grew up, learned critical thinking skills, and realized there is no proof for any god. Since man is the only animal smart enough to understand that it will die someday, the fear of death is a convenient tool by which to control people and gain power. And while people do some really good things to impress their gods, kids also do some really good things to impress Santa, but they grow out of that one day and do those good things, hopefully, just because they are good people. I regularly do good things just because I'm a good person, not because I feel the need to impress a mythical figure.

As such, my life is now ruled by logic, not by the moral standards of people who lived in very different times and who turned to dust thousands of years ago. Since science is built on logic, I trust science, my knowledge of history, and my own moral compass as my guides.

The Republican Party's power is based largely on the manufactured consensus of the fearful, ignorant, and with the addition of the religious right, the superstitious, so it's plain to see why colleges and universities pose a huge threat to their power base, and it clearly explains the impetus for Fox "News" and other right wing propaganda sites to tear at the foundation of our educational institutions by describing them as generating "lefties", "communists", "Marxists", and other buzz words that gin up conservative hatred and fear.

Re:There's an obvious reason

[RightwingNutjob]

You're quite right. Nowhere did it say explicitly that the accused don't have rights. What it did say is that I ought not act like the burden of proof lies on the accuser. From which I reasoned that they don't want me pointing out that accused have rights, the most fundamental one of which is that the burden of proof lies on the accuser, and not the accused. Not much of a logical leap, is it now?

Re: There's an obvious reason

[quantaman]

Your straw man conception of modern Republican ideology was written by vox and think progress. It's not anywhere close to reality.

Have you been paying attention the last 8 years?

They've been in complete denial of the scientific consensus of climate change, explaining away scientific consensus with outlandish claims of mass international conspiracies.

They're convinced of massive widescale voter fraud without any evidence, I don't even mean Trump's crazy millions, even the endless claims of thousands of illegal voters never amount anything more than a couple people confused non-citizens.

Large portions of the party were convinced that Barak Obama was an illegal alien.

They spent 8 years of campaigning again a Republican healthcare bill (ie, Obamacare), and after getting in power they're now realizing they've made a series of completely contradictory promises, came up with an absolutely awful bill, and are still trying to ram it through. What do they even expect to accomplish if they do pass it? Do they think people won't notice when the individual health care market explodes?

This is not the action of a rational party.

I won't dispute for a second that intelligent rational conservatism exists, but the GOP is not it.

SJW/Antifa backlash

[elrous0]

This sudden decline in opinion isn't the result of some new strain of anti-intellectualism, as some Democrats will no doubt suggest, but rather the perception that modern universities have become hotbeds of SJW, "Antifa," and anti-capitalist ideology. That's why the disapproval numbers are particularly high among those with higher incomes (who HATE anti-capitalists).

Even I'm more distrustful of modern universities than I used to be just a few years ago. And I used to be a professor.

Re:SJW/Antifa backlash

[AmiMoJo]

SJWs are just the latest imaginary enemy for people to blame. The subject of endless clickbait articles and ranting videos/radio shows. Everything would be great if it wasn't for the damn SJWs / immigrants / commies. Naturally, the bastards target your kids and try to convert them.

Universities and colleges have always been left leaning, as have the young in general, and always full of radicals.

Populism has always been right leaning, often pretty far right, and anti-intellectual. In fact anti-intellectualism is fundamental to populism, because anyone who really understands the problems will tell you that the solutions are more complex than the populist is claiming.

Re:SJW/Antifa backlash

[dunkelfalke]

A sudden decline? In the 1960ies republicans happily set the bloody national guard on students who built a park on a patch of unused land. It is not a new strain of anti-intellectualism, it is a very old one because stupid people generally distrust intelligent people, and studies have shown again and again that lower iq and weak education correlate strongly with conservative views and strong religious beliefs.

Re:SJW/Antifa backlash

[Golgafrinchan]

I'd never heard of Prager U until I read this post. I began searching for more info about it, and after a few minutes I ran into the Twitter page of Dennis Prager, the creator of Prager U. Yesterday, he tweeted:

"The news media in the West pose a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does."

After reading that, it kind of makes it hard for me to take seriously anything else he says or produces.

Re:SJW/Antifa backlash

[markdavis]

>"After reading that, it kind of makes it hard for me to take seriously anything else he says or produces."

That is unfortunate. So you didn't view any of the videos published by many bright and informed people because of your snap judgement from a single statement that might be read out of context, by one person? That is not the way to learn, but the way to censor your own exploration. It is exactly what we are talking about in colleges! You might not agree with something, but turning away from anything that challenges your beliefs isn't healthy.

Re:SJW/Antifa backlash

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, he's kind of right. The news media in the west elected Donald Trump as president. No I don't mean the individual employees voted for him, I mean they gave him 24/7 wall to wall coverage over every tiny thing he did. They know how to stop a candidate from getting attention and votes, just don't cover them. It's what they did to Ron Paul, it's what they did to Bernie Sanders. But Trump played them like a fiddle. Every move he made, from the biggest most obnoxious catch phrases to his tiniest farts were on full 24/7 news coverage. Combine that with their love affair with Hillary Clinton (and the fact that the DNC was once again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, see also John Kerry), and you have DJT for president, bought and paid for by CNN and Fox and MSNBC and everyone else. Trump couldn't have spent enough money to get that sort of coverage, and the western news media gave it to him for free.

Re:SJW/Antifa backlash

[laird]

Perhaps read "none of this is impacting regular education much at all. The vast majority of classes are not impacted;" Students protesting an offensive speaker at an auditorium doesn't "create a hostile work environment" for anyone except the speaker that's pissed off the students.

curious

[nnet]

Because the last thing american leaders want is an educated electorate.

Re:curious

[rholtzjr]

WRONG! We need less sheeple. We need MORE independent thought which is the true nature of a higher education.

Get back to tech news please

[Anonymous Coward]

When did slashdot die? If you must post baloney, bring back Jon Katz. At least he was the king of this kind of tripe. There are actually real tech storeis out there beyond your usual lazy "rivers on mars", "amazing batteries", and "tesla cars".

Not a suprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Theocracies dont like education to break their control of society

Re:Those places used by the left to indoctonate

[beelsebob]

"Anyone who disagrees with me must have been indoctrinated. It couldn't possibly be that by becoming better educated these people see clearly the bullshit that the GOP has become."

Re:Those places used by the left to indoctonate

[MightyMartian]

In the sense that education inevitably seems to reduce conservatism

Re:Those places used by the left to indoctonate

[Bengie]

Indoctrinating critical thinking. In most of my classes, right or wrong, if you could make a good argument you got nearly full credit. A good Devil's advocate was always rewarded.

Re:Reading between the lines.

[doctorvo]

Your sarcasm is unwarranted and misses the point. In fact, it's much simpler: conservatives want higher education to teach conservative values and ideas, while leftists want higher education to teach leftist values and ideas. The leftists have pretty much taken over US academia, and as a result, conservatives want tax payers to pay less for teaching an ideology that they disagree with.

And although dependence on big government programs is likely a nice political side effect for people who generally advocate such things, the primary reason for skyrocketing costs is the same as our public pension crisis: special interests lobby for more government spending for their causes, and traditionally, it's been hard for politiciains to say "no" to subsidizing education. If you subsidize something, prices generally go up.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Fascists are not "leftist" no matter what they or other people may call them. You gonna tell me the People's Democratic Republic is a democracy?

They may be "to the left" of Dominionist Republicans, but that's still the extreme right.

Some slash-perspective

[Texmaize]

In general, the people reading slashdot are left leaning, like universities have become. You can not imagine how someone could hate/mistrust an institution that echoes all your thinking. What you may not realize is that universities have become corrupted and failed in their mission because now they ONLY propagate one ideology. Universities are supposed to be about truth and helping kids find what they believe. You can't actually do this if you are only presented with one viewpoint. This is what the modern universities do. Why this happened has to do with the philosophies that started with rise of industrialism. At the time, these were new and exciting and captured the imagination of many young faculty, who later became the majority. The dangerous part of these philosophies is that they broach no dissent. You are with or against. Think about what went down in Russia in the first part of the 20th century. It happened in our universities, here.

Many of you probably think that there is no sound and deep conservative thought. You may be shocked to learn that there is plenty of great conservative thought that challenges many of your assumptions. Sadly, you have never been exposed to them. Think about college. You can probably fondly think remember a course with a dynamic professor who spoke of intriguing ideas about privilege and economic redistribution. Your other professors probably reinforced his points. Now, can you speak about the class where the counter points were given and argued just as passionately? Do you really think no such arguments exist? Did you ever really seek them out? Do you understand that the absence of this discussion is the anathema of true intellectual thought?

You can see the shadows of these conservative ideas on these very forums. The party line says that all races, genders, places or origin etc. are exactly the same. Any deviation from this means that you and your organization is flawed and fundamentally corrupt run by corrupt people. But, lets face it, the IT/tech world is not a diverse place. In your own life, you know who is good and who is bad, and while it may have nothing to do with what group you belong, for the most part it turned out a certain way. You can see this argued on these forums. You do not call yourselves bad guys, but offer explanations for why it is this way. Yet, you are not so charitable about other people's industries or vocations. The world is full of ***isms, but they are just for others, right?

The same ideology is laughably unable to deal with what goes on in professional sports franchises, which are not terribly diverse either. It is ignored because it gives a wrong answer.

So the political right is now, correctly, identifying the universities not as places of learning and education, but as fallen organizations that peddle indoctrination. For a long time, these people were patient justifying to themselves that exposure to different thoughts were good. Arguably too late has the right figured out the real game.

If you want a test to see if you have been intellectually corrupted, simply ask your self what is the last book that you have read from the conservative perspective? If the answer is a real long time ago, or why bother, then you are honestly not the person that you think you are. You are an intellectual but a zealot. You can thank the university for that.

Pervasive vs. present

[s.petry]

I was in college in the 80s, so a bit after you. We had groups like you mentioned, but we didn't have nearly 100% of our Professors teaching/preaching their leftist ideology during lectures. I am paying for my kid to go to college today so get to read assignments, lectures, and material. It's quite a different animal.

When every single course is lecturing not so much the subject matter, but leftist ideology, we have problems with our education system. Biology courses are filled with anti-American rhetoric and promotion of 3rd wave feminism. Even Math and Physics lectures are filled with anti-American rhetoric.

The ideology is not new, but the pervasiveness certainly is more recent and having impact. The normalization of punishing people who question the narratives is also more recent.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[MoarSauce123]

Fascists have always been alt-right fundamental nationalists, much like those who diss higher education.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[nip1024]

And ^this^ is why American education systems are failing. Kids don't know shit about history, don't know what fascism is, don't know what what liberalism even means. Thank you for proving our point.

The politcal right vs education

[sjbe]

It's because colleges are the most left leaning places in America. I'd bet more American flags are burned at American colleges than in Russia and all middle eastern countries combined.

Possibly true but that's what free speech means. I do find it curious that the most educated parts of the population tend as a general group to lean left in their politics. I think that says something meaningful but I'll leave it to you to fill in the blank.

It's not that republicans hate education.

Some do, most don't. It is true that a LOT of blue collar republicans think people who go to college are "elitist" snobs. Many certainly do not place a high value on scientific education particularly the more virulently bible thumping amongst them. You know, the ones who think prayer in school is a good thing and that "evolution is just a theory". Those folks certainly do not value education very highly.

I think the fact that they made an unqualified idiot like DeVos secretary of education speaks a lot to what republicans value.

They also hate teachers as a collective group because they are staunchly democrat. More specifically teacher's unions fund democrats. That's a major reason why republicans are so eager to pass so called right to work bills - it hurts teacher's unions which as a body seldom support the political right. Has nothing to do with them hating education per-se but it does have a everything to do with them being willing to tear down big parts of the educational system in pursuit of power.

Reality has a liberal bias

[rsilvergun]

it's an old joke, but it's not far from the truth. Right wing economics (Supply Side, or what is disparagingly called Trickle Down or Voodoo economics) doesn't work. It's been tried again and again in Red States (Kansas is the latest) and failed miserably. And sure, Communism doesn't work. But Democratic Socialism _does_.

That said, it's not that they're 'growing out of it' but that they're becoming fearful. As you get older and you have something to lose you turn conservative. Not Right Wing. Conservative. You don't want change because you're terrified of losing what you have.

Personally, I'd like to live in a world we're we're not all living in constant terror of dying in a gutter.

Billions of dollars of student debt

[Anonymous Coward]

The billions of dollars of student debt is directly attributable to the Republican insistence on cutting taxes and support for state Universities.

In 1975 states paid for approximately 75% of an education at a State University with the student contributing the other 25%, meaning the majority of students could pay for college with a summer job and working part-time during the school year, maybe with some help from family. Additional financial assistance was available for truly needy students. The taxpayer accepted their part of the social compact to provide a higher education to the youth and support the large Public Research and Land Grant universities. Universities that were established and funded by our founding fathers that valued higher education for all youth.

Fast forward to today, the percentages are reversed 75% student/25% state funding with the gap made up by even public university students going into debt that will take decades to pay off. The conservative Republicans that insist on paying as little in taxes is short-changing today's youth and repudiating the vision of the founders as the the value of higher educations.

Re: Mod Parent Up

[Brockmire]

Uh, I associate environment protection and education with the left, not the right. You have a very loose definition of control. Which side likes to control your body? Oh, the right. Perhaps we need a 3D scale instead of a 2D scale.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[Dutchmaan]

Arguing with the willfully ignorant is a waste of time. So no.

Got it.. i need to be *willfully* indoctrinated... didn't quite catch that nuance at first.

Re: Mod Parent Up

[Anonymous Coward]

These arguments go on ad nauseum here and elsewhere on the internet.

The problem begins with trying to conflate "left"/"right", "liberal"/"conservative", "progressive"/"reactionary", "democratic party"/"republican party", "big government"/"small government", "large budget"/"small budget", "welfare"/"police state", and so on as if they are all labels for the same two groups of people or perspectives.

These concepts are not so clearly and consistently aligned, nor is any one of them the defining issue of our current political climate in the US. Only ideologues with a one-track mind can reduce our societal problems to one sound-bite like that. Unfortunately, pop culture and social media seems to send us further and further into this simplistic and superficial style of discourse and debate.

When I wake up in one of those ideologue moods myself, I find that "progressive"/"reactionary" is the easiest one to fit to most of the debates I see these days in the US. But, when I snap out of my mood, I realize even these are the wrong labels. It's probably closer to "egalitarian"/"fuck you I got mine", and people from all corners of our populate fall into either camp depending on whether they are haves or have-nots for whatever resource and way of life is being questioned.

Here's what words mean

[skam240]

You're confused, let me help you.

Fascism is a combination of left wing economic policy (although not communism) and right wing social policy. The Nazi's got to be one of history's biggest villains not because of their left wing economic policies but because of their right wing social policies. Big patriotic rallies, not big on gays, not big on minorities; these are all attributes of the right.

Furthermore, fascists were big on the rule of law and they certainly gave their police force a wide set of powers.

Now I'm not trying to say the Right in this country are Nazi's, I'm just pointing out that you got the meaning of some words wrong.