Tag Archives: Extreme

News

New survey finds that university professors are moving further to the left

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From the Inside Higher Ed.

Excerpt:

Academics, on average, lean to the left. A survey being released today suggests that they are moving even more in that direction.

Among full-time faculty members at four-year colleges and universities, the percentage identifying as “far left” or liberal has increased notably in the last three years, while the percentage identifying in three other political categories has declined. The data come from the University of California at Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute, which surveys faculty members nationwide every three years on a range of attitudes.

Here are the data for the new survey and the prior survey:

2010-11 2007-8
Far left 12.4% 8.8%
Liberal 50.3% 47.0%
Middle of the road 25.4% 28.4%
Conservative 11.5% 15.2%
Far right 0.4% 0.7%

Gauging how gradual or abrupt this shift is is complicated because of changes in the UCLA survey’s methodology; before 2007-8, the survey included community college faculty members, who have been excluded since. But for those years, examining only four-year college and university faculty members, the numbers are similar to those of 2007-8. Going back further, one can see an evolution away from the center.

In the 1998-9 survey, more than 35 percent of faculty members identified themselves as middle of the road, and less than half (47.5 percent) identified as liberal or far left. In the new data, 62.7 percent identify as liberal or far left. (Most surveys that have included community college faculty members have found them to inhabit political space to the right of faculty members at four-year institutions.)

Professors are extremely liberal, especially in non-quantitative, non-scientific departments like English. It’s much harder to be liberal in academic areas where there is some connection to the real world that can be tested, like economics, business and computer science. Liberal bias is something to look out for if you go on to higher education. What you’ll find there is that there is often a lack of critical thinking on many topics. The left isn’t welcoming of other points of view. Their side doesn’t read our stuff, but we read their stuff. They think we’re evil, and we just think they’re wrong.

Here’s my previous post surveying several academic studies of liberal bias in the mainstream media.

News

Five of Obama’s radical leftists judicial nominees approved by Democrats

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Here’s the post by Hans Bader on the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Excerpt:

Five radicals have been approved for judgeships by the Senate Judiciary Committee, voting along party lines.

The committee held over for a future vote one controversial nominee, Judge Robert Chatigny.  Chatigny unsuccessfully tried to block the execution of a serial murderer and rapist known as the Roadside Strangler based on the ridiculous argument that the murderer’s “sexual sadism” was supposedly a mitigating factor. Chatigny presided over that case as a trial judge even though he had briefly represented the Roadside Strangler, creating an obvious conflict of interest.

Chatigny’s nomination to an appeals court had previously been approved by the committee earlier this year, but it died when the full Senate failed to vote on his nomination due to public opposition. He was then renominated by President Obama, along with other controversial nominees whose nominations had also earlier died in the full Senate, like Edward Chen, Goodwin Liu, Louis Butler, and Jack O’Connell.

The rest of the article talks about what makes each of the 5 judges radical.

Here are a couple:

The committee rubberstamped Edward Chen, a fervent advocate of racial preferences who unsuccessfully challenged a provision of the California Constitution banning racial discrimination and preferences.

[…]It once again approved radical law professor Goodwin Liu, who wrongly thinks that the Constitution requires some forms of welfare. Liu has no experience trying cases at all, even though judges are supposed to have “substantial courtroom and trial experience.” Liu claims that “‘free enterprise, private ownership of property, and limited government” are right-wing concepts and ideological “code words.”

Obama is appointing people who will disregard the law and the Constitution so that he can do whatever he wants – an Imperial Presidency. Even Bruce Ackerman, a liberal law professor from Yale, says that Obama’s appointment of radical anti-business leftist Elizabeth Warren is another step toward an Imperial Presidency. (H/T Competitive Enterprise Institute)

Polemics

MUST-READ: The Western Experience debunks the doomsday predictions of the left

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I just got an e-mail this week from someone I know who voted for Obama. He was worried about the bogeyman peak oil. Where does the left get all these crazy views? I actually think that atheism causes people on the left to be afraid of the unpredictable future. They imagine insane doomsday scenarios and they become very frightened. They then try to make the world predictable by imposing totalitarianism, to control consumption of scarce resources.

It’s the secular equivalent of “Left Behind” fiction, only they actually believe it. It’s their religion.

But the thing is, it’s all false.

Take a look at this post by Jason over at The Western Experience.

Here’s the summary:

  • Who was Thomas Malthus?
  • What did he predict?
  • Why did his predictions fail?
  • Who was Paul Ehrlich?
  • What did he predict?
  • Why did his predictions fail?
  • Some more insane predictions of the left

You might want to read his short, informative post. (It’s a perfect post) And then remember, this is the worldview of the left. They believe this, right up to Obama’s mad science czar.

Previous stories about Obama’s science czar:

The fact that their predictions are always wrong doesn’t stop them from acting crazily.