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Why fight it? Because it is important.

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a_majoor

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I found this piece rather disturbing for the following reasons:

1. If it represents an accurate description of academia today, then it follows these and similar ideas are influencing public discussion, which in turns influences policy decision, which ultimatly rebound on us, the ultimate "enforces" of government policy.

2. Since we insist that all officers are University educated, many will be exposed to these ideas, and a certain percentage will find them attractive. Leaders should be trained in critical thinking in order to plan and control actions. If they think like physical scientists, then all well and good, these people clearly see cause and effect relationships. Otherwise....

This explains why I will spend precious time to argue against many of the positions espoused on this board. Critical thought will expose the holes in arguements like this, and we need to hold these things up to the light where they will shrivel and die.

W. Churchill
A sad look at a sick academic bubble.


By Mark Goldblatt

The recent controversy over the writings of Ward Churchill, radical activist, faux Indian, and tenured professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, raises a number of serious academic issues â ” which, let me underscore, does not mean that Churchill himself is in any way serious. On the contrary, Churchill is as unserious as anyone ever paid to stand in front of a classroom, an intellectual featherweight whose ideas are less politically scandalous than buffoonishly wrongheaded. Case in point is his assertion that the victims of the World Trade Center attack got what was coming to them: "If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it."

Churchill's own attempt to clarify what he meant by this is telling: "I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as 'Nazis.' What I said was that the 'technocrats of empire' working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of 'little Eichmanns.' Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies."

To make sense of Churchill's clarification, a reader has to accept the following premises: 1) the United States government is actively and intentionally engaged in genocide; 2) the hijackers, contrary to their own claims, were attempting to defend individual freedom rather than advance a totalitarian spiritual regime; 3) the ideological agenda of the hijackers represents the true aspirations of the people on whose behalf they claim to act.

Each of these premises is false based on a preponderance of evidence. But that understates the point; all three are so utterly false that failure to recognize their falsehood, in effect, betrays a cognitive disability. Yet I'd estimate ten percent of American college professors â ” and I'm low-balling that figure â ” would accept them as probably or at least partially true. (If you substitute "corporate capitalists" for "the United States government" in the first premise â ” i.e. "Corporate capitalists are actively and intentionally engaged in genocide" â ” assent among college faculty probably rises to 25 percent.) These are credentialed adults who are initially hired to instruct, and who are eventually tenured to profess...yet they're professionally, stupendously, tenaciously, defiantly, demonstrably wrong.

That is the gist of the problem.

If we take as axiomatic the principle that colleges exist in order to pursue and disseminate the truth, it follows that no accredited mathematics department would employ a teacher who denied, say, that base angles of an isosceles triangle are equal; that no physics department would employ a teacher who denied the force of gravity; that no chemistry department would employ a teacher who denied that protons and neutrons are found in the nuclei of atoms; that no biology department would employ a teacher who denied that green plants convert light energy into chemical energy by photosynthesis. The hard sciences, in other words, are bound in their fidelity to truth not only by traditional logic and empirical evidence but by a demand for coherence within a framework of what is already known. Faculty in hard sciences seek to push the envelope of knowledge, not to "deconstruct" it. (Deconstruct v.t. To affect intellectual depth by teasing out secondary and tertiary senses of a term until it belies its original meaning.) It is exceedingly rare, therefore, to find a professor in a hard science espousing irrational, unsupportable theories.

Not so in the social sciences. To be sure, no history department would, in the current academic climate, employ a teacher who openly argued that the Holocaust never happened. But this is a matter of political expediency, not material certainty. On the contrary, many history departments employ teachers steeped in postmodern thinking, who hold, for example, that the perception of a reality existing independently of thought and language is illusory, that "reality" is in fact a linguistic construct of the phenomena of subjective experience which is continually adjusted in response to a fluid social consensus. But if there's no such thing as an independent reality, then there can be no reality check. There's no test for truth. And that, my friends, is Holocaust denial â ” one step removed. Postmodern thought has taken root across the social sciences, spawning all manner of loopy theoretical posturing in history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, political science, and even philosophy itself.

Still further down the epistemological food chain come literature and art, pseudo-disciplines hoist on the ouija-board wonkery of aesthetic judgment. The truth value of a work is gauged neither by correspondence with an independent reality nor even, for the last quarter century, by it coherence within a canonical framework; rather, truth value is a function of whether the work pleases the teacher. Subjectivity, therefore, rules. Literature and art departments often employ faculty members whose theories are not just at variance with one another but are mutually exclusive. It is not unusual, nowadays, for two students at the same college to sign up for the same survey course the same semester with two different professors and discover they're learning nothing in common.

But the epistemological nadir of any university is found in the wacky world of ethnic and gender studies: black studies, Africana studies, Chicano studies, Latino studies, Puerto Rican studies, Middle Eastern studies, Native American studies, women's studies, gay and lesbian studies, et al. The suggestion that "studying" is involved in any of these subjects is laughable; they are quasi-religious advocacy groups whose curricula run the gamut from historical wish fulfillment (the ancient Egyptians were black; the U.S. Constitution was derived from the Iroquois Nation) to political axe grinding (the Israelis are committing genocide against the Palestinians; the U.S. is committing genocide against the people of Cuba) to gynocentric self-help (reasoning from verifiable data is a tool of male domination, to which the experiential impressions of women are a necessary antidote) to circumstantial special pleading (Lincoln was gay because, well, he was a nice guy; Hitler, not so nice, therefore not gay). Contesting the status quo is the raison d'etre of these departments. No idea is beyond the pale â ” except, of course, the suggestion that the status quo might somehow be valid.

Which returns us to Ward Churchill, professor of ethnic studies, University of Colorado. In one sense, he's like a thousand other burnt-out refugees from the 1960s who avoided a full-time job long enough to acquire multiple university degrees. Along the way, however, he convinced lots of people that he was a Cherokee Indian â ” apparently on the basis of an honorary tribal membership â ” and thus tapped into the vast reservoir of white liberal guilt flowing through the halls of academia. Most critically, he found outlets to publish crypto-Marxist rants and thereby distinguished himself from the vast majority of his invincibly ignorant peers. That publishing record, in turn, allowed him to command not only his tenured professorship, but activist committee posts and lucrative speaking engagements at campuses nationwide.

So who published Ward Churchill?

Well, there's AK Press. Publisher's mission statement:

    AK Press is a worker run book publisher and distributor organized around anarchist principles. . . . Our goal is to make available radical books and other materials, titles that are published by independent presses, not the corporate giants, titles with which you can make a positive change in the world.

Then there's South End Press. Publisher's mission statement:

    Since our founding in 1977, we have tried to meet the needs of readers who are exploring, or are already committed to, the politics of radical social change. . . . In this way, we hope to give expression to a wide diversity of democratic social movements and to provide an alternative to the products of corporate publishing.

Finally, there's City Lights Books. Manuscript submission guidelines:

    City Lights Books is a publisher of fiction, essays, memoirs, translations, poetry, and books on social and political issues. We publish a dozen new books a year and are committed to providing the finest works of vanguard literature and oppositional politics.

In other words, Churchill hooked up with like-minded lefties, networked himself into book contracts, parlayed these into academic prestige and political name recognition â ” and thus a wholly unserious man who says wholly unserious things wound up being taken very seriously. In a more rational world, Churchill would be an amateur conspiracy theorist with a chip on his shoulder, the type who spends an hour on hold with CSPAN to spew 15 seconds of venom before Brian Lamb cuts him off.

In our world, Churchill is a cause célébre.

So what's to be done with him?

The fact that he has tenure must, I'm afraid, be taken into account. Firing him, or forcing him to resign, might be morally satisfying but would be a tactical error. It would confer martyr status on him, and it would be interpreted by his students, and by Churchill himself, as punishment for speaking the truth to power. Besides, the fault here does not lie with Churchill; he's a symptom, not a disease. The fault lies, generally, with the sick academic culture in which he has thrived, and, specifically, with the administrative weasels at the University of Colorado who have repeatedly rewarded his dubious critical achievements. What should be done with Churchill, therefore, is...nothing. His notoriety should stand as an ongoing monument to the decay of intellectual standards in higher education, and his professorship as an ongoing monument to the intellectual cowardice of the school which hired and tenured him.

Thus, inadvertently, Ward Churchill might teach us all a lesson.

â ” Mark Goldblatt's novel, Africa Speaks, is a satire of black hip-hop culture.

   
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/goldblatt200502090753.asp
 
So...are we saying that in the social sciences there is a "correct" viewpoint or interpretation that is to be used as the benchmark for measuring people's beliefs and theories?

Well, let's look at some of the things that have been considered to be socially, culturally or politically "correct" in Canada over the years:

-Catholics should not hold office or be allowed to vote;

-women should not be allowed to vote or serve in the military;

-14 year old boys should be hung for stealing watches;

-Only white, European males should be permitted to join the military, police or fire services;

-we should lock up the Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Nisei and Doukhobors without due process;

-men should be able to beat their wives without the interference of police or society;

-Roman Catholic Church clergy should be above criminal investigation for sexual abuse of youngsters;

-Jews are not welcome in private clubs;

-we should not drink alcohol on Sundays;  etc.

All of these were, at one time, accepted practice if not mandated by law at some time/some place in this country. What changed these things were people who challenged the social and political status quo.

Now, Ward Churchill may be a twit-in fact it sounds like he is-but he has a right to express his opinion as offensive as it may be, as long as he qualifies it as his opinion and does not force it on others. The day that we decide in our universities that there is a "right" view on social sciences is the day that either the Left or the Right will hold sway over people's minds.  The purpose of higher education is not to swallow somebody's idea of "The Truth" (Left or Right) but IMHO to develop critical faculties of reasoning, research, logic, debate and questioning.

As for officers' minds being polluted by hearing this sort of thing: well, perhaps they better not watch TV or see a movie or read a magazine or a book either. It is up to all of us to examine ideas presented in the academic environment, assess them, and then accept or discard as we see fit. I suggest that if an officer cannot develop that faculty then he has not much potential as an officer anyway.

I do not like the raving ideologues of the Left, but I have no time for the Fox/Rush Limbaugh/Pat Robertson freaks either.

Cheers



 
If Ward Churchill loses his pulpit, it should just be for plain old tawdry fraud, not for expressing an opinion.
 
Now, Ward Churchill may be a twit-in fact it sounds like he is-but he has a right to express his opinion as offensive as it may be, as long as he qualifies it as his opinion and does not force it on others. The day that we decide in our universities that there is a "right" view on social sciences is the day that either the Left or the Right will hold sway over people's minds.  The purpose of higher education is not to swallow somebody's idea of "The Truth" (Left or Right) but IMHO to develop critical faculties of reasoning, research, logic, debate and questioning.

As for officers' minds being polluted by hearing this sort of thing: well, perhaps they better not watch TV or see a movie or read a magazine or a book either. It is up to all of us to examine ideas presented in the academic environment, assess them, and then accept or discard as we see fit. I suggest that if an officer cannot develop that faculty then he has not much potential as an officer anyway.

This is one of the few times I disagree with you, PBI, but not for your opinion, which is correct, but the underlying assumption that the current academic environment will support or allow the mental development that lets people assess ideas, then accept or discard them. The posts by a lot of people on the political board demonstrate a disturbing tendency to parrot popular "memes", without any evidence of serious examination of their meaning, content or possible consequences. Broadsides which deconstruct these memes with facts, historical analogy or anything else seem to have little effect. In effect, the social sciences already indoctrinate students with somebodys idea of "The Truth", wheras hard sciences deduce "The Truth" from observation and experiment.

The fact these ideas are not challenged and become entranched has a negative feedback loop on us, Ideas about "soft power" and "peacekeeping" and "root causes" effectively discount the need for an effective and prepared military force to maintain soverenty over Canada or support Canadian interests abroad. This is reflected in practical matters like manning ceilings, equipment selection and purchases;  mission objectives and ROEs.

The practical effect on our force if a large percentage of officers think this way is less clear, but the idea that they don't or won't examine or change their views even in the face of contrary evidence does not bode well to me.
 
The only reason they get away with promulgating their opinions to the students is because young people (having been kept artificially younger than their brains will allow) don't have the experience or training in argument to call bullshit on the prof.  It's always amusing to see a mature student in one of these lectures who does.  And it can cut both ways.  I saw an interesting interchange in my Industrial Relations class at University, where the prof had said one thing, and the mature student, a Union Steward, took him to task on it and systematically destroyed his "argument".

This incidentally, is largely why corporations lay off older workers in preference for the young.  It isn't "age discrimination" (as in, old people can't cut it).  It isn't (necessarily) because "they don't understand computers".  It's largely because they have self-respect, experience, and will not blindly follow stupid orders and allow themselves to be stabbed in the back by scheming superiors.  Their salary (or marks or whatever) aren't worth diminishing themselves to that level.

Why fight it?  Because it is important, and if you actually know what you're talking about, the utter destruction you can wreak on their misplaced "authority" is a very telling battle indeed.

So while I agree with A_majoor, I also disagree.  Just because holding an argument up to the light will destroy it is insufficient reason to ignore it....you need to do the "holding up to the light" once in a while.  It's a bit like teaching a pig to sing, I'll grant you:  It wastes your time, and annoys the pig....but it allows any audience that is around to see the pig for what it is:  a pig, who ain't never gonna sing, or educate...
 
Gunnar and a majoor: I have to confess to having kept out of most of the Political threads: I see all you guys moan about the resident idiots and I assume I would have a cardiac episode if I got too deeply involved. So, in that respect, I defer to your knowledge of that battlefield.

As far as the university environment, I guess it does depend on the nature of the person being subjected to the particular rant. I have also been to university (nyaah nyahh  :p ) but as a mature student with 20 plus years as an officer. I enjoyed the experience of having as much or more "real world" experience as many of the profs, and I guess I have to agree that an alarmingly high percentage of the young civvy students have almost no frame of reference from which to judge or to discriminate. Some of them are apparently dimwits.

However, I do not think that this poses a danger to the quality of our officer candidates provided that they have been adequately selected for character and intelligence, and are getting some good military training parallel to the academia. The idea that they are automatically going to be corrupted is, I think, countered by the number of Res soldiers who I have spoken to who enjoy nothing better than crossing swords in their Universwity or college class by introducing reality or military experience to a class full of floppers. I do not think we should assume that we will be sucked in: rather we can take it as an opportunity to introduce our point of view and experience to them.

And then get the buggers out for an hour on the square. Filthy civvies.
:rage:
Cheers.
 
Nasrudin was caught in the act and sentenced to die. Hauled up before the king, he was asked by the Royal Presence: "Is there any reason at all why I shouldn't have your head off right now?" To which he replied: "Oh, King, live forever! Know that I, the mullah Nasrudin, am the greatest teacher in your kingdom, and it would surely be a waste to kill such a great teacher. So skilled am I that I could even teach your favorite horse to sing, given a year to work on it." The king was amused, and said: "Very well then, you move into the stable immediately, and if the horse isn't singing a year from now, we'll think of something interesting to do with you."

As he was returning to his cell to pick up his spare rags, his cellmate remonstrated with him: "Now that was really stupid. You know you can't teach that horse to sing, no matter how long you try." Nasrudin's response: "Not at all. I have a year now that I didn't have before. And a lot of things can happen in a year. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die.

"And, who knows? Maybe the horse will sing."

Well, I'm off to the stables again..... ;)
 
Evening all,

As usual I come down somewhere in between.   I don't think academia succeeds in brainwashing the more intelligent undersgrads - but, as we would all agree, ideas have consequences, and this can impact social forces beyond academia.

University campuses do appear to be hotbeds of resistance against the War on Terror - I have to admit being surprised at the enthusiasm accorded people like Mr. Churchill when I saw some TV news clips of him in action.

I would suggest that universities do have a profound impact on culture and the shaping of social attitudes.   As PBI alluded to - there are a list of social mores are no longer acceptable today - and nearly all of them have been overturned by some degree of intellectual force and energy - often originating in the universities or some kind of intellectual elite (and I use this term very lightly).  

The obvious antecedent here is the campus ferment of the 1960s which ushered in a virtual cultural revolution.  

I'm currently peddling a pet theory (which I ran past PBI our resident wise owl) that we are in fact on the cusp of another upheaval - in part driven by reaction to the War on Terror, Iraq and Afghanistan in the US.

I know this seems to be counter-intuitive with the landslide election of Bush, but bear with me.

I would suggest that the conservative political victory in the US is more apparent than real.   Although the Bush victory was attributed to the religious right and other factors of values and morality - it appears that the real reason was that most voters believed Bush was the most competent in managing the war.

As the war drags on, as casualties mount, as an exit strategy continues to elude the Bush presidency, it could be that the Ward Churchill's of the world achieve greater moral authority by sheer power of their convictions.   Or if you consider him too radical for the American Heartland there are more moderate opponents of the war. Remember that Kerry was not leading the Democrats as a the Party of peace, but as a leader who would prosecute the war more effectively.

This in turn could be exacerbated by the US military's recruitment and retention problems which, if this does reach crisis levels, (and I note PBI's caution on this) might force more draconian stop-loss measures or even a draft. A lot of returning veterans may less than enthusiastic about their experience in Iraq and add to a growing sense of frustration - and this in turn could impact the morale of the Army.

In sum, war weariness is a factor we need to take into account - and more weary you are, the more your cultural confidence is shaken, the more the eternal verities seem to be brought into ill-repute, the more likely you are to listen to dissenting points of view - which today are so graphically illustrated on American campuses in America.  

Patriotism in the US is a strong force - but it's also a pragmatic and elastic one, not to be confused with the more traditional nationalism of European states.

I know there are a lot of "ifs" here, but I wanted to float this with some others on this thread, cheers, mdh

 
Historical analogy is quite risky, MDH. If I were to choose the historical analogy to fit this situation, it is Lincoln at the start of his second term of office. The population is war weary, but a few victories have prevented the "Peace Democrats" from winning the election and making a negotiated peace with the Confederacy. Lincoln, however, is determined to stay the course, and very soon Grant will launch a series of bloody offensives in the Eastern Theater, while Sherman is making plans for a march through Georgia to the sea.

As Victor Davis Hanson points out in many of his books and essays, the final months and even weeks of the war are often the worst, as the dying enemy regime commits its final energies in a spasm of violence, gambling on finding a weakness and preventing their final defeat.

Unthinking pessemism, or a refusal to see the changes on the ground have left a lot of people looking foolish (especially those who claimed the Afghanis and Iraqis were somehow not ready or willing to have elections), and even the military situation seems to be changing, with the Jihadi threat receding while conventional threats by state actors (Iran, N Korea and China come to mind) begin to come to the fore. People who are prepared to examine the evidence and draw conclusions based on that are the sort of people we need in charge, not people fixated on ideas which do not have a close correspondence to reality.

 
Another rant against academia from a right-wing zealot. Goldblatt sounds about as credible as Churchill. To complain that there's no universal "truth" against which the social sciences measure things is ridiculous. Maybe we could establish some universal truth by which we can evaluate if a piece of music is "good" or not.

As it is, and I can only speak for political science, scientific methodology is employed. Theorize a relationship, test relationship, etc. The difficulty is that you can't quantify most social factors and identification and elimination of all confounding variables, etc. is near impossible given the intricacy and complexity of society and human beings. How does one go about practically testing theories? Political scientists can't establish governments and expose them to stimuli, launch entire political movements and change characteristics to see what happens, etc. so there's always going to be times where theories don't measure up to experience. That's why the closest thing to a "law" there is in political science relates to something as focused as the effects of plurality voting systems on party formation.

Of course, maybe we should take an ideological framework from the right and apply all conclusions and theories to that framework to test their validity. Maybe then we'd stop hearing the right whine about academia. My professors don't prosthelytize or indoctrinate us into a political ideology - in fact they steer clear of it quite purposefully. Is my own personal experience enough to generalize from, no, but going on that and the experiences of friends, I get the feeling the whole "academia is politically brainwashing students" argument to be baseless. The student body itself may perform that function but the professional institution itself certainly doesn't, from where I'm standing. Certain theories may dominate but that's because of their durability - take Realism in International Relations as an example. A more conservative-friendly theoretical framework, the theory may be more conducive to one ideology than another but that does not, in and of itself, make it politically biased.
 
Glorified Ape said:
I get the feeling the whole "academia is politically brainwashing students" argument to be baseless

I can't say that I see any conspiracy of academics professors politically brainwashing students, but if you look at it from a different perspective. Most academics are taught to think in a certain manner via their higher learning. Thus, they tend to gravitate towards certain political ideoligies more than others. This can be seen sometimes as brainwashing as the academics see their way as "right" and "true" but is more just the general worldview that they tend to end up after being in the academic world for so many years.

pbi said:
I do not think we should assume that we will be sucked in: rather we can take it as an opportunity to introduce our point of view and experience to them.

We all should, as people having a different worldview based upon our beliefs and experiences,  provide the other side to young students, of which I am one currently while awaiting my reg force application to go through, and the professors that there is another side. I personnally believe that experience counts for more than academics and that certain people are drawn to academics wheras others are given to trades and that these two groups generally differ without either being brainwashed. It is just that people of like minds group together and thus produce a common or like-minded world view.

So, that ends my long rant and my first post. Enjoy  :)
 
Yet I'd estimate ten percent of American college professors â ” and I'm low-balling that figure â ” would accept them as probably or at least partially true. (If you substitute "corporate capitalists" for "the United States government" in the first premise â ” i.e. "Corporate capitalists are actively and intentionally engaged in genocide" â ” assent among college faculty probably rises to 25 percent.)

This is where Goldblatt lost me.  Yes, Churchill is a nutjob, and there are other nutjobs in academia (as there are in all elements of society), but where do these 10% and 25% figures come from?  Is this a serious problem, or is he making a mountain out of a molehill?  I haven't been on campus in 10 years, so I don't really know what's going on in universities these days.  It would be nice to see some real evidence.

I guess that's just my hard science education showing itself... ;)

edit: Just as an example of professional nutjobbery in other elements of society (including tenured hard science types), does anyone remember Fleishmann and Pons discovering cold fusion in 1989?
 
Barek said:
I can't say that I see any conspiracy of academics professors politically brainwashing students, but if you look at it from a different perspective. Most academics are taught to think in a certain manner via their higher learning. Thus, they tend to gravitate towards certain political ideoligies more than others. This can be seen sometimes as brainwashing as the academics see their way as "right" and "true" but is more just the general worldview that they tend to end up after being in the academic world for so many years.

I agree - the structure of thought and approach to information that you're taught may very well affect your political leanings. That's not something to be blamed on academia. As it is, college grads voted for Bush and Kerry in equal numbers(http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html).

If academia is brainwashing students into that oh-so-evil liberal way of thinking, it sure as hell isn't working. I wish it was. As it stands, the fact that the majority of the best educated people in the country tend to lean towards a political ideology (see post-grad stats) might hint at something to those opposing it.  ;D
 
clasper said:
Just as an example of professional nutjobbery in other elements of society (including tenured hard science types), does anyone remember Fleishmann and Pons discovering cold fusion in 1989?

The perfect example! Fleishmann and Pons made specific claims, which could not be replicated or substantiated. If today anyone thinks of them at all, it is usually with a derisive, "Oh, those guys".

Listening to presumably well educated people claiming OIF was to secure cheap oil, then looking at the spiking prices at the pumps during the same time period would indicate a severe disconnect between the theory ("invade to get cheap oil") and reality (Prices climbed to new highs). In the hard sciences, this sort of disconnect gets the theory discredited and bounced (cold fusion). I have not noticed a great diminution in the claims about fighting for oil, even on this board.....

Here is another example drawn from another "politicized" science topic, "global warming" (taken from "Chaos Manor")

The exact same phenomenon is now occurring with anthropogenic global warming. Interview 100 climate scientists, and 99 will clearly state that (in the words of the IPCC's report, but NOT their political summary) that "there is no known correlation between human CO2 emissions and global temperature increases". However, the other one will jump up and down screaming that "The sky is falling, the sky is falling". Which of these two interviews is published/printed/broadcast?

Before I'll listen to anyone even express an opinion on anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming, I've been asking them to take a simple, 3-question quiz for the past five years or so:

1. What gas is responsible for approximately 95% of the "greenhouse effect" on planet Earth?

2. Are the United States a net A) Emitter, or B) Absorber of carbon dioxide?

3. Is the global climate now A) Warmer, or B) Cooler than it was approximately 1,000 to 1,100 years ago?

Answers:

1. Water vapor is responsible for about 95% of the Earth's greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide is less than 2% of the total effect, with methane taking up most of the balance, and other gasses responsible for the remainder. But all we EVER hear about is CO2.

2. The U.S., with it's vast forests (more now than in pre-Columbian times) and farmlands is a net ABSORBER of CO2...as opposed to Europe and Japan, which are net emitters.

3. Let's see...they were raising crops of oats in Greenland, and the Icelandic/Viking explorers were calling what is now the chilly area of Newfoundland "Vinland" because of the grapes which grew there. It's an era referred to as the "Medieval Climate Optimum" in old climate textbooks, and was followed by the spread of Black Plague (the fleas of the rats taking advantage of the warmer climate to spread to northern Europe). That period was followed by what used to be referred to as the "Little Ice Age", in which England saw snow in areas never before seen, and the River Thames froze quite solidly on a regular basis. That period ended in the early/middle 1700's, and we've been in a warming trend ever since.

When an eco-fanatic that I'm talking to fails the first question, I have to enquire why they feel that they are entitled to demand legislation on a technical topic of which they have absolutely NO idea what they are talking about.

Glorified Ape, social sciences "can" use scientific methodology, mostly through the study of history. As Thucydides said "but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content". There are very few things new under the sun, and understanding the cause of, say, the "Tulip Mania"  of the late 1600 or early 1700's offers a lot of insight into the "Internet Bubble" of the late 1990s. Even various organizing bodies and theories have a real life example somewhere, so the study of economic trends or health statistics comparing Imperial Russia with Victorian England (for example) will offer some insights on the relative efficiencies of a constitutional monarchy vs an autocratic empire.

Clasper, I don't know where Goldblat gets the 10-25% figures, I suspect it is anecdotal evidence based on speaking to a selection of University professors. It would be better if he gave the size and composition of the sample, etc., but perhaps you could do that as a research project?
 
It's funny to hear the pundits, experts and nay-sayers.

"The American's won't be able to fight the dreaded Mujihadeen who defeated the mighty Soviet Empire"

"The dreaded Afghan winter will be a major impediment to the Americans"

"The dreaded Iraqi summer will ruin the Campaign"

"Baghdad will be Stalingrad, bloodying the American forces"

No one seems to have faith in being able to accomplish the mission anymore, I wonder what we'll hear next?

"Iraq is Vietnam, the Americans will not be able to find an exit strategy!"
 
No offense, but the word "science" has merely been co-opted by students of the political and social arts in a bid to gain a veneer of respectability.  There isn't much objective science involved.  The perception of political bias in academia stems from the divide between the world as some people would like it to be, and the world as it is.  Most idealized theories of political and social systems tend to be communitarian, but they are crafted in the sociopolitical equivalent of a frictionless universe - absence of the human factor.  It should not be surprising that academics who confine themselves to over-idealized views tend to communitarian political and social views.

The reason I state with confidence that the social and political arts are nearly bereft of objectivity is the pigheaded unwillingness of many people in the disciplines to acknowledge some simple, longstanding, empirical observations: freer peoples tend to prosper; and, free and prosperous peoples tend not to pick fights with others.  Yet there is no end of effort to try and fit the readily observable data and evidence to theories which advocate a large role for masters in one form or another.
 
No offense, but the word "science" has merely been co-opted by students of the political and social arts in a bid to gain a veneer of respectability.   There isn't much objective science involved.   The perception of political bias in academia stems from the divide between the world as some people would like it to be, and the world as it is.   Most idealized theories of political and social systems tend to be communitarian, but they are crafted in the sociopolitical equivalent of a frictionless universe - absence of the human factor.   It should not be surprising that academics who confine themselves to over-idealized views tend to communitarian political and social views.

The reason I state with confidence that the social and political arts are nearly bereft of objectivity is the pigheaded unwillingness of many people in the disciplines to acknowledge some simple, longstanding, empirical observations: freer peoples tend to prosper; and, free and prosperous peoples tend not to pick fights with others.   Yet there is no end of effort to try and fit the readily observable data and evidence to theories which advocate a large role for masters in one form or another.



Hi Brad/a-majoor - good posts,

And it's one reason why I think A-Majoor's criticism is too focused on academia.   While I stated above that universities can have a profound impact on society and culture I wonder if it's more accurate to call this what Pat Buchanan and the US conservatives would call it: the "Culture War" in the US.

It seems to me that this is really the crux of this issue - radical left-wing university professors, the ACLU, the liberal media, activist judges, Hollywood, etc - all factor into a battle to redefine or reshape American social and political cultural norms and values. (In their view of the world).   The Janet Jackson episode is one of the many recent controversies that underscore that current tension.

(We're seeing a version of that Culture War being played out here in Canada over the same-sex debate.)

And while a-majoor is right that we should be careful about historical analogies, I still believe that we are seeing the second chapter in the cultural and social unrest that started in late 1960s - I would point to   1968 as the Year One - the start of the great dividing line that was sparked by the Vietnam war (although I should note that I do not believe Iraq is a second Vietnam) - the Ward Churchill's in this psycho-drama are very much of that generation, and the Iraq war provides them with another opportunity to launch a second crusade with the aim at re-establishing (and re-energizing) the political relevance of 1968.

What is more interesting is that Churchill - otherwise an obscure academic - has managed to generate adoring and enthusiastic crowds. How did we get from the 9/11 - (which was a clear and morally unambiguous act of war, in effect a latter day Pearl Harbour) - to this?

cheers, mdh
 
Brad Sallows said:
No offense, but the word "science" has merely been co-opted by students of the political and social arts in a bid to gain a veneer of respectability.   There isn't much objective science involved.   The perception of political bias in academia stems from the divide between the world as some people would like it to be, and the world as it is.   Most idealized theories of political and social systems tend to be communitarian, but they are crafted in the sociopolitical equivalent of a frictionless universe - absence of the human factor.   It should not be surprising that academics who confine themselves to over-idealized views tend to communitarian political and social views.

The reason I state with confidence that the social and political arts are nearly bereft of objectivity is the pigheaded unwillingness of many people in the disciplines to acknowledge some simple, longstanding, empirical observations: freer peoples tend to prosper; and, free and prosperous peoples tend not to pick fights with others.   Yet there is no end of effort to try and fit the readily observable data and evidence to theories which advocate a large role for masters in one form or another.

Have you studied poli sci?
 
Glorified Ape said:
Have you studied poli sci?

Been There, Done That myself, and I completely agree with what Brad has said.

What's your point?
 
Infanteer said:
Been There, Done That myself, and I completely agree with what Brad has said.

Strange, I don't find it accurate at all. One of his primary beefs seems to be "freer this that and the other thing make this but academia doesn't believe it" which is false. Off the top of my head I can recall topics such as stability and legitimacy of government being directly linked thereto, Democratic Peace Theory, etc. As for "idealized theories being communitarian", I didn't get that impression from reading Luther, Hobbes, Locke, Mill, etc. Marxism, sure, but that's been largely discounted except for drawing certain descriptive utility vis a vis socioeconomics.

The whole "free people don't pick fights with others" is a pretty idea, but US, French, British, and numerous other foreign policies would suggest otherwise. If he'd said "democracies tend not to pick fights with other democracies", then there'd be some validity (hence Democratic Peace theory) but even then there are exceptions.

Arguing the supremacy of ultra-atomistic, "free" societies is just as absurd as arguing uber-communitarian society's supremacy. Both are black and white arguments, not recognizing that both sides have valuable elements and an ideal likely rests somewhere in between. Or are we going to accept Anarchy as the ideal simply because it's "free"? As for poli sci using a "veneer" of science to gain respectability, it employs the scientific method to gain validity, not acceptance, though the latter stems from the former.

With the exception of political philosophy classes, which are a minority, the whole "see society in ideals/as we'd like it to be" is completely inaccurate. Poli sci courses in International Relations, Comparitive Politics, regional studies, Strategic Studies, etc. DESCRIBE more than they seek to explain - that's where theory comes in and the ones that survive and do the best are the ones that fit reality the best. The typical structure is to describe the crap out of a phenomenon then cover the theories that seek to explain it, pointing out their weak and strong points in relation to the information. To argue poli sci doesn't try to reflect reality is ridiculous - theories are tested and formed based on information from "reality" - IE what has already happened. I'm sure poli scientists would like to be able to make entire societies and have them interact with other manufactured societies but we can't - governments and countries aren't baking soda and vinegar in a test-tube.

Maybe your university and mine have differing approaches to teaching but Brad's description of poli sci doesn't fit my experience, both personal and from reading the work of poli sci academics, at all.
 
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