Posted on 02/13/2004 5:10:51 AM PST by Tolik
Simplest answer: Because, as is the case with government and journalism, leftists are neither qualified for nor inclined to have real jobs where there is genuine competition and performance is judged by an objective standard of success. All that these professions require are glibness and conformity to a specific code of thought. In return they provide a sense of prestige and "superiority" for people who, if they were forced to actually work, would otherwise be complete failures.
Basically, they are losers who make a profession of faking their way into a spotlight and there are just enough dummies out there who buy the act to make it all work.
Amen, brother!
I was referring more to the artificial environment and that academic pay scales amounted to a "vow of poverty", but Mr. Feser's point about marxist dogma being at the core of this modern "priesthood" is entirely correct. Their enforcement of this dogma is reminiscent of the Inquisition. The only difference is that the burnings at the stake are (so far) only symbolic.
I think the countervailing force is young men in large numbers rejecting university education as irrelevant to their futures. The Left may eventually achieve total control over academia, only to find out that no one who matters in American society is listening.
I think that intelligentsia’s advanced proficiency with words tilts the balance between the words and action. The words are extremely important in human life, but not self-sufficient without action. Operating exclusively in the realm of word constructs skews their worldview from the real-world to fantasy-world, from how it is to how it should be in the ideal world.
Looks like this tendency is common among all liberal arts professions such as journalism, arts, acting, social studies, etc., not just the university professors. Common sense that represents the action side of human life gets neglected in favor of wishful thinking.
It is interesting that such thinkers (very popular at FR) as Victor Davis Hanson, Lee Harris, Mark Steyn often emphasized this trait of Islamism: living in the fantasy world of their ideology instead of the hard earned reality, and supporting their fantasy ideology with oil money gifted by mother nature and developed by the hated West, instead of supporting their grandeur wishes with the hard labor of their own. At the same time the Left demands no less than Utopia level perfection from ourselves: when quick and unbelievably successful two wars in a short time are still quagmire to them, when nothing short of the proof beyond a reasonable doubt is acceptable to them as proof of guilt of the enemies who build in deniability into their actions to begin with.
This maybe explains the Lefts opposition to America’s bringing a muscular reality check to the sick Mideast, their strange affinity to people who would be their mortal enemies if the Left did not loose common sense. If left alone the Left would quickly disarm us and leave totally defenseless against any enemy.
It seems that we are at the same time in conflict with our own fantasy Utopists on the Left, here and in Europe and fantasy Islamists across the sea. And as conservatives we want to conserve our reality for our kids.
Bump for the obvious!
And this a laudable example of throwing out the baby with the bathwater? You wouldn't possibly mean that!
I think that's part of it. I graduated from engineering school back in the middle of the dotcom boom. Many of my classmates, the competent ones, went directly into industry and on to lucrative and rewarding careers, but I noticed that those that got dragged through school and were mediocre students at best, i.e. those that didn't feel competent enough to jump into the engineering workforce, stayed on to pursue their education in a Masters program.
This is in some ways dangerous and part of the problem. Those in charge of education are seeking outcomes that tell them they've done a gone job. They figure ways to fix the numbers and one of these numbers suggested is cash. So higher education has changed allegiance to crown it king. It really shouldn't be difficult to understand that objective standards in education result in a particular standardized product. And when cash is the motive, all important knowledge not immediately profitable is deemed unnecessary.
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