Republicans Hate College Now, Apparently

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I'm not trying to hurt anyone. You just can't see past your biases.

If someone went up to you and said "if you're ever in the hospital with a terminal illness, lying in an ICU where the only visitors allowed are family, I want to give a hospital administrator who hates you the right to make sure that you die alone, without the person you built a life with or the children you raised" and then worked to bring this about, would you say this person was trying to hurt you?

When you say that you're against same-sex marriage, you're saying this... along with many other hurtful and harmful sentiments. For the people it affects, this isn't just an academic issue. Same-sex marriage solves a huge number of problems - some critical - in the lives of same-sex couples and their families. By opposing same-sex marriage, you're saying that these couples should be forced to suffer through these problems.

Prohibiting same-sex marriage hurts people. If you're trying to prohibit same-sex marriage, you ARE trying to hurt people.

 

[Valjean]

I don't know really. I thought the (second video) gave examples to illustrate the point?

Yes. the video illustrated a disturbing trend toward an insular intolerance completely at odds with my idea of liberalism

 

[Valjean]

This has never been my experience. In my experience the liberals just shout you down and make fun of you. The minute you mention you are against gay marriage you are labelled a homophobe and any friends you had quickly disappear. Could be a cultural divide between the US and UK.

No True Liberals! (wait -- did I just say that?)

I should think a real liberal would be delighted to find a social or political outlier, and eager to interview such an interesting specimen.

 

[Valjean]

I'm not homophobic. I don't hate and am not afraid of gay people. I just oppose gay marriage. I also experience same sex attraction almost as strong as my attraction to men and, if given the opportunity, would likely act on it. So I'm not sure how I qualify as a homophobe.


There are gay folks who oppose gay marriage. Being against gay marriage is not homophobia. Calling it homophobia is a new leftist trick to make people feel guilty.

If someone can reasonably defend his position, you have to respect it, no matter how eccentric.

 

[Rival]

If someone went up to you and said "if you're ever in the hospital with a terminal illness, lying in an ICU where the only visitors allowed are family, I want to give a hospital administrator who hates you the right to make sure that you die alone, without the person you built a life with or the children you raised" and then worked to bring this about, would you say this person was trying to hurt you?

When you say that you're against same-sex marriage, you're saying this... along with many other hurtful and harmful sentiments. For the people it affects, this isn't just an academic issue. Same-sex marriage solves a huge number of problems - some critical - in the lives of same-sex couples and their families. By opposing same-sex marriage, you're saying that these couples should be forced to suffer through these problems.

Prohibiting same-sex marriage hurts people. If you're trying to prohibit same-sex marriage, you ARE trying to hurt people.

You are going off the deep end and I don't understand your example.

 

[Revoltingest]

My experience, from the '70s and '80s, (perpetual student) was of a liberal, tolerant and cosmopolitan community.
But recently I've been hearing about a disturbing trend toward liberal intolerance (how's that for an oxymoron?) on various campuses (see video #2); a suppression of ideas and opposing points of view. Such views, it seems to me, should be encouraged.

Why, for example, should a university pay for a politically correct speaker who would only be preaching to the choir, when it could get some political heretic for half the price who would really shake up some minds?
Why would a teacher not encourage dissenting opinions? Isn't part of his job to help students hone their analytic, argumentation and debate skills?

If you can't argue both sides of an issue, maybe you're not familiar enough with it to hold a valid opinion.

Aye, to entertain offensive ideas is critical to avoiding chauvinism.

Poor Mr Chauvin.....to have one's name become a label for blind & fanatical devotion to an agenda.
Not how I'd want to be remembered.

 

[Jeremiahcp]

If someone can reasonably defend his position, you have to respect it, no matter how eccentric.

I have found that you don't have to respect any position no matter how "reasonable" it is. I would be happy to demonstrate that if you care to provide a "reasonable" position.

 

[Valjean]

I have found that you don't have to respect any position no matter how "reasonable" it is. I would be happy to demonstrate that if you care to provide a "reasonable" position.

Stuff and nonsense! I'll have none of it!

 

[Jeremiahcp]

I'm not homophobic. I don't hate and am not afraid of gay people. I just oppose gay marriage. I also experience same sex attraction almost as strong as my attraction to men and, if given the opportunity, would likely act on it. So I'm not sure how I qualify as a homophobe.


There are gay folks who oppose gay marriage. Being against gay marriage is not homophobia. Calling it homophobia is a new leftist trick to make people feel guilty.

If you oppose gay marriage then you are agaisnt fair and equal treatment for homosexuals. Playing semantics with the word homophobia does not erase your prejudice. You are basically saying along the lines of, "Hey, I am not a racist but I still think blacks should sit in the back of the bus."

 

[Jeremiahcp]

I work at a college, we just got a Subway! We are on our way to the top!

Oh fancy.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

You are going off the deep end and I don't understand your example.

This happens in places where same-sex marriage is illegal: a person is in the hospital and the hospital's "no visitors" policy makes an exception for close family. Often, "close family" will include a spouse but not a boyfriend or girlfriend.

On a number of occasions in the past, a head nurse or hospital administrator has used this sort of rule to keep a sick or injured person's same-sex partner from visiting ("he's your boyfriend, not your husband, so we don't have to let you in to see him").

When my father was dying of cancer, his hospital's policy let my mother stay with him around the clock because she was his wife. If some hospital staff member had kicked her out, this would have hurt her deeply. By opposing same-sex marriage, you're - among other things - saying that people in positions of power should have the ability to hurt same-sex couples in the sort of circumstances that my parents were in.

That's just one example. You're also saying that someone shouldn't be able to sponsor her same-sex foreign spouse for immigration purposes... IOW, that the people in that couple should be forced to live alone.

Prohibiting same-sex marriage is harmful - and IMO hateful - in many ways. For the most part, it means kicking people when they're down... hurting them when they're at their most vulnerable.

 

[Jeremiahcp]

I think this is important. I can't remember where I saw it, but I read that less than 20% of the tuition you pay actually goes towards your education costs. The majority of it seems to go towards athletics, student activities, administrative overhead, student centers, gyms, etc.

I am sorry, but is that for in state or out of state tuition cost? Also does that 20% figure include the fee for student health insurance?

 

[Quetzal]

I am sorry, but is that for in state or out of state tuition cost? Also does that 20% figure include the fee for student health insurance?

Good questions, just to be clear, my figure is from memory and may not be accurate. I will see if I can dig it up but I think it was in-state tuition. As far as health insurance, I do not know the answer to that question. An anecdote, at my university a student could opt in/out if they already had insurance. Not sure if this is a common practice or not.

 

[Quetzal]

Oh fancy.

We even toast the bread!

 

[LuisDantas]

I just... I can't comprehend how anyone could possibly see colleges and universities as a negative thing. Halp! Someone explain this to me!

Higher education isn't automatically a good thing. I for one regret that there is such a thing as faculties of law.

I assume that to a (probably small) degree that mistrust indicated in the OP may reflect similar concerns from some North Americans, IMO. To the (rather limited) extent that I can understand Trump supporters, many of them seem to feel that having some accademical proficiency leads most people to become alienated and uncaring towards the needs of the "grassroots".

I somewhat agree, albeit only in the area of law.

More generally, higher education is an activity like any other. It consumes resources. It needs support structure. It is conceivable, if not necessarily common, that it might be over-emphasized to the point that it hurts the viability of other concerns.

Personally, I have the feeling that the USA suffer from a huge excess of prestige towards law-oriented careers (which is almost a given, since law careers are unavoidably parasitical in nature) coupled with a serious lack of proper valorization of true higher education.

Disappointment from the serious social and economic oportunity disparities is probably a factor as well. Also, a land where people talk of the Theory of Evolution as "just an unproven theory" shows that proper basic education is not on a good situation either, and the hurt from feeling put aside from the "good life" and the prestige must be huge now.

 

[Nous]

I would just note one more point in addition to the confusing nature of the question and the multiple possible reasons for the answers people may have given.

Contrary to the title of the thread, the findings do not show an unmitigated partisan divide. Among those people who classified themselves as a "moderate/liberal" type of "Republican/Lean Republican," at least as many, if not a greater percentage, expressed a positive view of the impact of colleges and universities "on the way things are going in the country" as expressed a negative view. An additional 29% of those claiming to be "conservative" "Republican/Lean Republican" expressed a positive view. At the same time, 23% of the group of "moderate/conservative" types of "Democrat/Lean Democrat" expressed a negative view of the impact of colleges and universities "on the way things are going in the country," as did 14% of those claiming to be a "liberal" type of "Democrat/Lean Democrat".

 

[Nous]

Higher education isn't automatically a good thing. I for one regret that there is such a thing as faculties of law.

I somewhat agree, albeit only in the area of law.

law careers are unavoidably parasitical in nature

Are these statements supposed to be funny? What are supposed to mean? How are law careers "unavoidably parasitical"?

 

[Quetzal]

Are these statements supposed to be funny? What are supposed to mean? How are law careers "unavoidably parasitical"?

I am curious of this myself. I find lawyers are subject to bad apples like anything else, but not to the degree of calling it a parasite.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Thinking more about the OP and my own experience in school (undergrad in civil engineering, late 90s to early 2000s, Canada):

- the only time politics entered the classroom at all was in my intro to environmental assessment course, which was run by environmental science, not engineering. Our prof would tell us stories about the projects he was protesting that week (relating it back to the course material, since he'd often use the rules of the environmental assessment process to oppose projects he disagreed with), but didn't demand that we share his views.

- the Engineering Society held a memorial every year on the anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique massacre. The memorial always had a strong anti-violence against women and pro-women in engineering message (the massacre involved a gunman killing 14 people, most of them female engineering students, because he didn't think that women should be engineers). The memorial was heavily promoted, but if someone didn't attend, nobody would have thought ill of them; we would've probably assumed that he had a conflicting class or didn't like crowds.

- there were left-leaning and right-leaning student clubs available for those who wanted them. The left-leaning clubs were a bit more prominent and vocal.

- the student newspaper had a spectrum of views, but probably leaned left overall.

- nobody ever asked me to express my political views or to agree with someone else's political views.

How different is the experience of those who are complaining about how things are now?

Even today, the only person I've met in person who has complained about "infringement of free speech" on campus was the head of a campus anti-abortion group, and her complaint was just that she wasn't allowed to hand out anti-abortion pamphlets on campus (she handed them out on the sidewalk next to campus instead).

 

[LuisDantas]

Are these statements supposed to be funny?

Not at all. I have a personal and well-earned reputation in real life for discouraging law studies with, shall we say, some passion.

What are supposed to mean? How are law careers "unavoidably parasitical"?

Because their whole point is to earn money out of the knowledge and application of law.

That is an almost archetypical example of parasitical activity. It consumes resources and true wealth that must therefore be taken from the rest of society. And what does it offer in exchange? Nothing at all besides barely-disguised promises of privilege, revenge and exception. While challenging their own colleagues, no less.

Appealling as that scenario clearly is for many people - perhaps because it taps into expectations of some form of tendency of existence to reward us "eventually" - it is the very definition of a drain.

In my opinion that comes from a misunderstanding of the true role of law. Law is a tool for settling disputes. No more and no less. It is not supposed or even particularly expected to be "fair", let alone to change society in a positive way.

Were people a bit more rational and sane, law would not be allowed to attain much in the way of prestige, and recourse to it would be correctly perceived as an exalted bet. People would strive to reach common understandings in order to avoid the inherent risks of resorting to law disputes. And we all would be considerably better of for it, including in the moral sense.