quote:

morality is any system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.

quote:

At long last a liberal academic social scientist has recognized (and had the courage to put into print) the inherent bias built into the study of political behavior�that because Democrats are so indisputably right and Republicans so unquestionably wrong, conservatism must be a mental disease, a flaw in the brain, a personality disorder that leads to cognitive malfunctioning. . . .

. . . The liberal bias in academia is so entrenched that it becomes the political water through which the liberal fish swim�they don't even notice it. Even the question "What makes people vote Republican?" hints at something amiss in the mind of the conservative, along the lines of "Why do people believe weird things?" As Haidt notes, the standard liberal line is that people vote Republican because they are "cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death." . . .

. . . Further, according to the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Surveys, 1972-2004, 44 percent of people who reported being "conservative" or "very conservative" said they were "very happy" versus only 25 percent of people who reported being "liberal" or "very liberal." A 2007 Gallup poll found that 58 percent of Republicans versus only 38 percent of Democrats said that their mental heath is "excellent." One reason may be that conservatives are so much more generous than liberals, giving 30 percent more money (even when controlled for income), donating more blood, and logging more volunteer hours. And it isn't because conservatives have more expendable income. The working poor give a substantially higher percentage of their incomes to charity than any other income group, and three times more than those on public assistance of comparable income�poverty is not a barrier to charity, but welfare is. One explanation for these findings is that conservatives believe charity should be private (through religion) whereas liberals believe charity should be public (through government). . . .

. . . Why are academic social scientists so wrong about conservatives? It is, I believe, because almost all of them are liberals! A 2005 study by the George Mason University economist Daniel Klein, using voter registrations, found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans among the faculty by a staggering ratio of 10 to 1 at the University of California, Berkeley and by 7.6 to 1 at Stanford University. In the humanities and social sciences the ratio was 16 to 1 at both campuses (30 to 1 among assistant and associate professors). In some departments, such as anthropology and journalism, there wasn't a single Republican to be found. The ratio for all departments in all colleges and universities throughout the U.S., says Klein, is 8 to 1 Democrats over Republicans. Smith College political scientist Stanley Rothman and his colleagues found a similar bias in a 2005 national study: only 15 percent professors describe themselves as conservative, compared to 72 percent who said they were liberal (80 percent in humanities and social sciences).

quote:

I suspect that the reason most professors are liberal is that they have a Messiah complex. They firmly believe that they have been called to save humanity through education. Conservatives know better. Liberalism also finds a life within institutions that are dependant on government funding and donations�in research grants and alumni contributions. Many university professors denounce the free market but could not make a living in it if they applied their classroom ideals to it. A Ward Churchill could not make it in the competitive world of commerce because he would turn off clients and drive business away.

quote:

Why is there a preference for a more liberal view at universities

quote:

As recently as the early 1950s, the typical American university professor held social and political views quite similar to those of the general population. Today � well, you've all heard the jokes that circulated after the collapse of central planning in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, how the only place in the world where Marxists were still thriving was the Harvard political science department.

More generally, US higher education often looks like a clear case of the inmates running the asylum. That is, the students who were radicalized in the 1960s have now risen to positions of influence within colleges and universities. One needs only to observe the aggressive pursuit of "diversity" in admissions and hiring, the abandonment of the traditional curriculum in favor of highly politicized "studies" based on group identity, the mandatory workshops on sensitivity training, and so on

quote:

Academics tend to be highly intelligent people. Given their leftward leanings, one might be tempted to infer from this that more intelligent people tend to favor socialism. However, this conclusion suffers from what empirical researchers call "sample selection bias." Intelligent people hold a variety of views. Some are lovers of liberty, defenders of property, and supporters of the "natural order" � i.e., defenders of the market. Others are reformers, wanting to remake the world according to their own visions of the ideal society.

Hayek argues that exceptionally intelligent people who favor the market tend to find opportunities for professional and financial success outside the Academy (i.e., in the business or professional world). Those who are highly intelligent but ill-disposed toward the market are more likely to choose an academic career. For this reason, the universities come to be filled with those intellectuals who were favorably disposed toward socialism from the beginning.

quote:

Originally posted by Phil:
I know you're meaning to imply that they're smarter because they are liberal, but that would ignore the extraordinarly intelligent people who are also more on the conservative side of issues.

quote:

Btw, what did you mean by "the Republican view" in "there is a noticeable correlation between higher education and the avoidance of the Republican view?" What the heck do you think "the Republican view" is, anyway?

quote:

Chomsky - if you Google "Chomsky", how many references to linguistics do you find relative to left wing radical politics?

quote:

This is the first rule of moral psychology: feelings come first and tilt the mental playing field on which reasons and arguments compete. If people want to reach a conclusion, they can usually find a way to do so.

quote:

The culture "wars" in the U.S. signal a values divide. Note, however, that's it's a peaceful war, and I'd maintain, a necessary one.