Can we talk about something else? This is your blog and you are entitled to your views, but I come here for lively and interesting perspectives on higher ed, not stuff that I could just as easily find on Redstate or FreeRepublic.

And what happened to the moratorium on snark?

Peter,

One of the recurrent themes of this blog is how higher ed shirks civics education and American history. I've posted countless times on how many of the problems on campus these days arise from a failure on the part of students, faculty, and administrators to understand their rights and their responsibilities (speech codes, due process, freedom of association, etc. etc). My interest in the health care debacle right now arises in no small part, as I say in an earlier post, from my sense that what we are witnessing right now is a Washington that poses as intellectually astute (Obama's academic cred, etc) as a means of contemptuously exploiting the American people's confusion about what freedom is and is not, what government's role is and is not, and what their place in the democratic process is and is not. In other words, I think we are running a kind of endgame right now, one that emerges from the massive failures of our educational system at all levels to educate for citizenship--and the gross cynicism of elected leaders who are more interested in imposing their agendas than upholding the founding principles of our nation. In other words, we are not off topic.

Erin's comment gets to precisely the point I was trying to tease out in the other thread--the academy has proven itself incapable of dealing with Obama in an intellectual honest manner, something that should not come as a surprise given the way it dealt with Bush.

I have never seen a group of people so praised for their intelligence and critical thinking abilities so quickly turn off their critical faculties and place blind faith in an individual the way the majority of academics have done with Obama.

And, as Erin points out, this ideological blindness--and the rather frightening cult of personality--are being passed down from teacher to student at all levels of education.

It would be an exaggeration to compare this to North Korea and Kim Jong Il. For now.

Erin,

Perhaps we are not off-topic, but clearly the conversation has entered another stage, with different rules and a sharper, more partisan, tone. It may no longer be a conversation in which some of your readers wish to participate.

Peter,

You are welcome not to comment--just as you are always welcome to comment. The rules are no different--and it's important to distinguish deeply felt comments from partisan ones. At least if you look at my own postings--and they are the only ones for which you can reasonably hold me to account--I never get involved in party-centric bashing of the sorts that you will see on the sites to which you have compared this one. I also don't get involved in namecalling of the "liberals are like this" and "conservatives are like that" sort, though many of my academic commenters regularly do that--and regularly direct their comments at me. You know this to be true.

So, I'm sorry these threads have not been more pleasant for you as a commenter--but trust me, we are well within the zone of reasoned debate over here. It just may not be the zone you are used to. But, as I have often said here over the years--there is no right not to be offended, and sometimes the most productive exchanges are those in which one or both parties feel distinctly uncomfortable. I for one appreciated your comments about France and Japan. They made me think. Hopefully something I or someone else has posted here will make you think too.

Erin,

This is not (merely) about feeling uncomfortable. Despite the reiterated claims by some that I am a liberal zombie, I read this blog because it makes me think (although I often disagree with you and others who post here). The same could be said, I would guess, for Luther B., MavProf, EveningSun, etc.

With partisan passions inflamed, however, the critique of liberal groupthink seems to be becoming its own perverse form of groupthink. Why debate with someone, when you can contemptuously dismiss him/her as a pseudo-intellectual, liberal ignoramus?

Although your postings have been more temperate than most, you are not quite as innocent as you suggest. And I am not just referring to the snarky reference to Obama supporters as "True Believers." Whatever truth there may in your diagnosis of academia or liberalism, by hitching your wagon to the anti-Obama caravan, you have changed the nature of the conversation on this blog, for better or worse. Despite your claim that this is about "facts" and your belated acknowledgment of my comments about Japan and France, you seem less interested in debating Obama's proposal than in demonstrating how "people like me" have been duped by his flip-flopping on the single payer issue.

So now, instead of being an interlocutor in a conversation, I'm the prime exhibit of the decline of American intellectual life. I've been cast as an educated fool and nothing I can say will change that. Indeed (to someone like Drake) the mere fact of being reasonable and even-tempered becomes proof that I've been brainwashed, that I have drunk the liberal Kool Aid.

So no, there is no "right not to be offended." But intellectual high-mindedness is not a birthright, either. It requires a deep and constant commitment to self-awareness and fairness.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/2009/08/cnn-anchor-rips-into-health-care-ceo-whos-funding-anti-reform-effort.php

Just sayin, maybe you ought to consider who your getting your information from. I'm for health care reform because A) I'm poor and B) I'd rather have my health viewed by the gov't as a right than viewed as a number on a spreasheet that could be swiped if I'm not profitable to somebody.

It'd be cool if you got your hands on the bill and broke it down though. (not sarcasm)