Why do liberal universities honor murderers?

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by detbuch

This whole "liberals" and "conservative" bit is so misleading that your "wonder" cannot properly be addressed. Most present day Americans are "liberal" in one degree or another. The founding of this country was a "liberal" revolution. Yours is not a far-fetched scenario, but how liberals would react is so diverse, it would take a book to answer your question as to how they would react.

In one of my links, I provided a link to a story...yes, I'm talking about the incident where the idiots blew themselves up (and almost killed their neighbor, Dustin Hoffman).

The police investigation indicated 2 possible targets - an army dance at Fort Dix, and the Columbia University library. Blueprints to buildings on the Columbia University campus, were found in the rubble.

"This whole "liberals" and "conservative" bit is so misleading that your "wonder" cannot properly be addressed. "

I agree that my wonder cannot be addressed. In my opinion, the reason for that has nothing to do with my labels of liberal vs conservative, but in how indefensible the liberal positions are on some issues.

There are obviously kooks on both sides. But on teh left, even the "middle of the pack" seems to surrender a huge amount of rationality and reasoning.

In this thread, Spence says the Weather Underground are not terrorists, and that Bill Ayers dedicated his life to positive public service.

Columbia University makes a professor out of a terrorist and accomplice to mass murdere.

The vast majority of liberals believe that conservatives don't care as much about the elderly and th epoor as they do...and their "evidence" is that we want to save the programs that serve the old and the poor, from bankruptcy.

That last one, is not a fringe liberal position. I hear that articulated by almost the entire group of elected Democrats in Washington, and certainly here in CT as well.

The liberals (and I mean the vast majority, not limited to the radical fringe) attack anyone who proposes cutting 3 cents from SS or Medicare. That necessarily means that they don't admit those programs need radical overhaul, which necessarily means that they are actively denying 4th grade arithmetic. I'm not talking about higher order statistics, I'm talking about addition and subtraction that can be done on a $5 calculator.

[scottw]

here's the simplest explanation for you Jim because you are giving me a headache.....

modern liberalism = better person
conservative = evil

Eben described a "liberal" perfectly and how "modern liberals" would tend to reflect on themselves politically, personally....better, smarter, more tolerant, independent and posessing great judgment, of course....but apparently lacking humility

Eben cites gay marriage as an example of liberal tolerance forgetting that Obama and Hillary only recently came around on this subject no doubt for political reasons otherwise, what took these smart tolerent people so long?......and that he lives in a state the cannot get gay marriage through a legislature that is overwhelmingly dominated by "liberals" in the modern and democrat sense.....France is extrmely "liberal"...but not when it comes to gay marriage apparently....

Eben referred to himself as fiscally conservative but socially liberal which is an impressive oxymoron.....tight with your own money while supporting unsustainable government programs that bankrupt your nation is what? or as a cartoon that I recently saw stated "I'm pro-chioce.....except for -insert lenghty list of issues"

on abortion.....I believe that most "liberals" simply punt on abortion....is it wrong?..most would say yes and not something that is for them...is it killing?.....there's really not much question about that....but for most "liberals" it's easiest to not render judgment and simply allow it..wrong morally but acceptable... .and for the some, ultimately fund it through government.....because many on the left understand that it is an important dividing issue on their tripod of political power and take full avantage of this unwillingness to render judgment by people that claim to 'separate the good the from the bad and weigh their judgments' better than the rest of us....

your frustration with "liberals" and why they do this or support that, is because you fail to understand that the dividing line that they draw in terms of rendering judgment is a political one rather than being based on any moral sense of right and wrong because right and wrong for many of them is relative and relative to their stance on a political issue as opposed to the dreaded "religious" type of moral judgment....have you noticed that virtually every "issue" these days is a political issue that the government must involve itself in or solve?

if you are counted among the self-described "liberals" you are part of their "independent" group think club and not subject to the rules of political correctness and behaviour that you may heap mercilessly on others.....you point these out on a reguar basis Jim...no shortage of examples

this just happens to be yet another.....


"Liberals are capable of independent thought and can see the big picture and separate the good from the bad and weigh their judgements. Liberals are mostly very educated and are in carreers that use their creative minds.

Conservatives tend to be more rigid in their thought process, are very good at being told what rules work and they follow them. That's why conservatives love religion and the military. . "

still trying to make sense of this....are these the same indpendent free thought "modern liberals" that seek to tax, regulate and administer control via a massive centralized bureaucracy over every aspect of American life with their big picture good judgments which I guess is to control those Conservatives who desperately yearn to be controlled as they complain about trivial things like freedom and liberty and personal responsibility?

must be a left/right brain thing

BTW Ayers was recognized and received some sort of award for reforming education in Chicago...which I guess is like giving Ted Kennedy a Lifesaving Medal or Obama a Nobel Peace Prize....but was coincidentally denied an award by the University of Chicago because he dedicated one of his written works to Sirhan Sirhan and the Kennedy son who was on the board and did not find it amusing....Ayers denies this of course......

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by scottw

"Liberals are capable of independent thought and can see the big picture and separate the good from the bad and weigh their judgements. Liberals are mostly very educated and are in carreers that use their creative minds.

Conservatives tend to be more rigid in their thought process, are very good at being told what rules work and they follow them. That's why conservatives love religion and the military. . "

still trying to make sense of this....are these the same indpendent free thought liberals that seek to tax, regulate and administer control via a massive centralized bureaucracy over every aspect of American life with their big picture good judgments which I guess is to control those Conservatives who yearn controlling as they complain about trivial things like freedom and liberty and personal responsibility?

must be a left/right brain thing

It's hard to make sense of a paradox other than to accept it for what it is. Maybe understanding the origination sheds light on why it is whatever it is. The liberal/conservative paradox in which what is purported to be "liberal" is actually authoritarian, and what is considered to be "conservative" (a supposedly rigid, authoritarian complex) is a structure for individual freedom. How did this come to be?

Two nearly simultaneous revolutions both of which were to promote liberty, the American and French revolutions, started from different circumstances and ended with different results. The Americans actually had a great degree of freedom before their revolution, more, for the common man than may have existed in advanced cultures before that time. Their revolution was about keeping that freedom from being usurped by a distant ruling power and ensuring that no ruling power, domestic or foreign, could ever take away that liberty. The French were about getting a freedom that common men did not have.

The Americans created a system derived not only from the centuries of different governing models, but also from their own experience of liberty under loose British rule in the colonies. It was a system created by a people that were relatively free to make their way, and that initiative and self-responsibility engendered a vision which relied on dispersed individual and local power rather than a central authority.

The French experienced and understood, in spite of and contrary to even their own political philosophers such as Montesque, power to be distributed from a ruling class. In the case of their revolution, the ruling class, the monarchy, was to be overthrown and replaced by another ruling class supported by "the people." Their liberty would be an enforced equality.

Each was a "liberal" revolution in that there was a liberation from monarchical rule. The Americans were merely keeping and ensuring freedom, the French would administer and enforce a new freedom of "equality."

Somehow, after about a hundred years, sophisticated American students taught by an emerging class of "progressive" thinkers and scholars that, especially those who went abroad to "better" German and French universities, became more enamored of the burgeoning European idea of "equality" which was growing like a wildfire there, concocted by the likes of Marx and French social theorists, and co-opted and quelled by the ruling class with a system of bureaucratic administration which doled out new systems of welfare and pensions. After all, a founding principle was that all men were created equal, and they saw that Americans were NOT all equal. And they perceived that the wealthy were lording it over the common man. And they admired the system of German and French administration as far more efficient than the cumbersome American system and as far more capable of distributing material good in a more equitable fashion. And they believed that the European system could be "Americanized," that the control of the ruling class could be replaced by freer American governmental ways.

The so-called liberals of today are more inheritors of the French revolution and dissenters against the outcome of the American revolution. As I see it, what is called "liberal" has become an embodiment of that European centralized administration of equal distribution ENFORCED by government. What is called "conservative" is a mixed bag, the ostensible core of which is preservation of the original system of individual and local sovereignty. Hence the paradox. "Conservatism" is actually more "liberal" in the classical sense in that it conserves individual liberation from central government power. "Liberalism" is actually more like what the "liberals" refer to as "conservatism," a rigid attempt to control the distribution and redistribution of material well being in a supposedly equal outcome.

[scottw]

there's that and also look at:

"Locke's Classical Liberalism"- belonging to liberalism, advocating civil liberties and political freedom, limited government, rule of law, and belief in free market.[2][3][4] Classical liberalism is built on ideas that had already arisen by the end of the 18th century, such as selected ideas of Adam Smith, John Locke, Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo, stressing the belief in free market and natural law,[5] utilitarianism,[6] and progress.[7] Classical liberals were more suspicious than conservatives of all but the most minimal government[8] .

"Burkean Conservatism"- described as "the disposition to maintain those institutions seen as central to the beliefs and practices of society'"...and specifically in America- In the United States, conservatism is rooted in the American Revolution and its commitment to conserve the rights and liberties of Englishmen

"Fiscal conservatism" (which Eben and many "liberals "claim) is the economic philosophy of prudence in government spending and debt.[34] Edmund Burke, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, argued that a government does not have the right to run up large debts and then throw the burden on the taxpayer

"liberal conservatism" has been used in quite different senses. In political science, the term is used to refer to ideologies that combine the advocacy of laissez-faire economic principles, such as respect for contracts, defense of private property and free markets[1] with the belief in natural inequality, the importance of religion, and the value of traditional morality[2] through a framework of limited, constitutional, representative government.

I'd argue that today's "liberal" considering the policies that they've embraced and continue push to even greater degrees represent none of this.....and in fact....Eben's description of a liberal is little more than a list of "superior qualities" that most liberals apparently posess either by nature or by virtue of thinking the right "liberal way" on various issues or by accident of birth and superior genetic fortune allowing them to know and understand better than the rest of us


...exactly what does today's modern American "Liberal" stand for given the political ideaology that they currently give power and enablement to through their support ?...