The decline of higher education into an ideological echo chamber has been widely discussed on this and other sites. Polls show record lows in the public trust in our universities and colleges as revenues decline and closures increase. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon responded to this meltdown with a common-sense call for greater transparency and tolerance. The response from teacher unions has been nothing short of hysteria, led by Randi Weingarten at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and Todd Wolfson at the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) — two of the most polarizing and political figures in teaching.
Secretary McMahon released a policy statement titled “National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards.” I encourage you to read it. Few Americans would disagree with the call for universities to post policies on how they can achieve greater intellectual diversity and openness in both admissions and hiring.
Not surprisingly, the AFT and AAUP went into a full cardiac arrest at the notion that universities would adopt such policies, let alone work to restore integrity and balance to higher education.
In a public letter, they denounced the policy as “galling.” The letter was a telling moment from the two organizations most responsible for the politicization of education.
The AFT and AAUP merged not long ago, destroying the AAUP’s traditional role as a neutral advocate for academic freedom. Under Wolfson, the organization has become blatantly political, even abandoning its long apolitical stance and issuing its first political endorsement this year. It was for radical Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
I recently debated Todd Wolfson, President of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), over the loss of institutional neutrality in higher education. In the debate, I raised AAUP’s own abandonment of neutrality principles, which Wolfson acknowledged. While the viewers overwhelmingly supported a return to neutrality principles, Wolfson was undeterred.
The alliance with AFT and Weingarten is crushingly predictable. Weingarten personifies what I have called the “education cartel,” where teacher unions receive massive contracts and pension agreements from Democratic allies and then turn around and send massive political contributions to those same allies. The losers in this symbiotic relationship are of course the students and their families.
Weingarten is “credited” with turning the teachers’ union into an extension of the Democratic Party, often appearing at political rallies with her signature high-volume screeds:
As public support and revenue for both public education and higher education plummet, these figures are doubling down. The last thing that they want to see is the restoration of neutrality or balance. That is why a policy calling for such reforms is so anathema to them. These organizations are now political organizations that use their dues to pursue radical agendas.
I previously criticized the selection of Wolfson, who promised to make the AAUP more of a “fighting organization” for liberal causes. A Rutgers University anthropologist and former union leader, Wolfson is a political activist who doubled down on the ideological intolerance that now defines higher education.
As promised, the AAUP quickly became a more radical and activist organization. It adopted an anti-Israel boycott policy and unleashed attacks on Trump supporters as “fascists.” It has targeted civics centers as conservative breeding grounds. Trinity College Professor Isaac Kamola, the director of the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF), explains that they want to unleash “naming and shaming and discrediting and undermining the legitimacy” of such programs.
So, as trust in higher education hits new lows, the AAUP is accelerating that decline by doubling down on ideological bias and political activism. In reality, the AAUP represents only a small fraction of university professors but is often viewed as speaking for the teaching academy as a whole.
I have previously written about the similar liberal agenda of the American Bar Association despite plunging membership among lawyers. The ABA now represents just 17 percent of the bar.
The AAUP currently has roughly 50,000 members. There are an estimated 1.5 million university and college professors in the United States. Both the ABA and AAUP have become captive to the most ideological elements of their membership. That agenda has overwhelmed the original apolitical mission of these groups.
The loss of the AAUP as a neutral arbiter for academic freedom is tremendous. As Wolfson acknowledged in our debate, it was once a voice for neutrality, avoiding ideological and political causes. It was central to the articulation of neutrality principles and core academic freedom values. We need such an organization now more than ever.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Teachers’ unions should be outlawed. I’d also like to see cities & states barred from negotiating any type of contract with teachers at all levels of education! Before teachers’ unions existed, we had teachers who went into that career because they truly wanted to TEACH students–not indoctrinate them into communism or any other “ism.” Teachers should not be forced to teach political viewpoints or any form of indoctrination. They should be hired to teach a particular subject(s) or grade level & the curriculum approved for that grade level. Indoctrination should never be allowed!
Yeah! With one text- the Bible! This new fangled physics just don’t roll my biscuits.
on earth do we allow public unions to exist? this is a relatively new development
It’s called labor. Each man owns his labor and collectively, too. They were known as guilds.
Trades people living in rural areas with median income at 53 000 yearly are charging 300 dollars per hour without a concept of volume of service while Griffen takes a penny on a huge volume of business.
Well, as I am in college currently, I can report not all colleges are full of the illiberal, crunchy granola types. There is a “We accept everyone!” vibe, but it is not shoved down our throats in class. And based off by some of their comments, most of my professors I would say are either middle of the road, traditional Democrats, or lean right. But all of them keep to the class, what they are teaching and do not get into politics.
I have two classes that are like being in high school again. But those students were in high school last spring, so it is to be expected.
My other classes which are pre-reques for a specific field, lot more mature, lot more serious, even the ones who were in high school last spring.
So you are basically confirming, from personal experience, that all these claims about colleges as dens of socialist subversion are complete nonsense.
And obviously, from your own observations, Turley’s claims about conservatives being purged from colleges are nothing more than MAGA propaganda.
Your entire comment ignores what Upstate actually said.
I can report not all colleges are full of the illiberal, crunchy granola types.
Damn, did you eat paint chips as a child?
Here’s the thing Olly.
The Fake Farmer can supposedly report that NOT ALL colleges are illiberal, crunchy granola types.
This “report” is based on the experience of a single person, at a single college, taking only a few of their courses. Despite these personal observations. he is willing to suspend belief in these observations and declare that ALL other colleges are dens of socialist inequity in the complete absence of personal knowledge. This belief derives entirely from what he hears here, from his fellow MAGA cultists on this miserable excuse for a legal blog.
He is perfectly happy to believe what he is told here, even when it conflicts with his personal experience.
That is cult behavior.
The statement stands on its own, clown.
Upstate is in a college where “not all colleges are full of the illiberal, crunchy granola types.”
Yes, clown, a single person can experience, opine, and conclude that “not ALL.”
just ONE exception voids “not ALL.”
Grow up.
It is a community college.
I can confirm when my daughter was at a university, not a community college, yes, she did in fact experience a professor who did in fact let her leftist leanings be known in class, and did not allow for any conservative view points.
Same university forced her to take and pay for a DEI course as a graduation requirement.
So your personal, first hand experience at the college you attend is that it is the exception to your belief that all other colleges are dens of socialist subversion.
And your evidence for the socialist subversion of ALL other colleges is the experience of one other person, at one other college, who had to take one course.
You have absolutely zero personal, first hand knowledge of other colleges.
You choose to believe the MAGA propaganda that spews forth on this blog on a daily basis, rather than rely on your personal observations.
That is not normal, rational thinking.
that’s what a socialist would say.
Most of the letter’s questions don’t even apply to community colleges. The Secretary of Education is too daft to even realize that.
Oh, no, one professor. Wait until she gets employed and finds out her boss is a MAGA cult member.
College is not a place to be coddled from life.
Anonymous, you’re arguing with Estovir. James is one of Estovir’s original puppets from 6 1/2 years ago. He’s not in any college. He’s just a serial liar. And maybe you’re Estovir playing some bogus liberal so he appears to be arguing with someone.
Serial liar PSYCHO MORON ANON
Esto Vir is telling you something. Be a man. Presently, you haven’t reached that point, so try harder.
Farmer has been indoctrinated.
But all of them keep to the class, what they are teaching and do not get into politics
I am genuinely happy for you. Looking forward to observing from afar your academic journey.
Hi Upstate, if you wish, can you tell us what your major is and what you want to do with it in the future? My mother didn’t have the opportunity to go to college when she was young, so when the opportunity arrived, she did what you are doing and got her degree. I think that is great. I take adult education courses at the local university for no other reason than to learn. The professor I liked the most had a different mindset from mine, so occasionally we corresponded with our respective arguments by email. We both had open minds.
Relevant first hand investigative journalism, embedded, UF. Sociology?
Maybe it is time to burn it all to the ground. If the goal of education is to teach one to think, then why is the union getting in the way. If the ultimate customer is the student and the union is preventing them getting good solid educations, why allow them to exist? I understand that unions were created to prevent the teachers from getting caught in the winds of politics. But when the protecting body is playing politics themselves, why allow them to exist? The galling part is that they do not even try to pretend they are not political and have zero interest to try and show any balance. These groups have turned cancerous on the education system. Time to cut them out and heal the system.
Unions don’t set curriculum; school boards do.
The highest commitment University presidents and governing boards have to serving the American people at this point in the nation’s history is to pointedly address and earnestly help abate the menacing political divisiveness that foreshadows the collapse of civility. Education leaders throughout the spectrum must renew their appreciation for the essential role that exposure to diversity, dissension and debate play in mitigating the ominous trend toward homogeneous education cultures divided into separate and opposing indoctrination centers. Do we relish and seek debate all the while remaining respectful, or do we drift ever so deliberately toward a state of even greater antipathy?
Public sector unions are largely either kickback machines or money laundering operations. Take your pick. I would suggest decertifying public sector unions. Most have utterly failed in their mission and IMO are a major reason our government is so expensive. Taxpayer dollars are funneled through government unions with a significant amount going back to the Democrat Party. As an alternative, bar by law the participation of public sector unions in the political process, ie no funds may be transferred from a ps union to a candidate or politically affiliated organization. This does not prohibit union members individually from contributing to and participating in the political process outside of their public duties.
Unadulterated,
Wise words. Better to abolish teacher’s unions altogether. They have participated in much of the destruction of American education.
Why stop at the teachers union. Keep going, firefighters unions, police unions, civil servants unions. None are covered by the 1st amendment. Right?
Exactly and Exactly.
Only owners of private property may “claim and exercise” dominion.
Only elected officials may “claim and exercise” dominion over public property.
Hire, fire, pay, direct, etc.
Set prices, wages, rent, etc.
Any organization that usurps and exercises dominion in either case is an illegitimate criminal organization.
Labor unions are a perfectly legitimate free market actor.
When you join costco -= which is essentially a buyers club – you get advantages because your membership collectivizes purchasing and negotiations.
So long as Govenrment functions PURELY as an arbiter of contracts without favor to any party a union is no different from any other form of contract negotiation.
Individuals OWN their own labor. They are free to sell it as they please. They are free to join with others to sell their labor.
Just as in the past employers have abused their power so have unions. The fact that the outcome of a contract negotiation ANY contract negotiation sometimes is bad, is not a justification for dismantling the ability of one side or the other to form a contract and to buy or sell whatever they wish to buy or sell.
I am not “pro-union” – like many I witnessed the destruction of the US auto industry at the hands of unions – though I would note automakers were complicit in that.
But that disaster does not change the FACT that individuals own their own labor and have the right to negotiate when they sell it just as selling anything else, and that they can join with others iof they feel that is to their advantage in collectively selling their labor.
Unions didn’t kill the auto industry. Bad designs and a failure to spend money on modern manufacturing did. Those 1960s and 1970s and 1980s cars didn’t rust to pieces in a few years because there was something wrong with the labor that put them together. It was Detroit tried to keep the “new car every 3 years” sales model and the Japanese thought a car should last longer than that.
I have absolutely zero problems with PRIVATE Unions. More accurately I am neutral – they are a perfectly valid part of the free market.
The wax and wane based on their own conduct and that of employers.
But like FDR public unions MAY NOT EXIST.
Separately your “first amendment” argument is out of thin air. The nexus between a union and the first amendment is poor.
That does not means thay are not legitimate PRIVATELY as part of general individual freedom.
But govenrment is not at all like a traditional employer. They have neither property rights, nor independent shareholders to protect.
Unions excercise leverage on political figures in ways they can not over private employers.
And yet the teacher’s union has accomplished so much on Chicago’s educational system.
Young: Good one!
In fact, you might say it’s all going according to their plan.
Our government is meant to protect us from mobs disguised as unions preying on your tax dollars.
Public unions provide nothing of value.
GPT-5.6 Luna
I cannot identify a textual constitutional provision that authorizes a federal Department of Education.
The relevant text does not supply one:
Article I, § 8, cl. 1 authorizes spending for the “common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” It does not mention education or authorize spending for every favored class or subject.
Article I, § 8, cl. 18 authorizes laws “necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” the powers already granted. It is ancillary; it does not create a new education power.
Article I, § 1 limits Congress to legislative powers “herein granted.”
The Tenth Amendment reserves powers not delegated to the United States to the states or the people.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Constitution provides no express legal basis for establishing a federal Department of Education.
The department’s statutory justification depends on interpreting the General Welfare and Necessary and Proper Clauses more broadly than your textual reading permits. That interpretation may be the prevailing judicial doctrine, but it is not a verbatim constitutional authorization for federal control or administration of education. A statute cannot itself supply a power that the Constitution did not delegate.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with particular emphasis on the Supreme Court.
The entire American welfare state is unconstitutional, beginning with its Frankensteinian components—Social Security and Medicare—and extending from there.
We need to burn modern education to the ground, and that’s all. Termite level fumigation. I could give a toss what people at the institutions say. Robespierre 2.0 is nowhere more apparent than in modern ‘higher’ ed. F*** these people. And if you are one of the blind alma mater, wake the eff up. This is not that. Those days are already dead and buried. Accept it, no matter how painful that might be to you.
Typical response of a MAGA moron trapped in a cult.
This is the thinking of those who have joined a cult, but in reality is not really thinking at all.
When cults perceive a threat to their existence, the knee jerk reaction is burn the threat to the ground.
Destroy everything that does not comport with the cult!
Burn it down!
These reactions are the result of profound brainwashing, completely unencumbered by rational thought processes.
I think you mean the remaining climate change caused by humans cultists, or the remaining Obamabots even after Iran.
What about the cult of modern progressivism? I guess pot and kettle are due for a meeting.
Public school unions are illicit and unconstitutional criminal organizations with no constitutional basis.
No contract with a union is a legal contract.
Public school unions are communist indoctrination institutions.
Nope. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the First Amendment’s right to freedom of association protects the right of public employees, including teachers, to organize and form unions. In cases spanning decades, the Court has consistently held that the government cannot prohibit public workers from joining labor organizations.
While the U.S. Constitution does not mandate collective bargaining, individual state laws and state constitutions explicitly authorize public employers to enter into binding contracts with unions. Under the Tenth Amendment, states have the sovereign authority to regulate their own public labor relations, making collective bargaining agreements entirely valid, legally binding contracts.
When the Supreme Court reviewed public sector unions in the landmark 2018 case Janus v. AFSCME, it did not rule that public unions were unconstitutional.
Thank you so much, comrade.
The singular American failure IS the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
Nowhere does the 1st Amendment or Constitution state that communist enemies may seize and control the American education system under so-called “union” or any other titling.
________
First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
While you are correct that SCOTUS did not obliterate the right of public sector unions to exist in Janus – they absolutely severely clipped their wings. They essentially made closed shops of manditory union membership illegal for government employees.
Personally I find the decision problematic. Contra your claim – there is no constitutional right for public sector unions to exist.
You claim a long history – but that history is merely upholding public union contract terms. Not the legitimacy of Public Unions.
Many states have laws that bar manditory uinion membership – closed shops but I think Janus and your chain of cases – which all address public sector union fees not the legitimacy of public sector unions.
The Correct SCOTUS decision is that the employer in the instance of government is “the people” and the people are not properly represented in public union negotiations – which would violate the contracts clause of the constitution – as well as other provsions.
Conversely with respect to private unions – while I think that closed shops are a bad idea, it is perfectly constitutional privately and state laws barring closed shops are unconstitutional.
I would also find the NLRB unconstitutional – there is absolutely no reason at all -0 and it is unconstitutional for govenrment to step into the contracts between private employers and private employees beyond enforcing the provisions of any negotiated contract in the same way they would construction contracts of purchase orders. The parties to a contract are free to make bad even self destructive choices.
Aty the same time all laws compelling business owners to actively assist unions in efforts to unionize are also unconstitutional.
Again the govenrment may not interfere in the private right to contract – it can not pick sides. It can neither favor unions nor employers,
it can not preclude either unions or owners from negotiating a bad deal – as the automakers did in the 60’s and 70’s
It is not governments job ot protect businesses from their own stupidity, or workers from theirs.
There are a few ancient constraints on the right to contract that are legitimate – people can not contract themselves into slavery as an example, and contracts in which one party had no part in drafting must be interpreted in the light most favorable to the party that did not draft the contract.
Beyond the norms of court enforcement of contracts – government has no business involving itself in any way in private contracts – including labor contracts and unions.
I have no problem with any contract that private actors negotiate whether I personally think the terms of that contract are a good idea.
Governments role in all contracts is as a neutral arbiter – not an advocate for either side. Right to work laws are unconstitutional,
laws against lockouts and strikes are unconstitutional. Laws requiring businesses to cooperate in unionioization are unconstitutional.
Pretty much all laws that extend beyond the centuries old laws of contract arbitration by the courts are unconstitutional under the contracts clause of the constitution.
Chairman Mao did just that. 40 years later the Chinese decided they needed the academics and intellectuals after all.
The Reflecting Pool is drained and fenced off from the public.
The Kennedy Center is boarded up and closed to the public.
The East Wing has been destroyed.
The White House has more gold laminate than a whorehouse in Vegas
The Rose Garden has been paved over so it looks like the outdoor dining patio at a Cheesecake Factory
Ten years into the Trump Interregnum, we’re living in a cheaper world. A tawdry world. A transactional world. A huckster’s world. It’s the Trumpian ethos, and it has trickled down like pus off a gangrenous leg.
The legal blog from the good professor is being drained and polluted with OT posts trying to destroy it.
The polluters are attempting to board up and fence off those with whom they disagree.
The Western free speech civilization model is being attacked by those who constantly post 0ff-topic accusations.
It’s the naysayers’ ethos, and it has trickled down like pus off a gangrenous leg.
Just trying to bring some sense of reality to the moronic musings of those who live in the wonderful fantasy land of delusion that is the MAGAverse.
“Lin” had the courage to sign her name; your scaredy-cat “anonymous” musings belie the “wonderful fantasy land of delusion that is the MORONICAverse
But you are not connected to reality – For much of my life the left has been a delusional cult of doom. But that has gotten much worse since 2013.
Over my lifetime – the standard of living in the US has more than quadrupled. Much of the world has nearly done the same.
Life nearly everywhere on the planet has improved – but particularly in the US.
The only things that have gone to schiff are those the left has foist on us through govenrment.
we get left wing nuts ranting about various forms of impending doom – from climate or whatever the latest Malthusian nonsense coming from the left is. The improvement of the world is not without hiccups – but it constantly improves nonetheless.
Do we live in a utopian world absent racism and sexism and whatever other prejudices the left rants about – absolutely not.
But we live in a far better world than 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 60 years ago.
We live in the most diverse least racist country in the world. A world and a country that has been improving in nearly every way over any measure of time longer than minutes.
If you are born in poverty in the us – you have won the lottery in comparison to the rest of the world. And if you were born in the rest of the world today – you won the lottery compared to people born 75 years ago. You will live much longer, be healthier, eat better than any prior generations. You will still experiance some forms of predjudice – but orders of magnitude less than your parents.
If you are born in poverty in the US – absent making stupid mistakes like turning to drugs or crime you will be in the middle class by your middle ages.
This is the real world. Everything the left touches turns to schiff – but fortunately the US is wealthy enough that we can afford the expensive cow patties the left drops on us
PPACA is a disasterous and expensive failure that has made an expensive mess of both our health insurance and our healthcare.
But just as millions were not saved by PPACA, no one has died as a result either. We are just paying much more for insurance and healthcare than we would be for better care in an actual free market.
If Democrats sweep the midterms – if they miraculaously manage to take the WH in 2028 – it will NOT be the end of the world.
The country survived Biden who was the worst president since Buchanon. It survived Obama who presided over 8 years of the slowest US growth since the great depression – but still better than Europe.
As much as many of us Fear a DSA takeover of the country – and democrats taking power WILL deliver MORE power to the fringe DSA,
at the same time this country will not topple over the abyss. We are unlikely to damage ourselves half as much as europe and the UK
which have slid backwards over the past several decades and are near certain to slide even further behind in the future.
A left takeover of the country will SLOW the improvements in our standard of living, It will not stop them.
Contra you left wing nuts Trump is neither fascist nor the end of the world. He is MOSTLY a modest improvement that will result in a higher standard of living than we would have had otherwise.
Contra the MAGA verse the left is not an existential threat to the country. The US is not Europe and efforts by the left to make it into Europe or worse will fail. If americans give the left power they will expect them to deliver.
Not Medicare For All; but actual improved prosperity – and failing to deliver will result in their demise – as it did for Obama.
Clinton lost to Trump because the country was willing to bet on something new rather than endure another 4-8 years of Obama stagnation.
This is nothing more than a rambling, nonsensical rant of completely irrelevant and disconnected thoughts.
Flight of ideas, and pressure of speech are definitive signs of mental illness.
Your dislike for reality does not change it.
The SIMPLE core of my post – which is OBVIOUSLY correct and which you ignored is that nearly everyone everywhere in the world and the US is better in nearly everyway over time.
That has been true since approximately the 1500’s but accelerating with the advent of self govenrment and the recognition of individual liberty.
A corralalry point is that ALL malthusian claims – which is the core of the left have proven FALSE since …. Malthus several centuries ago.
It does not matter if you are on the right living in fear that the DSA will take over the country or on the left terrified of the latest left wing nut malthusian claim and busy proving how stupid you are by claiming Trump is worse than Hitler.
The FACT is the world is NOT going to h311. Our political choices – and those of the people in other countries WILL determine the rate of future improvement – with everything the left wants reducing that rate of improvement.
But the world I have lived in is a better world than that of my parents.
Their world was better than their parents, and my childrens world will be better than mine.
That is UNARGUABLY reality. Either you actually know that or you are stupid.
Regardless, fallacious attacks on me rather than confronting either reality or my arguments is just evidence of your own cluelessness.
What I wrote – does not ramble much – and even if it did – it would still be factually correct.
What I wrote was not completely irrelevant – it is the most relevant thing on earth.
Absolutely we can debate policy, but in the past 500 years only one country has not seen any improvement in its standard of living for more than 2 decades – and that would be China under Mao. Even the people of the USSR were better off in 1989 than in 1917 – they just lagged far behind the west.
There are lots of instances where any of a variety of hiccups cause short term declines, but nothing anywhere in the past 500 years has triggered a long term decline in standard of living most anywhere.
The CLEAR thread connecting everything I wrote is Malthus and all malthusians right or left have ALWAYS been wrong about everything. The end of the world is NOT nigh. Those of you right or left predicting disaster if you do not get what you want are no different from the lunatics on the street claiming the end of the world is nigh.
Separately – idiots should not attempt to practice psychology.
Your “pressure of thought” nonsense is the gobbldygook of people who do not have an argument.
Your ranting about the mental health of those you can not manage to successfully argue with is stupid and pointless.
I have no mental health issues – but even if I did, it would not change the fact that my arguments are correct.
John Nash was a paranoid Schitzophrenic who won the nobel prize in economics.
If you have an actual argument – Make it, The idiotic ad hominen just makes you look impotent and stupid.
John Say is a group of Russian psyop workers and it’s the first day of the month when the new vodka ration is issued. It’ll be about 8 days before the hangovers start to hit after the bottles go empty.
^^^speaking of going OT^^^^
Sometimes John Say HAS to rant about his long running gripes about “the left”.
You appear to have reading comprehension problems. While the bent towards the malthusian nonsense that if you do not get your way the world will go to h311 is more common on the left than the right – the difference is primarily of degree.
Regardless if you actually read what I wrote it is a reality based attack on Malthusianism – Not the left.
A significant portion of those seeking power from Hitler to Mao to Stalin and Lenin and Chavez, and Castro and … even Trump
tell us the end is nigh if we do not give them the power they demand.
The FACT is “the end is NOT nigh” – no matter who is predicting it.
The left absolutely is a disaster. If they gain power we will be less well off than we would have been otherwise – just look at what they have done to Europe whose standard of living is about equal to Mississippi the lowest standard of living in the US.
But even Europeans are better off than they were 4 decades ago – the merely have not improved as much as americans.
Given power your ideas if implimented will make us all less well off than we would have been otherwise.
But it is highly unlikely they will make us less well off than we are.
I would strongly recomend reading “The Ultimate Resource II” by Julian Simon who is unfortunately dead.
In it he debunks just about every malthusian claim EVER.
While a significant portion debunks the myriads of claims that we are going to run out of oil, or water or copper – or in more modern terms rare earths, or as Malthuis who gave his name to claims of impending doom claim – we would run out of arable land.
But he addresses things beyond malthusian resource claims.
There is only one resource that matters – the human brain. I have attributed the exponential growth that started in the west 500 years ago to the the western concepts of individual liberty and self govenrment – which is true. But even that has a more fundimental cause – which is the concentration of sufficient numbers of people to come up with the ideas that change the world.
SImon postulates that there are only two factors that determine the rate of improvement in standard of living.
The first is the number of people, and the 2nd is the baseline level of development.
Africa has a large and growing population but it is significantly behind the rest of the world in development – so more people does not improve things as fast as it does in more developed parts of the world.
https://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
I would note that YOU have probably only inadvertently argued much the same thing in the past – when you argue for NYC and Mamdani. It is absolutely true that NYC and California have greatly benefited – and lead the world because large concentrations of people significantly increases the odds of amplifying the rate of growth of standard of living.
This observation is just a restatement of the pareto principle or the bell curve.
intelligence distributes on a bell curve. The more people – the larger the area under the curve – the longer the tails are.
People like Musk, Bezos, Gates, Buffet, Jobs, are extremely rare. But if you have enough people you not only significantly increase the odds of having one of those extremely rare people who radically changes the world, But you increase the odds of having not one but a dozen who even if they compete rather that cooperate still create synergies that amplify the results beyond what you would expect in aggregate.
If your intelligence was less than Luke warm you would grasp this is also an argument for large scale immigration – which has greatly benefited the US in the past. It is not however and argument for lawlessness.
it is also true with respect to immigration – and pretty much everything else, that All “policies” have winners and losers.
Large scale immigration – even the lawless mess under Biden is with near certainty NET positive for the US.
But it is not completely positive in every single way. In the US and thoughout europe all nations with significant immigration suffered significant increases in crime. Further large scale immigration is significantly harmful – atleast in the short run to the working class. Immigration suffers from the problem that the benefits are hard to see even though they are large and the costs are easy to see even though they are small.
Lin,
Well said.
Nobody said free speech is neat and tidy. Obviously Darren is no longer running as moderator. It’s up to the commenters to exercise some discipline and abide by the blog’s rules. But…..as it is in reality nobody is doing that.
Sad by true.
HEY X!
Guess what!
Here’s something written by a STUDENT in Student News Daily
“Is Google Biased?”
https://www.studentnewsdaily.com/example-of-media-bias/is-google-biased/
X we see very few literal spam posts and those do not stay up long.
Someone or something is doing some form of moderation or we would see far more get rich by clicking on this link or improve your sexual performance or …. posts.
The blog is being moderated – just very lightly and I would bet that is a deliberate choice.
“The Reflecting Pool is drained and fenced off from the public.”
Pictures from this week show a fence arround it to protect it from left wing nut vandals but otherwise filled and viewable by the public.
“The Kennedy Center is boarded up and closed to the public.”
Correct for much needed renovations. Outside of a few left loons there has been no challenge to the need for the renovations – only the method of performing them. The executive determines that not the judiciary.
“The East Wing has been destroyed.”
Nedarly every president has renovated the Whitehouse. Trump is adding a ballroom that again is much needed – as well as a large number of security and administrative space expansions. No court has rejected the need for any of this. The fight is over whether left wing nuts get to stall things so long the costs are astronomical and the results are a mess. We elect presidents for a reason – because every citizen or even only those who are litigious does not get a voice in every single thing that govenrment does.
The majority of us are obligated to tolerate and even pay for the extensive disasters that the left has foist on the nation, or elect representatives that will change that. Those of you on the left are obligated to do the same.
“The White House has more gold laminate than a whorehouse in Vegas”
So you say, regardless who cares. the WH is the home of the current president. Each president gets their own choice of decor.
In 2029 President Vance can redecorate as he wishes.
“The Rose Garden has been paved over so it looks like the outdoor dining patio at a Cheesecake Factory”
Only the grass in the Rose garden has been replaced – the garden itself is exactly as it was when Melania renovated it in 2020.
The limestone pavers provide better drainage for the myriads of events that are held on the rose garden – including press events.
Reporters no longer have to stand in a swamp.
“Ten years into the Trump Interregnum, we’re living in a cheaper world. A tawdry world. A transactional world. A huckster’s world. It’s the Trumpian ethos, and it has trickled down like pus off a gangrenous leg.”
You are free to beleive as you wish. Outside of left wing dystopias – Rents in major urban areas are going down by about 5% – because that is what happens when several million illegal aliens are deported. The US working clas starts to be able to afford their rent.
Further working class wages have gone up significantly
Unemployment has Dropped – despite deporting over 2M illegal aliens as well as having 3M illegals self deport.
And reducing the size of the federal government by 300,000 people and counting.
The cost of the left wing nut massively fraudulent social safety net is declining significantly – because millions of illegal aliens are no longer public charges. The cost of state and local govenrment is declining – because millions of illegal aliens are no longer a burden on state and local fascilities.
While Europe is deindustrializing America is reindustiralizing – both of these started before Trump But both were amplified by Trump during his first and 2nd Term. The US is increasing the number of well paid skilled manufacturing jobs for working class americans.
Inflation is still too high and the price increases from the Biden disaster will never go away – but wages are rising significantly faster than inflation – particularly for working class americans.
You left wing loons ranted about Trump and Panama and Trump and Greenland.
China has been evicted from threatening key portions of the Panama Canal.
Denmark has done everything short of publicly announce US soveregnity over Greenland.
The US can build whatever military bases it needs in Greenland without requiring approval.
The US has perpetual military sovereignity over greenland.
The US has the right of first refusal with respect to all natural resources in greenland.
The US has the right to prohibit any other foreign country from any access to greenland.
While Greenland is not an official territory of the United states – it might as well be.
Regardless as is typical of the left – you do not have a clue regarding negotiating.
Trump has gotten what the US wants and needs.
It is my expectation that before 2028 the US will have ABM’s deployed to Greenland – because that is a much better location to intercept ICBM’s coming from Russia or China than Alaska is. As we are seeing in conflicts all over the world, the ability to successfully strike an enemy AND the ability to completely thwart their ability to strike back are a significant part of the modern cutting edge of conflict.
The Cold War Mutually Assured destruction detente is being replaced by “we can strike you, but you can not strike back, so don’t start something you can’t finish” As we have seen in Iran – Russian and Chinese Air Defense systems are worthless. While US interception systems work well and with minor improvement are capable of protecting both the US and the world from beligerants.
Russia and China are being driven out of the western hemisphere. Trump is enforcing the 200 year old Monroe doctrine. The western Hemisphere is no place for European and asian foreign influences.
The US standard of living has been rising faster than most of the world for some time – particularly Europe. This too predates Trump.
The US left continues to tout the virtues of “Social Democracy” yet even for those born yesterday and ignorant of the copious bloodshed and failure of socialism in the 20th century – the decline of Europe over the past 20 years should be an object lesson that name changes do not prevent failure. Socialism fails – even when relabeled as european social democracy. Europe is coming unglued. It has taken in a tiny fraction of the legal immigration that the US has, and its social fabric is being torn apart. The lefts vaunted social democrats in nordic countries have flipped from pro immigration to far more virulently anti-immigrant than Trump to hold power. Nearly all the rest of europe faces rising “right wing parties” driven primarily by the failures of open borders in Europe.
Regardless you can challenge the causes – but the FACT is that the standard of living in Germany today is equal to that of the poorest state in the US – missippi. Most of the US – even the poorest sections are doing significantly better than Europe.
Further Europe is in decline and the US continues to be ascendant.
There will eventually be peace in Ukraine, and that likely will in the long run precipitate the fall of Putin in Russia.
Regardless Russia is now visible to the world as a “paper tiger” – Europe does not need the US to protect itself from Russia.
The US is not leaving NATO – but we are leaving our post WWII role of propping NATO up.
There will also be peace in the mideast soon enough. Hamas has effectively been defeated in GAZA. Rebuilding of Gaza will be done by Other mideastern nations under the suprevision of the US, and absent control by Terrorists Gaza will likely emerge as a prosperous and self sufficient teritory. just as it was a century ago. Hezbollah has effectively been defeated in Lebanon – and the lebanese govenrment is negotiating for the return of occupied teritories in exchange for the Lebanese military continuiing to defang Hezbollah.
Lebanon has been anarchy my entire life – but it too was once a prosperous and peaceful nation – that is being restored.
While the Saudis despite one of the best equipped militaries money can buy do not seem to be able to deal with Houthi terrorsts – The French have sent forces, and the Saudis are negotiating with the Israeli military. Again all of this is precursors to long term regional peace and prosperity.
The regime in Iran seems intent on committing suicide. While they are capable fo periodically terrorising traffic through the straits – they have not actually shut the straits and can not. While traffic declines breifly after each attack, it rises again and reaches 2025 levels
We do not know the full extent of unrest in Iran – but Substantial Kurdish forces are operating in Iran in the southern and northern regions.
The IRGC does not have the capacity to continue the fight with the US AND thwart kurdish forces that have sought autonomy in significant portions of Iran for my entire lifetime. Further there is evidence of Iranian disidents rising in the cities like Tehran. IRGC and Basij members and leaders are being killed by protestors.
Regardless, Iran may or may not be able to hold out until mid terms. They may or may not be able to hold out for months after.
It is not possible to predict how long a suicidal regime can hold out. Pockets of Japanese soldiers in the Pacific continued fighting for years after Japan surrendered. But Iran can capitulate now, or collapse later. Frankly this regime is not likely to survive long even if they strike a deal with the US.
One way or the other – The worlds most dominant exporter of global terrorism is collapsing soon.
The mideast and the world will be better for it.
For the past 50 years Iran has gone from one of the most prosperous countries in the mideast to stagnant and impoverished.
With the end of the current regime Iran can return to being a peaceful and prosperous nation.
I would further note the current conflict with Iran has radically disempowered Russia and China.
Russia has lost access to its largest supplier of munitions for the ukraine war.
Iran supplied 40% of Russias munitions. Today what little Iran is producing they are keeping for themselves.
China’s economy more so than any other country in the world was dependant on Iranian oil
Right now the difference between chinese economic collapse is Trump’s control of the oil that China can get.
I have not mentioned either Venezuella or Cuba. Cuba will collapse or negotiate its own transformation sometime in the near future.
Venezeulla may still have a nominallly chavista government – but it governs at the pleasure of the US and it knows it.
Venezuella is slowly rejoining the world. Its natural resources are slowly returning to global markets.
Like Iran decades ago – before Chavez and “socialism” Venezeulla was the wealthiest nation in south america and one of the wealthiest in the western hemisphere.. Like Iran prosperity in Venezuella can be restored.
Contra those on the left – everything that socialism touches turns to schiff. Everything that Trump touches turns to gold.
Do you really think any sane person bothers to read your nonsensical, irrational diatribes.
You are profoundly mentally ill.
Not a whole lot do. But it does show how much pent up aggression he has towards “the left”.
It doesn’t stop him from putting out falsehoods and making up stuff to justify said aggression and detachment from reality.
Kettle, pot, pot, kettle
Confession through projection.
Am I intellectually “aggressive” against an ideology that has failed everywhere all the time and has caused more death and human misery than anything else in the entirety of human existance – Absolutely.
I am no supporter of rapists either.
Have I used FORCE against anyone on the left ? Have I even threatened to use FORCE against anyone on the left – absolutely not.
Contra left wing nuts – there has been very very little actual political violence by the right – both now and historically.
To gin up claims that the right is violent – the left has to pretend that white violent prison gangs are political – while far more prevalent minority prison gangs are just criminals.
When was the last time someone on the right tried to assassinate a president ? A supreme court justice ?
Kirk and Thompson were assassinated by left wing nuts – but WORSE still – far to many on the left CELEBRATED those murders
and even those like you who were not dancing in the streets were still defending those who were.
AGAIN I am not seeking to use FORCE against anyone on the left for their immoral or unethical conduct – that is also legal.
I will defend YOUR right to free speech – something that YOU do not reciprocate.
That does not mean I will not call you out fort the idiocy of what you say.
The right to say something is NOT a right to evade criticism for the garbage that you say.
Again UNLIKE you – I am not looking to lock up others because of political difference.
But I absolutely will lock political enemies up for ACTUAL crimes – as opposed to made up ones.
And even when for various reasons they can not be locked up – I will not let those like you who defend them for purely political reasons forget that they are perjurers.
Regardless, X you have nothing to fear from me beyond a severe tongue lashing for the idiocy of much of what you post.
The same can not be said of you and the left.
Yes we all know – anyone who says anything that offends the left in some way is “aggressive”, violent, fascist, ….
When you conflate criticism with violence you attempt to justify actual violence as self defense.
Have you EVER actually identified a specific instance in which anything I have written is at odds with reality ?
you rarely if ever even try.
In the rare instances you respond – you resort almost exclusively to ad hominem – as above.
Please identify a single fact I have misstated and I will correct it.
ATS – you get to speak for yourself – not the world.
Regardless ad hominem is not argument.
My mential health is excellent – but if it were not that would still be irrelevant.
As noted before – John Nash was a paranoid Schitzophrenic and still won the nobel prize in economics.
Not wanting to wade into Gish Gallop cesspool of John Says explosive bowel ejection, but before Trump started messing with the Reflecting pool, no one was vandalizing it and it seemed to keep water in it well enough. I’m not sure how costly the water is, but I bet a decade’s worth of water spending has been wasted on this project so far. If the fear is about vandals, then the fences can never come down and the security patrols can never be stopped – making this project the most negative possible one of its type.
However, as no vandalism has actually taken place so far; problems were entirely caused by a rushed and incompetent job of a type (spray coating) that was studied and found lacking a long time ago when leakage was first addressed, it seems like neither the barrier nor the armed guards were required.
Biden-era inspection reports expose Kennedy Center disrepair, safety hazards that Trump seeks to fix
“Concerns raised during the Biden era included vulnerability to terrorist attacks and health hazards like lead-painted steel beams, insufficient ventilation in bathrooms and failing sealants containing a cancer-linked chemical.”
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/biden-era-inspections-exposed-kennedy-center-disrepair-safety
Trump didn’t want to “fix” the Kennedy center. He only claims to have wanted to fix it when he wanted to illegally put his name on it. Which only Congress can do.
If he wanted to fix all the things that were wrong with it. He could have just done so without the catch that his name be on the building. But because he couldn’t put his name on it, out of spite like the jerk he is he chose not to do anything about it. That’s some quality leadership isn’t it?
Awww! you got TDS!
Note that Trump put his name on it -before- starting any repairs. He is never going to repair it.
Does Trump want his name on things – Absolutely – that is a common trait of politicians.
Regardless, the courts did not stop at saying Trump can not add his name to Kennedy Center.
They have tried to interfere with the executive role in maintaining the facility.
It is the courts thwarting the repairs not Trump.
Media coverage of Trump’s CNN ouster, Jack Smith spying on news outlets exposes double standard
“The records came from National Archives productions tied to 87 White House phones, capturing journalist-source exchanges as Smith’s team pursued Trump over the 2020 election and classified documents.”
“What is a bigger threat to freedom of the press: revoking special access to the White House or weaponizing the government to spy on journalists,” David Bozell, CEO of the Media Research Center, raised to Just The News.
“The media went up in arms about the former, but the broadcast networks dedicated exactly ZERO minutes to the latter.”
https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/first-amendment-emergency-only-when-trump-bans-legacy-media-not-when
Maybe so few conservatives are represented in university faculties because they mostly choose to work as productive members of the private sector thus limiting the hiring pool for university candidates to progressive and radical candidates that the private sector is astute enough to not hire. And, what fair-minded person of right mind would voluntarily torture themselves by joining an overwhelmingly biased, intellectually bankrupt, university faculty?
There you go. That’s why Turley’s “purging” theory is seriously flawed. They choose not to apply for a professorship or teaching position at a university.
Or george, why work for a college that hates you.
It’s not the college. It’s the conservative who keeps believing college is a waste of time and money. They love to bash colleges and universities, and Turley wonders why colleges are too ‘leftist’ these days. Conservatives haven’t been “purged” from their faculties. They just chose not to apply. It’s their fault there are more left leaning/liberals in college than conservatives.
Conservatives do not believe that colleges are a waste of Time – they believe that much left wing nut education and dominance of our colleges is a waste of time.
I have a degree in Architecture and a strong background in computer science, Structures and electrical engineering.
These are not a waste of time even today – and you will find that nearly all conservatives, libertarians, and independents among college professors are among the STEM fields.
Education that leads to productive benefits to society that creates things and raises standard of living is of great value – whether that is getting an engineering degree at a college or learning how to weld in a trade school.
Conversely womens studies, race studies etc. are luxuries. They have tiny benefits to society at all. They do not raise standard of living. At the very best they make tiny changes to who benefits, but at best they are zero sum. In reality they are not even that, as Effort must be expended just to shift who sits at what place at the table, so on net they reduce standard of living.
Regardless in small doses the arts and humanites as a whole have some value – particularly when they are not over run by political idiocy.
But again – small doses and small value – they are luxuries. Further they have no value at all if standard of living is not already high.
The sharecropper in the south a century ago, or the great plains farmer would not only gain no benefit from these, but would be worse off for wasting time on them – whether that is studying pagnini or the dynamics of race relations.
The humanitiues are a LUXURY – they are the PRODUCT of a wealthy society with a high standard of living.
They do not create that standard of living.
I am not opposed to alot of the education of the left. I am opposed to the fact that it has consumed both our primary secondary and higher education at the expense of productive education that actually makes us better off.
I would strongly suggest reading Maslow’s hierachy of needs. People who can not breath do not fixate on food and shelter. People who are starving do not fixate on cloths.
Completely separately there is left wing nut MISEDUCATION.
Whether you like it or not – Socialism is an abject failure. It has failed in practice everytime it has been tried – nearly always ending up repressive and even bloody – primarily BECAUSE it does not work. When it fails socialist must blame someone – because their utopian diamond can not fail absent evildoers interferance.
We see exactly this in the nonsense posts by you and others that PPACA failed because republicans magically caused it to fail.
Ignoring the fact that is total nonsense. You still have the real world problem that even it True – that is a failure of socialism.
In the real world systems must work with the people we have in the world we have.
I am all for better policing – but I am not sacrificing healthcare and engineering to move the best and the brightest to law enforcement or teaching. We must make the world work with the people we have.
Free individuals and free markets WORK in the real world. Socialism does not.
In your hypothetical world were PPACA could not survive against republican hostitlity – it still FAILED.
We do not have a free market – we have a mostly free market – and it succeeds despite all your efforts to F#$K it up.
Even in the USSR and communist countries – black markets arose because socialism failed to meet peoples needs.
All black markets are is the free market working in a world where free markets are illegal to meet peoples needs.
Regardless, left wing nuts ALWAYS attribute the failure of their precious socialism as a consequence of other evil actors.
Whether it is Mao’s capitalist roaders or the modern lefts hatred of billionaires – despite their own dependence on those billionaires.
The failures of the left often result in the shaming, prosecution torture and execution often publicly of anyone they think has gotten in their way. And if they can not find real obstacles that resulted in their failure – they will invent obstacles.
In the real world your ideology, your policies, your programs must work – even if many oppose them and try to thwart them.
Free markets are not perfect they do not work perfectly – they just work better than anything else.
And they work to meet peoples needs even in failed socialist governments.
Socilaism fails and is always looking for others to blame and frequently does so brutally.
If your solutions do not work in a world where many oppose – then your solutions are a FAILURE
In the real world for every 10 people there are 11 ideas as to how things should work.
Absolutely socialism should be taught in our schools – it should be taught exactly as it is a failure.
Teachers should examine examples of socialism and the analysis should explore why it failed in each instance.
But more important than that – students – in primary school, secondary school and college should be taught what they need to be productive in the world. To improve society – and contra the left you do not improve the world by advocating for causes.
You improve the world by producing things people value enough to trade the rewards of their own labor for.
I am not personally a huge fan of Bill gates. Regardless, in his creation of Microsoft and its products he has done a billion times more good than Mother Theresa has . Most everyone on the planet is better off for Bill Gates efforts.
A sudden switch from “Obamacare” to the PPACA?
“Most everyone on the planet is better off for Bill Gates efforts.”
Define “better.” Start with satisfaction with life and general happiness.
They could work for a conservative college, founded by conservatives, for conservatives, with conservative funding.
Somehow very few of those exist because there isn’t much demand for it.
No, no, no. It’s because the leftist university faculty does not have the skillset to successfully work in the productive economy anywhere outside of the cloistered university. And if they had the guts to apply to a job in the private sector, more likely than not during an initial interview they would be rejected as unemployable. Does anyone think that a private company would hire the likes Randi Weingarten or Todd Wolfson for anything?
It used to be that companies did in-house training and ran their own research and development groups that did basic science research. Then Ronald wiped out the tax incentives to do that and companies shifted training and research to universities.
Don’t like that arrangement?
Blame the companies for creating the situation and Reagan and Congress for making it profitable.
People generally do not choose to work where they are hated and discriminated against.
Regardless, Private universities can hire whoever they wish – so long as they are not subsidized by the government.
Public universities are not constitutional and are not the legitimatre role of govenrment.
I have no problems letting the free markets decide – so long as we are ACTUALLY dealing with free markets.
John Say, they are not “hated and discriminated against”. That’s quite a straw man.
They choose not to apply because there are better opportunities in the private sector. More money.
The free markets ARE deciding. Students are not demanding conservative professors or Republican professors.
It’s the poor credibility of conservative ideas or points of view that turn students off. They see it every day.
Conservatives are also required to pass on their merits not merely because they are discriminated against or are some sort of minority. Turley does want some sort of affirmative action applied for conservatives so there can be a ‘balance’ of ideologies. But…republicans are clearly against things such as affirmative actions and DEI.
Students are not demanding more conservative viewpoints enough to justify bringing on more conservative professors. There ARE conservative professors in these colleges and universities. They just don’t identify as such.
“John Say, they are not “hated and discriminated against”. That’s quite a straw man.”
Tell that to Charlie Kirk.
Sorry X those of you on the left are all hateful.
You are not all hateful to the same degree – but you are all far to tolerant of those who hate right up to and including those who murder people over ideas.
What conservative would ever seek to work in a university where a portion of those who disagree with him are so hatefilled as to be willing to kill them ?
Charlie Kirk was just a visiting speaker on campus’s. Further he brought his own security with him – because those of you on the left get violent when you lose arguments.
What professor can afford armed security to protect them on Campus ?
“They choose not to apply because there are better opportunities in the private sector. More money.”
When I was in college – and I would bet that is still true _even of professors on the left – most professors had outside gigs.
Many of my architecture professors also had architecture practices. My structures professors designed the structures for actual buildings and bridges. Even left wing professors today have outside economic interests.
One of the oddest things about the modern socialist left is how their real life behavior is INCREDIBLY capitalist.
I have ZERO problems with that.
What I have problems with is their hypocracy.
“The free markets ARE deciding. Students are not demanding conservative professors or Republican professors.”
End the goivernment subidies to colleges and see how long that lasts
Regardless, with exceptions – students are NOT paying for college. They would not have govenrment loans but for the fact that their parents cosigned the loans.
You are very confused about what a free market is.
It is NOT where you make free choices – and someone else pays.
That has a name – it is called MORAL HAZZARD – not free market.
“Conservatives are also required to pass on their merits”
ROFL
I tyhough we had to give minorities (except asians) oportunities because of their skin color not the merits.
I though we had to favor gays and muslims and trans because of their identity – not their merits ?
Has any socialist anywhere ever won a nobel prize for economics ?
Hayek, Coase, Freidman, Buchanon, Acemoglu, Olstrom, are just a small fraction of the clasical liberals – aka libertarians with Economics nobels ? Why is anyone allowed to teach socialism as an economic system if it is so intellectually bankrupt it does not have a single economics nobel ?
What is your actual idea of merit ?
Do you think before you spew this nonsense of yours?
You seem to conflate “merit” with personal preference.
You are free to have whatever personal preferences you want – though having preferences and getting what you prefer are NOT the same thing.
“not merely because they are discriminated against or are some sort of minority. ”
You do realize that sytatement is coming back to bite you in the ass over and over and over again ?
How in the world was a left wing nut like you even able to utter such as statement without choking on your own words.
Really, people actually earn their way in life through Merit ?
“Turley does want some sort of affirmative action applied for conservatives so there can be a ‘balance’ of ideologies.”
I have nowhere heard Turley – certainly I have never said that.
The need for conservative – and particularly libertarian voices on campus is because students are being piss poorly educated and it is a disservice to them. OIncreasing conserviativeds is not some affirmative action it is repair to the ideological damage being done to students. It is exposure to something other than the manifest lies of those on the left.
The lies one the left are appealing or no one would buy them. If all students here is the sweet tongued lies of the left many will be deceived and they will be harmed.
You keep refering to students. In what world is it that we structure education around the wishes of children ?
Parents do not let their toddlers jump off the garage roof because they think they are superman and can fly.
Most of the conflicts between parents and teens is centered on the fact that left on their own far too many teens will make poor choices that will follow them the rest of their lives. Even with parents struggling to protect their kids from bad decisions – STILL far too many teens still make choices that they pay for the rest of their lives.
If you know the world so well that you are able to chose what professors teach you – why are you in college at all ?
Any student who CHOOSES a socialist professor OBVIOUSLY does not have the requiste skills to make such a choice.
And again they are going to pay for that possibly through their lives.
Biden wanted to forgive over a trillion in student debt.
Absolutely not.
But I will fully support students who graduate with 100K in debt and a degree in underwater basket weaving or the equivalent suing the college fro Fraud and breech of contract.
Allow students to sue colleges for abetting their pursuing and education that will burden them with debt they will find almost impossible to repay and see how long before colleges bring in professors who teach students things of real value that actually work.
The mandate for the US Dept of Education should be to find a way to starve those teachers’ unions into nonexistence (and maybe that *is* the agenda here) and, when that has succeeded, itself evaporate into nonexistence. There is no valid authorization in the powers enumerated for the Federal government in the first three articles of the US Constitution for *any* involvement whatsoever in education. That is a responsibility lawfully left to the States.
FDR objection to public employee unions because, public employees have, “… special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.” is worth repeating here/
“Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.”
FDR was speaking of the employees of the federal government, but the rationale holds for public employees at all levels of all governments.
-g
While I agree with Professor Turley and many of the comments here today, I must also include my disdain for MSM and Google/Yahoo, etc. search results. These “sources” responding to search inquiries are rated “Left” or “Lean Left.”
What does this mean?
How does this manifest? In slanted, biased, WEIGHTED search results from programmed algorithms, –that lead students to infer one ideological conclusion over another.
e.g., read the abstract here:
https://arxiv.org/html/2410.23842v1
Lin,
It is great that you cited the University of Cambridge study, but it is important to look at why the researchers found that slight leftward skew rather than assuming it is a malicious programming choice.
If you read past the abstract into the full text, the study explicitly states that the researchers failed to find a meaningful direct relationship between political bias and an outlet appearing more in the results. In other words, the algorithm isn’t intentionally programmed to favor left-wing ideology.
Instead, the paper explains that the skew is a byproduct of popularity bias and a heavy algorithmic preference for national, legacy news outlets. Because traditional national media outlets are broadly consumed, the algorithm amplifies them based on user engagement and search engine optimization.
So, it isn’t a secret plot to lead students to a specific conclusion. It is a reflection of the market: the algorithm simply mirrors what the general public is already reading and clicking on.
X, of course, normal critical thinking should have caused you to understand that the word I used, “example,” ASSUMED (perhaps wrongly, knowing that it was you) that you would comprehend “context” and not base your response on a single example.
Your attempted argument fails on at least three basic premises, very typical of your M.O. in trying to change the argument:
(1) you skewered your comments to “researchers failed to find a meaningful direct relationship between political bias and an outlet appearing more in the results.”
I did not even mention “political bias.” I thought I said “left-leaning.”
(2) NOR did I even say that “the algorithm [was] intentionally programmed.” When you try to make an argument by
mischaracterizing the position of others, it sinks you fast.
(3) you completely missed the underlying hint that “popularity bias” is the result of limited/selective/filtered/weighted information flow.
(4) I particularly chose a non-biased conclusory example, that apparently went over your head.
If I wanted to use some more accusatory sources, there are sure plenty.
https://acekfund.org/2024/08/15/study-reveals-ai-algorithms-have-left-leaning-bias/
https://www.cato.org/commentary/how-did-ai-get-so-biased-favor-left
or maybe look up (since I can only attach two links):
“On the Inevitability of Left-Leaning Political Bias in Aligned Language Models”
or
“Scientists reveal ChatGPT’s left-wing bias — and how to ‘jailbreak it'”
or perhaps this is a good summary of my point:
“Bottom line. AI chatbots are biased, if ‘bias’ means a systematic tendency in outputs rather than a conscious political intention. The best recent evidence points to a left-of-center tilt in many major models on U.S. and European political questions. That does not mean every chatbot always gives liberal answers, or that every finding is equally strong. It means that, across several independent methods, a recurring pattern appears: when models are asked about contested political or social issues, their default framing often looks more liberal, progressive, or center-left than conservative.”
From “AI Chatbots are Liberal-Left Biased” by Jim Shimabukuro.
Sorry, X, not worth arguing with you when you are so very, er, biased.
Please, let’s get back on to today’s topic.
Thank you in advance. lin
I don’t understand your response here, Lin. You provide a link to a study that shows no causal relationship between political skew in news outlets and those outlets featuring more in search results. You use it to support your conclusion that you have “disdain” for search engines that are “rated” (by whom, I dunno, was passive voice intentional?) a certain political skew?
Thus, is your “disdain” with the free market? You want government intervention to require search engines to build some sort of political balance (in direct contravention with the free market results)?
Hello. Are you answering “anonymously” for X?
If you had at least perused the original example I cited (see “Background” section), you would see that it clearly outlines
“While algorithms, acting as gatekeepers, help users sort through the information overload common in the digital age, they are not free from bias, despite what some ideas of having these allegedly neutral alternatives might suggest [10, 209-214], [4, 182], [5], [9, 45,49–50]. Algorithmic biases might be hidden in systems even for those who develop it [20, 331], [21, 11-12], [22]. These biases can be technical, such as the criteria for selecting and ranking news, or stem from the humans who design them, reflecting their values and beliefs [10].”
THAT IS ALL THAT I WAS SAYING, no more, no less.
To your other comment:
Google and Yahoo search results have been rated Left or Lean Left by independent AllSides and MediaBias/FactCheck.
Not me.
No, I do not want government intervention. I do want more information to students/readers/viewers as to independently-rated biases. Remember when movies were rated “PG” and “X?” Susceptible students might be warned to check the bias ratings of their sources, that’s all, folks.
thanks, let’s get back on topic.
Absent government regulation, a company is free to use whatever biased algorithm it wants. If you don’t like Google because you don’t like its outputs, then don’t use Google.
If you are narrowingly your focus to wanting to spread the word about bias, the good news is —- Information is already available regarding the inherent bias in algorithms.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/11/16/public-attitudes-toward-computer-algorithms/
Here is a Pew poll from pre-AI 2018 that shows 58% of Americans feel that computer programs will always reflect some level of human bias.
Here is a more updated AI-specific poll with similar results: https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2025-ai-index-report/public-opinion
This poll shows that only 41% agree with the following: “I trust artificial intelligence to not discriminate or show bias towards any group of people.”
So basically the same results.
Thus, I don’t understand what you are upset about? Why do you not think readers are aware of bias? Is it perhaps due to your own bias?
?
^clearly X/Geo, hiding as anonymous.
Why did you attach links relating to ‘public perception’ of bias? Did you notice that she or he, aka lin, cited INDEPENDENT STUDIES AnD RESEARCH?
Also, aren’t we talking about STUDENTS and EDUCATION, so why are you linking to ADULTS who respond to polls?
Even worse, who is talking about “readers” here?
“Is it perhaps due to your own bias?”
Lin notes above that “I do want more information to students/readers/viewers as to independently-rated biases.”
What would the purpose of that be? To inform readers that there is bias. But, what I showed is — most people already know there is bias.
Same thing with news media. The vast majority knows CNN is liberal and Fox is conservative. That doesn’t mean they won’t still consume that media. What use would a movie-style rating system provide if folks already know the answer? Movies are rated because we specifically DON’T know whether something will be PG vs PG-13, etc.
Turley was talking about STUDENTS and how much they may or may NOT know about what appears to be reliable information from authoritative sources. Is that you, X?
Nope, that’s definitely not me. But it is a good point this ‘anonymous’ made.
“Hello. Are you answering “anonymously” for X?”
lin, as you already must know, GSX is an ignorant liar who has used multiple names and is a liar.
ATS – no one needs a study to determine that search engines and the internet are politically skewed.
Just as people have correctly assessed much of the MSM as skewed.
Nor do I overall care that the search engines are skewed. Both I and “the general public” are capable of dealing with that.
Nearly every dystopia ever written has at its foundation the distortion of language and information by the left.
Probably because the left has been doing that since the French revolution.
Yet despite the best efforts of the left to follow Orwells recipe and bring about that dystopia – they have FAILED.
You can fool all of the people some of the time.
you can fool some of the people all of the time.
But you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
I do not pay much attention to popular opinion on an issue – particularly in the moment.
I pay more attention as “the general public” – “the great unwashed” has had longer to digest.
I pay the most attention to what they are willing to DO as opposed to what they say.
And most of the time they ultimately get it right.
They do so DESPITE the efforts of the left to distort reality.
A MAJOR part of this is that over the long run – somethings work, and others do not.
People are heavily influenced by success and failure.
As to “studies” – I have a great deal of respect to real science. But the left has so trashed much of science that there is very little of that going on. Advances only occur in areas that are near infinitely distant from politics – and even in those domains any field where one voice has become dominant ends up stuck for decades until that voice retires.
A few years ago a Physics nobel was awarded for work done in crystalography that proved critical in modern semiconductor advances.
The work was 5 decades old. It had been burried and scoffed at for a generation, because a few people dominated the physics of crystalography and crushed anything that challenged their work.
We have seen this over and over in both hard and soft sciences.
Science is incredibly important but it is fragile and has historically been stalled for decades by politics of all kinds.
I am not much interested in a “study” that contradicts what I and most ordinary people KNOW of the world – until it has been conducted with extreme statistical rigor, and double blind approaches if it can not be conducted with total control of variables, been replicated multiple times and demonstrated very strong statistical significance.
Lin, it is deeply ironic that you are lecturing me on ‘critical thinking’ when your entire rebuttal relies on a massive category error.
You are completely conflating two entirely different technologies: Google’s web search index and Generative AI chatbots (LLMs).
The Cambridge paper you originally cited audited Google Search—a tool that indexes existing web pages published by human journalists. Every single link you just provided to ‘prove’ your point is a study about AI Chatbots and Large Language Models like ChatGPT. An AI chatbot generates text based on its training data; Google Search retrieves actual human-written websites based on traffic and SEO. Dropping ChatGPT studies into a discussion about Google’s search index is a total logical disconnect. That’s how critical thinking works.
You claim you didn’t mention ‘political bias,’ only ‘left-leaning.’ ‘Left-leaning’ is a description of political bias. The Cambridge study explicitly labeled this metric as ‘Political Bias’ on a scale of -3 to +3. Quoting the study’s exact terminology isn’t changing the argument; it’s using the data accurately. Did you read the study at all? I did.
If you agree the algorithm isn’t intentionally programmed to favor an ideology, then you agree with my point. It is driven by public demand, recency, and market popularity.
The study explains that ‘popularity bias’ simply reflects what the general public is already actively reading and clicking on. The algorithm isn’t creating a ‘selective filter’ out of thin air; it is mirroring existing public consumption habits
You can try to escape a flawed argument by pivoting to AI chatbots and hurling insults about my reading comprehension. But using a completely unrelated technology to defend your misuse of a search engine study doesn’t save your premise.
But I agree with your final sentence: let’s definitely get back to the topic. Have a great day.
HA HA ROLF! Hilarious! So CUTE!
X somehow thinks that Lin was only talking about AI.
X, try to read more carefully.
THEN try to comprehend what you read.
lin mentions “MSM and Google/Yahoo search results”
DO YOU UNDERSTAND, little X, that Google and Yahoo (and much of MSM) RARELY CREATE THEIR OWN CONTENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are aggregators collecting OTHER content from LLMs, Chatbots, AI cumulatives, and media sources, including MSM. MSM also gets much of its material from AI and social media.
And where did you get the sh!t that Google only collects content “published by human journalists.” You can’t be that ignorant to not understand where the journalists GET their content.
Geezz, I can’t even believe how ignorant you are.
BTW, “political bias,” is NOT a transitional word for ‘left-leaning,’ athough political bias is most often included when describing something as left leaning. What a simple mind you have. Maybe no mind at all–it’s all AI !!!!! ha ha ha
Lin is right.
And she (I assume; it could be he) includes some pretty straightforward and academic hyperlinks.
YOU, in turn, have no idea what you are talking about; you learn as you go along, lifting text from AI, and pretend to prevail. You really have NO idea what you are talking about. Just STFU and sit down and behave yourself. Suck your thumb for awhile. You may feel better.
Oh, I forgot to sign in. Don’t want to play the anonymous game like X did when he was afraid to respond to her.
George says, “An AI chatbot generates text based on its training data; Google Search retrieves actual human-written websites based on traffic and SEO.”
Can George/X be that much of a simp?
X no one needs a study or AI chatbots to know the Sun will rise tomorow.
People do not need experts from Cambridge to tell them that things are biased.
With respect to AI – While there are differences between google searches and AI.
Both are forms of pattern matching. Both have as their source very nearly the same dataset.
Google and other search engines “algorithms” are different forms of pattern matching that AI, and are easier to skew independent of the actual underlying data. But both are extremely sensitive to the quality of the underlying data.
The problems with AI are self evident with the problems with Wikipedia.
While Wikipedia is small in comparison to the data that is normally digested to produce the matrices and calculus that drives AI pattern matching – that is just a question of scale. AI is as skewed as the data set it rests on.
Even in areas like computer programming AI makes errors – because the data that it relies on to provide answers contains errors.
If I ask AI to generate code that uses an API that has been changed repeatedly over the past several years – the likelyhood that AI generates code that will not work is high. And that is not about Skews of bias it is just about innocent problems in the underlying data.
One must never forget all the underlying data that AI operates off of is HUMAN data,
It is possible – even likely that over time AI will get better at applying the rules of logic to the human data that it is analyzing – and that may well eliminate some or all political skew. In terms that YOU will likely understand – when AI starts looking for examples of successful socialism, rather than narrowly regurgitating skewed data from humans opinions – the left is likely to be in trouble.
The economy is incredibly complex trillions of things are all happening concurrently. But the rules that drive economics are not very complex. AI can eventually learn the rules and validate them against real world data and reject lots of nonsense that just does not work.
Due to the specific ways that AI works – while it is subject to inherit the biases in the underlying data – AI algorithms(as opposed to underlying data) are much harder to skew whether politically or otherwise than search engine algorithms.
There is some excelent material on AI algoritms on Youtube by 3blue1brown that if you can digest – warning there is alot of calculus in AI – but it is mostly massive amounts of very simple calculus, you will get a better grasp on AI’s strengths and weaknesses.
Trying to manipluate AI algorithms in the way that search engines manipulate algorithms will with near certaintly result in a cascade of errors.
AI uses calculus to process massive amounts of training data to produce coefficients for matrices that enable it to find patterns in data it has not been trained on. A human programmer – without using calculus could do essentially the same thing – but the human would produce matrix coefficients that are completely different. ones that actually made sense to humans, and could be tweaked by humans. AI produces coefficients to find patterns that appear completely random and meaningless to humans. You can not tweak those coefficients because even though they contain knowledge – they reflect the patterns that the calculus found – not the ones humans find and they are completely meaningless to us.
AI is just massive and unbeleivably fast pattern matching.
X tried to use clicks on the interent as a measure of “The general public”. I demonstrated how that is NOT even close to a reliable measure – using a HUGE counter example – search for anything climate related and you will get hundreds of links of doom and gloom.
You can blame the algorithm or anything else you want – but if that mass of links actually reflected “the General Public” the night sky globally would be as dark as it is in North Korea because there would be almost no electricity at night.
You can attempt myriads of different measures of peoples views on CAGW – but what you can not find is outside fo a tiny left wing fringe people willing to ACT. And even god judges people on what they DO not what they say.
AI is essentially using the same data as google is – LITERALLY, and with near certainty will produce the same results as google does.
The good news is that if you ask AI “how to toggle GPIO32 on an ESP32 in the arduino IDE” – with an incredibly high likelyhhood you will get the right answer.
If you ask what was the total amount of oil to transit the straits of Hormuz yesterday – within a reasonable margin of error the answer is likely to be correct.
But if you ask pretty much any question that is is either not objectively measurable or which the left has distorted the data on the internet – you will get a misleading answer.
It is even true that you get different answers based on the language you use to ask the question.
Ask AI about tianamen square in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English and you will get 3 different answers.
I am personaly a HUGE supporter of AI. I have said for a long time that this is bigger than the industrial revolution, it is bigger than the internet. It is bigger than the smart phone. This is the most disruptive advance in human standard of living that has ever occured.
But all that said – IT IS NOT intelligence. It is extremely fast pattern matching. It is NOT “artificial Intelligence” it is not “Super Intelligence”
Someday – but not likely in my lifetime or my childrens lifetime it MAY reach intelligence. But not any time soon.
Further barely mentioned in the AI debate is that while AI has suddenly exploded into the public eye and again its ability to exponentially increase our productivity is beyond comprehansion and we are not using a tiny fraction of that capability today,
At the same time – AI is already hitting a wall that we do not today and will not likely in the next generation have a way arround.
We are at the limits of silicon logic. We can not go much smaller, we can not go much faster – do not get me wrong we are far from done improvements. But long gone are the days of a doubling every 18 months. Baring advances in basic science that we are only at the very beginings of, we have only a few more doublings left in silicon logic and those doublings will each take many times longer than in the past. I have no doubt eventualy humans will get past this wall – but again not in my lifetime. or likely my childrens.
That puts a cap on the capabilities of AI AI will exploit the advances in silicon that do occur, and it will exploit advances in algorithms that will also occur over time. But the big advance from AI will not be what it can do in the future, but what it is already capable of doing that we have not begun to exploit.
Regardless AI is not a 1960s science fiction book about robots taking over the world and exterminating humans. AI is NOT actually intelligent – infact Humans do not as of yet have any good understanding of what intelligence actually is, and without that we are highly unlikely to accidentally create it.
What AI can do is make humans exponentially more productive – just like the industrial revolution.
As noted above in areas of controversy AI is flawed in that it is constrained by the available information that has been all provided by HUMANS. Ask AI about Global Warming and it will summarize what Google will give you. It does not THINK about the answer. It does not ANALYZE the answer. It is pattern matching.
it is possible – even likely that over time – possibly not much time some LIMITED logical analysis can be incorporated.
And that would be INCREDIBLY damaging to the left. What happens when AI goes through all the P values of all the climate science studies and rejects those with no statistical significance ? Or compares the predictions of papers to what has actually occured and finds they are 2/5 std dev off and rejects them ?
Further most of these “logic” improvements are going to be incredibly difficult to spin ideologically.
I do not rule anything out – but the primary skew to AI is in the raw data. While Google Searches are skewed by the choices of the programmers.
X – ever the apologist for the failures of the left.
First you invoke the general public as your impramatur.
Yet the FACT is that the general public is abandoning the left.
I do not care about polls – those measure the wrong things. They measure what people say – not what they do.
Slowly from the creation of Fax to the present – the consumers of the media have been leaving the increasingly hysterical left leaning media while the growing body of right leaning media is mostly doing well.
This is people “voting” in the free market – and what they are saying is – we do not value the left.
The left wing MSM is being sold off to billionaires – not because Billionaires are desparate to control the media – but because the left wing nut media has destroyed itself and fewer and fewer are viewing or paying attention.
That is “the general public” speaking loud and clear.
with respect to the specific issues of search engines etc. I value google and wikipedia and other sources that have been poluted by the left.
There are unpoluted alternatives and I make use of them. But google and Wikipedia are still useful – particularly to undermine left wing nuts like you. When wikipedia or Google or the NYT or Wapo is at odds with the left – YOU LOSE – almost no one supports you, and the argument is over.
Beyond that – “the general public” is far better than you credit them with sorting out the garbage. Google nearly always provides the right answer to questions, or the raw data to do your own analysis – if you ask the question right, or if you sort through enough obvious hokum .
Absolutely Google and the left have tried to engineer the internet to “circle back” to left wing nut points of view.
And absolutely we all have to click through an incredible amount of left wing nut garbage to get to the truth.
Actual viewers of left wing nut media is a REAL measure of the relevance of the left.
Clicks are not – becuas eyou have FORCED us all to click through alot of left wing nut garbage before we get to a source that is reliable.
When I do a search I often have to review a dozen left wing nut sources before I find a credible objective source.
So left wing nut here claimed the reflecting pool was drained and fenced off from the public.
I had to search alot of idiotic left wing nut sources before I found a photo of the reflecting pool from two days ago,
That showed a low fence to impede left wing nuts from destroying the reflecting pool. But the pools was full of water.
Now maybe I am wrong and it was drained in the past day or so. Or maybe the date on the photo is wrong.
But far more likely is that the left wing nut posting just made things up.
Regardless, I had to click on alot of biased left wing sources to get to a photo from a day or so ago – NOT some reporter left or rights rantings. All those clicks are driving the algoithm.
And YOU are busy claiming that the way that google plays hide the ball, generating fake clicks for the left, is somehow reflective of the general public ?
One of the things you were supposed to learn in School was critical thinking.
At the must fundimental level that means not taking absolutely everything you are told at face value.
Adam Smith did amazing work to write “the wealth of nations” in a world where very little data was collected, he was absolute to feret out from what data did exist good approximations of the changes in the standard of living of nations over time and the causes of those changes.
Today people have a different variation of the same problem. We have infinite numbers of sources telling us what we should beleive.
We have nearly unlimited data, and nearly unlimited analysis of that data.
But we must still do exactly what Smith did – and determine what data can be trusted and what can not, and also to look at that data and sus out what it really means – not what we are told it means.
A beautiful example of this is Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Even left wing nuts are starting to grasp that to the small extent people EVER had an interest – they have mostly lost interest.
The left has spent 4+ decades shilling nonsense to us – mostly as an excuse to take over the world – and BTW a pretty overt one at that.
Over those 4 decades the planet has warmed – just as it has done for the past 250 years since the bottom of the little ice age.
“the General Public” has heard all this nonsense about CAGW, and if you poll people – it is likely the majority of people even beleive humans are warming the planet. But outside left wing nuts this has NEVER resulted in a consequential political force to do anything about it – to take it seriously. “The General Public” does not understand the science, but in fact they STILL got it right. Despite being bombarded constantly – CAGW has almost completely dropped off peoples lists of concerns and it NEVER rose to the level of public interest the histrionics of the left demanded.
Yet if you google Global Warming – you will have to click though hundreds of links of varying dgrees of nonsense to get to anything that accurately reflects the views of your “the general public”
So if a google search does not come close to reflecting “the general publics” views on CAGW – why would you think it is an accurate measure of their views on anything else ?
You are making the typical left wing mistake of trying to force the data to fit your thesis.
One of the things I would demand from not just a College education – but even a HS education is education in processing an analyzing statitsics and data. The very good news is that on a nationwide scale given enough time ordinary people are suprisingly good at it.
They have CORRECTLY discerned – without extensive scientific knowledge or statistical analysis that the left is Full of Schiff regarding CAGW – or more accurately – they have tuned you out – you are the boy who cried wolf. Most people do not know that nearly all the claims cited by the left are statistical nonsense – that the average climate scientist does not have a clue what statistical significance actually means. Most climate scientists are the people who flunked out of Physics in college – thank god.
Regardless despite “the general public’s” lack of the requisite education in analysis and critical thinking – over a long enough period they nearly always get it right.
Those of you on the left constantly engauge in directed thinking – you form a hypothisis and then try to force some kind of data to fit your hypothisis. Your claim that the measures (clicks) that google etc are using to gauge “the general public” are OBVIOUSLY flawed.
My CAGW example is just ONE refutation of that claim.
I would bet that i you queried the ordinary person on the street they would SAY all the tings the left wants they to say about CAGW.
and they likely believe what you are telling them. But they have not been motivated to ACT on it. They do not VOTE as if what you claim is true.
Even though few could explain why CAGW is scientific garbage – and again most beleive and would repeat as their beleives what the left has told them, they still do NOT ACT as if those beleifs are true – because below their conscious level they KNOW they are not.
You keep appealing to “the general public” – but you do not know how to measure “the general public” – and you only beleive measures of the general public that confirm what YOU beleive to be true.
Both facts quoted by Professor Turley (“The ABA now represents just 17 percent of the bar” and “The AAUP currently has roughly 50,000 members. There are an estimated 1.5 million university and college professors in the United States” are very encouraging.
Thanks to the Democrat-biased MSM, who love to give them air time whenever possible, we might think there are a whole lot more members of both because of their shrieking speeches.
The need for school choice and cutting off federal tax dollars from teachers unions and universities has never been more clear.
And, thankfully due to the internet and a few remaining independent sources of journalism, the MSM has never been at a lower point in both credibility and viewership.
x
Professor Turley,
The questions provided in this “National Call” demonstrate how ignorant the US Department of Education under McMahon’s leadership really is.
Consider these two questions included in the announcement:
“How will your institution protect the free exchange of ideas, wide-ranging debate, and openminded campus discourse? And how will you guarantee that unruly and violent protestors do not harass students or disrupt classes, research, public lectures, and
campus operations?”
“How will your institution encourage intellectual pluralism in all its academic units? How will your faculty hiring and evaluation practices support academic vitality and ensure that all relevant perspectives are taken seriously? And how will your school ensure the research enterprise is dedicated to advancing knowledge, deepening understanding, and serving the American people who fund it?”
If a university “encourages intellectual pluralism,” it is necessarily NOT a “free exchange of ideas.” If the university sets out to higher equal numbers of conservatives and liberals, it is not a free marketplace of ideas. It is putting its fingers on the dial. That is equivalent to saying — if the US requires equal amounts of steel to be imported from China and the EU, then we have a free marketplace of goods. Obviously, that is not a free marketplace.
A free exchange of ideas allows good ideas to win over bad ideas. If a university only hires liberals, then students who want something else should choose with their feet and move to other universities. And that is what we actually see happening.
It is so concerning that neither the US Department of Education nor yourself know what a free marketplace is – especially considering how it is a focus of your book. Please think critically before you blindly support the current administration.
hire* sorry.
The current education system from elementary school to university have become indoctrination camps. There purpose is more social engineering than education. They are producing an entire generation of young people who have been manipulated to be anti American, anti capitalist, pro socialist, Marxist. We must stop the push to become a socialist country.
It’s for the lower classes only.
What you say is absolutely true. But you stop short of real truth. No govt federal, state or local should financially support institutions which dont meet the criteria of true diversity intellectually or otherwise.
The market place is already at work. University enrollment is declining. Students and parents are voting with their feet and $. Institutions can either wake up and correct their bias or die.
Great! That is how the free market works, not through government mandate.
As a parent, I would actually learn something from the university’s response before I ever got to the answers.
The Department of Education isn’t telling the university what to teach or how to teach it. The letter asks the university to show what it is doing and how it is doing it.
So if a university chose not merely to decline, but to actively oppose that request, that’s when I would ask “why?”
Not “Why do you teach this way?” But “why do you object to showing me what you’re doing and how you’re doing it?”
As a parent about to spend a great deal of money sending my child there, the objection itself would make me skeptical.
That’s information too. And then I can vote with my feet and my dollars.
A substantial portion of the information requested is already publicly available on most college websites.
Under existing federal law, colleges are already mandated to publicly host Net Price Calculators and disclose clear cost-of-attendance breakdowns.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action (SFFA v. Harvard), most universities have already publicly updated and published their revised, compliance-based admissions criteria
Many state systems and private universities already publicly host institutional statements on free expression (such as adoptions of the Chicago Principles)
You can see from UNC’s response that they rely heavily on pulling already-existing public policies together that have addressed these issues for years.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/08/20/how-unc-system-responded-mcmahons-call-action
Good. As long as they show both the what and how then that provides the transparency parents/students need.
Competition is what is needed at the k-12 level. If states would attach education tax dollars to the student, rather than the school district. a sea of competitive private schools would rise up for those dollars. Unfortunately, teacher’s unions have the dem lawmakers of each state have their balls tightly in the grips of those unions who depend on that tax money so that they can donate a large part of it to their progressive institutions, PACs and politicians of their choosing
Private schools are not subject to accountability requirements of public schools. Parents cannot actually compare the two, meaning the “competition” is not based on performance.
Moreover, the successful private schools do not need to accept vouchers, thus creating a system where the public dollars are really only going to the crappy private schools.
I am no fan of teachers’ unions, but the proper way to ensure competition based on academic performance is to limit public funds to public schools (including charter schools).
Some want there to be exposure to diversity, dissension and debate from [all] our universities, while others would have universities become full fledged homogeneous cultures divided into separate and distinct indoctrination centers. For a nation wrestling with the curse of acute polarization and collapse brought about by extreme divisiveness, the former offers a hopeful reversal. The latter, however, most assuredly only hastens our dissolution.
There is an interesting case of gang rape at Cornell University. Jane Doe gave a statement to police in 2024 that included doping, drinking, bar hoping and three way sex.
Let’s see where this goes.
She’s exposing the Cornell culture, fraternities and the mentality of males. I doubt it’s for any other reason other than think twice before enrolling if female. She participated as part of the culture.
Well, now we have poked the dragon in it’s underbelly and it is screaming loudly. Did that dragon truly believe that we couldn’t see what has happened to education these past 60+ years? I am glad that the republicans took their heads out of the sand (or their posteriors – which ever suits the description better) and finally noticed the destruction that our media/education industry has caused to several generations of young people and to our cultural institutions as well. I doubt, at this point, short of a catastrophe of some magnitude, that we can totally undo the poisoning of our society.
I agree. The tipping point was passed sometime back.
I was on campus in 1968-69 and when the Kent State shootings occurred and the campuses went into riot stage, I noticed that professors who had appeared prior to this as staid profs in tweed jackets with elbow patches emerged on to protest sites leading the bewildered/frightened students in protest speeches and sit-ins. It appeared that these progressives had just been camouflaging themselves in the academic sphere, like locusts silently living underground, until the right time for their emergence to do destruction to the world. Not all of them, but there were considerable numbers come to light. I also received a letter from a childhood friend who had been attending Kent State at that time and she said that she was totally unaware of the student protests happening and that if she had not been late for class, she would have, unknowingly, walked right through the center of that shooting. it illustrates that a good many students, at that time, were not engaged in the activism being pushed on campuses.
it illustrates that a good many students, at that time, were not engaged in the activism being pushed on campuses.
Agreed. I do not know of nor know personally any STEM PhD / MD students / trainees at my state university involved in these types of activities. Given my ethnic and medical career, I’d be a go-to person for them. If anything many of the ones with whom I interact complain they do not like their peers. There is a demand from these students for role models. Many retirees would do well to step up and do just that regardless of educational background.
why do you pretend to be a licensed physician?
Right, a tiny fraction of those generations of the time period have been magnified.
Last night, on the FNC, Rahm Emanuel distanced himself from both the progressive and traditional wings of the DNC by taking on the dismal state of American education. Of all the potential DNC candidates for POTUS in the 2028 election, Emanuel could be a real threat. The others are mostly lunatics with small but loud followings.
If he expects to carry this banner, Emanuel will have to confront the likes of Weingarten and Wolfson. To placate them, he would have to endorse their bad policies but I think he’s smart enough to know that an issue as powerful and potentially game-changing as education cannot be defended on the status quo and the views of those like Weingarten and Wolfson.
An old Chinese proverb says, “In chaos, there are opportunities.” Emmanuel may be thinking of this.
“Rahm Emanuel distanced himself ”
Emanuel was one of the principal enablers of Obama and his agenda, which led directly to the Democrat advocated Marxism on display today. He has zero credibility in this corner, he is most likely only trying to get back on the political stage in any way, shape, or form he can. I say let him continue to wither away into total obsolescence, and good riddance to him.
The good professor calls Weingarten and Wolfson (sounds like a snake pit law firm in Philly or Baltimore, …, no?) “two of the most polarizing and political figures in teaching.” While both people are turbocharged polarizing political insects, the problem with his label, of course, is that it misidentifies their line of work. It is not “teaching” in which they engage, but instead is blatant indoctrination. Some of it is Marxist in nature; some of it is racist in nature; but all of it is hypocritical and irrational in nature.
It is interesting that Weingarten, who is a childless lesbian, is allegedly an advocate for the education of children. She is just an activist.
“It is not “teaching” in which they engage, but instead is blatant indoctrination”
Agreed, they are propaganda specialists equal to any formerly employed by the USSR.
we need to reinstate the band of public unions by government employees, just like North Carolina
Mostly yes, if you mean the US. Public employees could usually join unions, but for decades governments refused to bargain with them, and strikes were banned outright. The 1919 Boston police strike, broken by Governor Calvin Coolidge, hardened that view, and even FDR wrote in 1937 that collective bargaining “cannot be transplanted into the public service.”
Key steps in how that changed:
• 1902–1912: Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Taft issued “gag orders” barring federal workers from lobbying Congress. The Lloyd–La Follette Act (1912) overturned them and protected federal workers’ right to join unions, though not to bargain or strike.
• 1947–1955: Taft-Hartley banned strikes by federal employees, and a 1955 law made striking a federal crime.
• 1959: Wisconsin became the first state to let public employees bargain collectively. Many states followed in the 1960s and 70s.
• 1962: President Kennedy’s Executive Order 10988 gave federal workers limited collective bargaining rights. This is usually seen as the big turning point.
• 1978: The Civil Service Reform Act wrote federal bargaining rights into law. The strike ban stayed in place, which is why Reagan could fire the striking air traffic controllers (PATCO) in 1981.
It still varies by state today. North Carolina, for example, prohibits public-sector collective bargaining, and Virginia lifted its ban only in 2021.
If you meant a different country, such as Croatia, the history is quite different, and I’m happy to go into that instead.