From the very beginning, the Left loves, and I mean really loves, thinking that they are superior to others.
The essence of Democrat slavery was that white people were superior and blacks should be slaves. They even claimed that blacks were better off as slaves to white Democrats than they were on their own.
After slavery, the same principle applied and the Democrats embraced Jim Crow. The essence of segregation was the superiority of white Democrats to blacks.
Then racism fell out of favor.
The new principle is that Leftists/Democrats are smarter, wiser, and generally better people. Since skin color is no longer justification for this feeling, they choose to justify it with pieces of paper they hang on their wall.
If you go to one of their Leftist elite schools you are a better, superior person, who exists on a higher plane that your fellow men who didn’t go to prestigious universities.
Hence this Tweet thread:
Question for conservatives: Why are the more selective colleges also more left-wing?
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 7, 2022
College students as a whole are very left-wing but Harvard students are much more left-wing than average.
Similarly NAS finds faculty are even more left-wing at the schools with the highest US News rankings.https://t.co/r0iCQAcioh pic.twitter.com/UzB023crjG
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 7, 2022
Similarly this paper finds that lawyers who attended more selective law schools (and more selective colleges) are more liberal than the average lawyer and that (relatedly) attorneys at the top firms are more liberal.https://t.co/XBJoNqwOIz
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 7, 2022
The paradox is that high IQ correlated with left-wing cultural politics but left-wing politics correlated with aversion to talking about IQ.
Conservatives don’t have that taboo but the argument is uncomfortable for them.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 7, 2022
We do have to ask where are the conservative fathers in all this? https://t.co/G0JMZBiDYh
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 7, 2022
Several points.
First, I have never heard a Conservative say to a kid getting good grades “you’re acting liberal.” That’s a ridiculous strawman.
Second, it’s utterly wrong to equate the prestige of a university with IQ.
The Left loves exclusivity and to segregate themselves from those they believe are less than they are.
The most prestigious universities are outright hostile to conservatives. Few decide to go there to work as professors or study as students.
They become simply Leftist echo chambers that convinced themselves they are that because they are so smart, not intolerant and hostile to those they disagree with.
Harvard isn’t filled with the smartest kids. Its filled with mostly above average IQ kids who cone from wealthy and well connected Liberal families from those regions of the country.
Don’t tell me Harvard is exclusively America’s highest IQ students when David Hogg is there.
I’d go further and say that the selection of majors at these schools doesn’t appeal to conservatives outside a few programs like law and medicine.
If you really want to learn chemistry or engineering, you don’t go to Harvard.
Reality is that there are many very smart kids who are at other schools not because they lack the brains to get into Harvard but because they lack parents with money and influence.
So they go to big state schools which are considered less prestigious and therefore are not echo chambers of Leftism.
I’d stack the brain power of a Missouri Tech, Purdue, U Alabama Huntsville, or any other flyover country school if mines and technology against any Ivy League kid any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Anyone who watched the videos of Yale students shrieking Woke platitudes at Nicholas Christakis over his Halloween costume email can’t think those kids are geniuses.
Neither were the Yale kids who protested Justice Brett Kavanagh teaching a class there demonstrating their intelligence by having screaming temper tantrums and hiding in safe spaces with cookies and play dough.
They were demonstrating their Leftism in an echo chamber.
The simple answer to this mostly rhetorical question is:
Ivy Leagues drive out anyone who isn’t a Leftist with a campus culture.
Ivy Leagues see only Leftists on campus and say therefore Leftists are the smartest based on past rankings.
Honestly, this is one of the reasons why my administration will seize the Ivy League endowments, to spite this academic hot box where Leftists go to inhale their own farts.
Yes, UAH educates NASA and Missile types; you know, rocket scientists. B-b-b-ut, they’re flyover country rocket scientists, with funny accents…
“Harvard isn’t filled with the smartest kids. Its filled with mostly above average IQ kids …”
Citation needed. Harvard accepted that halfwit David Hogg, after all.
I said mostly. Clearly Hogg isn’t included in that group.
Still not true, just look at the morons in government and big tech/businesses that “graduated” from Havard.
“Harvard isn’t filled with the smartest kids. Its filled with wannabe commie kids from everybody-gets-a-trophy helicopter parents…”
There, FIFY.
^^That, right there.
Yeah, I’ve never heard this “acting liberal” bullshit. Seems like something they made up just to make themselves sound smarter.
The problem with his premise is that it ignores discrimination against conservatives. The more liberal, the more discrimination against conservatives. This has nothing to do with any IQ bell curve vs. politics correlation.
Law isn’t a science. A law school is a fancy trade school, no different in purpose to what you would attend to learn to be an electrician. In both cases, you’re exposed to the practice of the trade. Neither involves science. Well, in theory you could teach the relevant branch of science in either place: electrical engineering in electrician school, or Constitutional theory in law school. But neither has much relevance to the trade. Consider how much importance is given to “precedent” in law study, even though from a principles point of view precedent really doesn’t matter at all. If a given case has a correct answer given by constitution and law, that’s the answer whether precedent exists or not, and whether precedent agrees. “Stare decisis” is merely an excuse for sticking with a wrong answer because someone else, some years ago, made that decision.
Meanwhile, back to the original point. If you were to consider fields where intelligence actually makes a difference, i.e., the STEM fields, would you find a predominance of liberals there? I’m not so sure. When the real world is in control, it’s much harder to sustain liberal delusions. If you think math or physics is a matter of opinion or of racial group membership, I’d invite you to step off the roof of that skyscraper to confirm your theory.
Good point, my kid went to engineering school and he and his friends are decidedly conservative and contemptuous of left wing behavior.
“First, I have never heard a Conservative say to a kid getting good grades “you’re acting liberal.” That’s a ridiculous strawman”
That’s because it isn’t a strawman.
It is a take on black culture where a black kid working hard to get good grades is told “you’re acting white”. And then peer pressure is applied to get the kid to act more “black.”
So that wasn’t a dig on Conservatives, it was a darn good zinger.
Other than that, spot on.
On top of all the other points you brought out, in collage, many conservative kids keep their mouths shut and their heads down until they are out. It is dangerous or perceived as dangerous to be a conservative on most collage campuses.
The most neutral points that you made should be accepted by anyone.
Ivy leagues are ridiculously expensive and that removes the ability for otherwise qualified students to attend.
I’ve leagues are not the best colleges for every major; no one is going to Yale to study engineering (do they even have an engineering program?) If they get into MIT, WPI, Cal Tech, etc.
If you really want to learn chemistry or engineering, you don’t go to Harvard.
This, right here.
If you don’t have an interest in law or medicine, don’t go to Harvard. There are much better schools — some of them are even Ivy League, but the ones with the best of the best academic programs aren’t.
If you want the ability to rub elbows and circle-jerk with alumni — and maybe use those “skills” to go into politics someday — you can go to Harvard. Outside of law and medicine (and sometimes within them), that’s about all you get. That, and a six-figure student debt unless you come from Big Money.
But if you want to be really good at a practical, real-world, STEM-based career, you go someplace else.
That’s the difference. It’s not that conservatives aren’t as smart because fewer go to Harvard. It’s that conservatives tend to favor the practical — and so tend to choose other schools — while Leftists love themselves a good circle-jerk.
It is the party of perverts and pedos, after all.
Answer for Mr. Yglesias:
Conservative students know where they aren’t wanted and choose to attend colleges that truly value diversity of thought instead of insular left wing echo chambers.
Also your strawman contains enough bovine excrement to fertilize every acre of arable land in the Willamette Valley, twice. Conservatives place a high value on hard work, good grades, punctuality and other virtues derided as “whiteness”.
Agree with most of this JKb, but speaking as a chemist, employed in the pharma industry, being accepted into the graduate school of chemistry at Harvard you would be foolish to pass up that opportunity simply because a majority of the students and faculty are rapid leftists. Besides, you’re going to be in lab >60 hours a week. You won’t care about your PI’s political leanings because he/she is just a hardass standing between you and graduating. I mean this in all sincerity, you will not have the time to give a shit about the various political insanity going on around you.
Is Harvard the number 1 chemistry program in the country, in my opinion no, but definitely top 5. I went to a different top 5, passed up a different Ivy league to go there.
In my industry talent is international, if you want to compete (e.g. be hired, issued grants, etc.) you have to stand out. Easiest way to do so is go to a school with a good reputation. Is it possible, to get a chemistry PhD from a smaller, less prestigious school and be successful? Yes, but you will start your career with a handicap, and that’s even if you’re a certified genius.
One day I hope there will be an excellent chemistry department, part of a traditional university, not subject to woke philosophy, but we’re not there yet. If you want to make it happen, get the best (as society views it) education you can, make a shit ton of money, then start you’re own university or company.
One problem is that “traditional university not subject to woke philosophy” is a category that’s shrinking every year. One problem is that nearly all universities take taxpayer money and thereby are controlled by the government.
The answer to why these places are so liberal is easy: they encourage and reward being liberal. If you think like the professor (or pretend you do), your chances of getting a job there go up. It’s a law of economics that you get more of what you incentivize and less of what you punish.
Ask them if diversity is so important, how many conservative viewpoints are on the faculty. If the cognitive dissonance makes their heads hurt, you’ll see physical signs like twitching.