Education Makes Liberals

The Washington Post this week had a front page, above-the-fold story with the headline Elitists, 'Crybabies,' and Junky degrees. The "problem" is that college tends to turn young people into liberals. A recent poll found that 58 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents believe colleges and universities have a negative effect “on the way things are going in the country.” This article represents the tip of the iceberg of the attack on education by conservatives, which has gone on for decades and is the movement's most pointed spearhead.

It is a hard point of view to explain without sounding stupid; well, they are advocating ignorance. The Post was able to find a local politician from Dragoon, Arizona, who would provide some quotes to a reporter.

I can remember as a young man sitting in an Anthropology lecture hall at Arizona State University, learning about the concept of ethnocentrism. If you are going to study another culture (which anthropologists do), you have to try to shake off your own society's assumptions and understand the target culture as the people see themselves. It is difficult but necessary to try to understand why they do the things they do, and believe what they believe. Having grown up in the (back then) small town of Phoenix, this whole concept was new to me. People have different ways of living. They aren't stupid, they're just different.

I didn't realize it at the time, but that moment of epiphany made me a liberal.

My studies taught me to see the different social groups of the world, including groups within my own country, as having ways of life that made sense from some point of view, even if I did not intuitively and instantly understand them. The concept did not only apply to exotic groups like !Kung bushmen and Australian aborigines, but to European and Mexican immigrants, local Indian tribes, jocks and hippies. I switched from thinking of out-groups as laughable and dumb to realizing they had their own kind of sense and reasons for being. My culture was one of many. I didn't appreciate it any less but the scientific perspective made it impossible to believe that our particular group had been singled out to be uniquely superior to all others. So there you have it: college made me a liberal.

And that is not to single out anthro. Any science has that effect on you, any study of the literature, religion, philosophy, or knowledge of other peoples. The student learns to stop seeing himself or herself and their own "way of life" at the center of the universe.

That is why conservatives don't like education. To be a conservative means to believe their own group's norms are truly better, realer, and more moral than other groups. No matter what kind of people they are -- defined by religion, ethnic group or anything else -- conservatism is the belief that their own way of life is special and good. It doesn't mean they try to change other groups, necessarily, but they regard them as something strange, ignorant, they assume other groups' beliefs are wrong and their intentions are bad. And education undermines that way of thinking. As you learn, as you become educated, you come to see your own place in the universe in a different and humbling way. You sometimes see the aphorism, "Truth has a liberal bias," and well, it's not a joke, that's just how it is. Education will make you a liberal.

You and I think of education as a good thing. People learn facts, they learn critical thinking, and they can make better decisions, do better things, accomplish more, they understand more things. The effect of education on our society has been amazing, just look around at the technology we have, the institutions that people have made, this is all based on the ability to reason objectively about the real world. But not everybody sees that as a plus; these same skills are a threat to traditional, tribal, parochial norms.

We have a President Trump because a lot of people are not educated and do not value knowledge. His presidency is defined by ethnocentrism, that is the concept that sums up his appeal and his decision-making; he stands for white Americans and that's that. There is no regard for higher values of ethics, reasoning, no respect for facts. When you let education slide this is what you get, the once-great United States of America is now like some third-world country, dysfunctional and petty. Trump's election is a consequence of bad education and his Presidency will ensure that American education in the future is even worse.

The Anchor

To take just a couple of paragraphs from a typical article this week, this one from The Post:

A year ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, Republicans are increasingly uncertain about keeping their majorities on Capitol Hill and are worried about how damaging Trump’s jagged brand of politics may become to the party.

“Donald Trump is an anchor for the GOP,” said veteran party strategist Mike Murphy, a Trump critic. “We got that message in loud volume in Virginia. The ­canary in the coal mine didn’t just pass out; its head exploded.” ‘Canary in the coal mine’: Republicans fear Democratic wins mean more losses to come

Funny, in another time and place, an "anchor" would be a good thing. And in fact the meaning doesn't change. An anchor is something weighty that you can tie your vessel to, to ensure that you have a steady position and don't drift.

In this case, the Republicans have tied their vessel to the most corrupt, lyingest, slimiest politician in modern American history, and suddenly they are "increasingly uncertain." Like, what, they didn't think people would notice? Did they think this was going to work? Now that anchor is holding them in place while the tide turns.

The only aim of today's Anchor President is to oppose everything and anything having to do with the black guy and the shrill woman. Ridiculous Secretaries are driving corrupt, self-serving Departments into the ground. Bizarre judges are getting appointed without a fight by the well-anchored legislature. We used to say, "Wait till there is a real disaster," and now there have been real disasters and the Trump administration was worse than useless. The guy actually picked fights with local officials who were wading chest-deep in floodwaters trying to save people. They sent Skittles, Cheez-its, and beef jerky to the starving island of Puerto Rico and sent a Cabinet Secretary's buddy's company with two employees to restore the electrical grid there. He thinks it's funny to call the crazy leader of a nuclear-armed country silly names.

Did you read about President Trump's visit with the American Indian leaders? This is amazing. Axios has the story. It happened last June, they have two first-person accounts and the White House does not dispute the story.

A group of tribal leaders met with the President to talk about the regulatory barriers to mining on the reservation. They had their Powerpoint ready to go; Trump waved it off.

He asked the tribal leaders what they needed and how he could help them. The tribal leaders told the president they couldn't get to the resources they needed quickly enough.

Trump interjected: "Why?"

They explained there were government regulatory barriers preventing them.

Trump replied:

"But now it's me. The government's different now. Obama's gone; and we're doing things differently here... So what I'm saying is, just do it."

There was a pause in the room and the tribal leaders looked at each other. One of them started to try to walk back through the barriers to accessing the energy; and Trump cut in again. "No. You've got to just do it. Just do it."

"Chief, chief," Trump continued, addressing one of the tribal leaders, "what are they going to do? Once you get it out of the ground are they going to make you put it back in there? I mean, once it's out of the ground it can't go back in there. You've just got to do it. I'm telling you, chief, you've just got to do it."

Of course everybody can relate to that. You don't try to figure out all the complicated rules, just cut through the crap and do what you have to do. This is why Trump supporters supported him, because he brushes the red tape aside and gets down to business.

Right?

Except for the nagging fact that he is the President of a country with a Constitution and laws. He is telling these community leaders to ignore the law, to break it, because now that he's in charge the government won't be able to do anything about it.

On the surface of it, this is anarchy. The President has no regard for the law -- if you don't like the laws just ignore them.

But it's worse than that, this is privileged anarchy. When you and I see something we want we can't just take it. But these tribal leaders have every reason to believe they are protected by all the weight of the office of the President of the United States of America. If they are hauled into court they can swear honestly that the highest authority in the land told them it was all right.

That's just how it is now, Trump is loading the government with criminals who are using it for their own profit while the principle of law is ignored when it is inconvenient. The Republicans have stood together in support of this guy. And wow, here was election day, and the anchor turns out to be an albatross: Republicans are increasingly uncertain.