What’s amusing about this is that we keep hearing from the Left that America has a terrible aversion to “The Other,” meaning people who are different from the mainstream of our society. That’s mostly baloney. Few Americans care about race or personal idiosyncracies these days. But the academic Left appears to have its own aversion: for it, “The Other” consists of people who do not share in the faith that increased governmental power is the solution to all socioeconomic problems. The believers shun us infidels and attack straw-man versions of our arguments. That’s bad enough in the world of politics, but shameful in the world of education.
It gets old responding to stuff like this over and over, but it’s also hard to resist. “Few Americans care about race or personal idiosyncracies these days”? Really? That must be why we hear so little about gay marriage, why Obama’s election didn’t bring with it any bizarre paroxysms of race-based fear mongering. Clearly America is past all that.
As for “faith that increased governmental power is the solution to all socioeconomic problems,” I’d love for Leef to point out one professor who actually believes this. Even the most left-leaning members of the most left-leaning academic fields (let’s go with sociology) understand that inequality is a the result of many, many factors, some having everything to do with the state, some having nothing to do with it. Leef can decry the left’s straw-men all he wants, but his post is strawmanism at its worst.
