Swimming Upstream: The Life of a Conservative Professor in Academia
By Ron Lipsman
I have been a faculty member at a major State University for 40 years. Several years after my arrival, I voted for George McGovern. Eight years later, I voted for Ronald Reagan. In those eight years, my family and I experienced several traumas that caused me to reevaluate -- and ultimately, drastically alter -- the political, cultural and economic axioms that had governed my life.
Within months of buying my first home in an excellent neighborhood, within walking distance to the University and, most importantly, located in a district with an outstanding local public elementary school, my five year old son was forcibly bussed to an inferior school, many miles away, in a horrible neighborhood in order to satisfy the utopian vision of a myopic federal judge. This betrayal of my fundamental rights was undoubtedly the greatest shock to my political psyche.
Another was a Sabbatical year spent living and working in Jerusalem, during which the UN issued time the infamous "Zionism is racism" resolution. I was able to observe firsthand that the standard propaganda about Israel and Zionism that was promulgated in America and elsewhere -- almost exclusively by those on the Left that I had formerly supported -- was nothing more than bald-faced, hateful lies. This and other events in the 1970s caused me to rethink everything that I had taken for granted since adolescence about how the world worked.
I emerged from the exercise as an enthusiastic conservative. Thus I was no longer your average faculty member who adhered to the liberal party line, but instead one of a tiny cadre who completely disagreed with the leftist mentality that dominated the thought of campus faculty and administrators.
The overwhelmingly liberal atmosphere on campus is well known. In the one place in society at which there should be diversity of thought, exploration of conflicting ideas and a propensity to challenge conventional wisdom, we have instead a mind-numbing conformity of opinion and a complete unwillingness to entertain any thought or idea that deviates from the accepted truth. That conformity encompasses:
The legitimacy of virtually any program that promotes the interests of minority and female faculty, staff and students, even if the program is blatantly racist or sexist -- justified by a belief that America's past unjust treatment of blacks, American Indians and Japanese-Americans, and its unfair treatment of women render such discrimination necessary and lawful.
A multicultural mentality, which preaches that America's Eurocentric, white, Christian heritage is responsible for colonialism, imperialism, racism and sexism, and that its replacement by a culture that "celebrates diversity" will transform the US into a more just and humane society.
A distrust of free markets and democratic capitalism, and its severe limitation in favor of a centralized, government-controlled economy that will redistribute the wealth of America more fairly.
A denigration of religious belief and its replacement by the "worship" of secular humanism, with mindless environmentalism occupying a central place in the new religion.
...
Read more here/Leia mais aqui.
+++++
Resenha de outro livro por Lipsman: Liberal Hearts and Conservative Brains: The Correlation between Age and Political Philosophy.
Website 1.
Website 2.
NOTA IMPERTINENTE DESTE BLOGGER:
A experiência de Lipsman não difere da experiência de muitos professores e alunos universitários no Brasil onde predomina o materialismo filosófico mascarado de ciência promovendo uma agenda ateísta. E preciso enfrentar publicamente e em salas de aulas este posicionamento ideológico monolítico que não admite outras visões e que nada tem a ver com a ciência e nem deve estar presente em nossos campi.
EDUCAÇÃO NÃO É IDEOLOGIA. EDUCAÇÃO NÃO É MATERIALISMO. MAS, DO JEITO QUE ESTÁ É DOUTRINAÇÃO ESCANCARADA DE MATERIALISMO FILOSÓFICO À CUSTA DE NOSSOS IMPOSTOS.
