Difference between revisions of "Liberal elite"

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Commenting on Rensen's article, Conor Lynch wrote at ''[[Salon]]'':
 
Commenting on Rensen's article, Conor Lynch wrote at ''[[Salon]]'':
{{Cquote|“If the smug style can be reduced to a single sentence,” Rensin worte, “it’s, Why are they voting against their own self-interest?”
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{{Cquote|“If the smug style can be reduced to a single sentence,” Rensin wrote, “it’s, Why are they voting against their own self-interest?”
  
 
This question was bound to become even more prevalent with the election of Trump, who essentially won by flipping several Rust Belt states that Barack Obama had handily won in 2008 and 2012. Sure enough, many liberals have seemingly doubled down on this smug style...
 
This question was bound to become even more prevalent with the election of Trump, who essentially won by flipping several Rust Belt states that Barack Obama had handily won in 2008 and 2012. Sure enough, many liberals have seemingly doubled down on this smug style...

Revision as of 21:06, May 19, 2017

The Liberal Elite is a term used to describe those high-ranking members of society - politicians, college educators and celebrities - who regularly promote the liberal agenda to unsuspecting teenagers and young people.

The Liberal Elite believe they are superior to others. Not in a physical sense but mentally, they have their high ground and nobody dare challenge. If you challenge the Liberal Elite thinking and beliefs, you risk being ridiculed.

Emmett Rensen wrote at Vox about American liberalism and liberal elitism:

There is a smug style in American liberalism. It has been growing these past decades. It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what's good for them.

In 2016, the smug style has found expression in media and in policy, in the attitudes of liberals both visible and private, providing a foundational set of assumptions above which a great number of liberals comport their understanding of the world.

It has led an American ideology hitherto responsible for a great share of the good accomplished over the past century of our political life to a posture of reaction and disrespect: a condescending, defensive sneer toward any person or movement outside of its consensus, dressed up as a monopoly on reason.

The smug style is a psychological reaction to a profound shift in American political demography.

Beginning in the middle of the 20th century, the working class, once the core of the coalition, began abandoning the Democratic Party. In 1948, in the immediate wake of Franklin Roosevelt, 66 percent of manual laborers voted for Democrats, along with 60 percent of farmers. In 1964, it was 55 percent of working-class voters. By 1980, it was 35 percent.

The white working class in particular saw even sharper declines. Despite historic advantages with both poor and middle-class white voters, by 2012 Democrats possessed only a 2-point advantage among poor white voters. Among white voters making between $30,000 and $75,000 per year, the GOP has taken a 17-point lead.

Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt The consequence was a shift in liberalism's intellectual center of gravity. A movement once fleshed out in union halls and little magazines shifted into universities and major press, from the center of the country to its cities and elite enclaves. Minority voters remained, but bereft of the material and social capital required to dominate elite decision-making, they were largely excluded from an agenda driven by the new Democratic core: the educated, the coastal, and the professional.

It is not that these forces captured the party so much as it fell to them. When the laborer left, they remained.[1]

Commenting on Rensen's article, Conor Lynch wrote at Salon:

“If the smug style can be reduced to a single sentence,” Rensin wrote, “it’s, Why are they voting against their own self-interest?”

This question was bound to become even more prevalent with the election of Trump, who essentially won by flipping several Rust Belt states that Barack Obama had handily won in 2008 and 2012. Sure enough, many liberals have seemingly doubled down on this smug style...

But this attitude has also been challenged by those on the left who argue that the Democratic Party has to offer a more populist vision and break out of its technocratic bubble in order to start winning elections again.[2]

Liberal bias of mainstream media

See also: Media bias and Mainstream media

Media bias is advocacy journalism gone wild, where one-sided arguments masquerade as objective reporting. It "is rarely expressed through distortion of the facts, but rather through the omission of certain facts that would be inconvenient for the outlook of the person or group reporting."[3] A good example is Paul Krugman's claim, in his New York Times opinion piece, that "Everyone knows that the American right has problems with science that yields conclusions it doesn’t like."[4] This statement completely ignores the much worse "problems" the American left has with science, specifically the climate science which refutes the junk science used by liberals to prop up their global warming theory and their "solution" to the "crisis" (see Kyoto Protocol, carbon credits, etc.).

It manifests distortion of news, commentary, non-fiction articles, textbooks, documentaries, speech codes and the like to favor one side's ideas over another's (see partisanship). Dictatorships and other authoritarian regimes which suppress freedom of the press are notorious for their media bias, particularly when all media are controlled directly by a one-party government.

Most journalism schools in free countries address the issue of eliminating bias, although efforts are rarely successful. The U.S. media is strongly polarized, with multiple outlets have strong liberal and conservative biases, depending on which station (or newspaper) is considered. Overall, however, many, including some academics with scientific backing, maintain that the media has a general liberal bias.

Sources of bias

Example of deliberate propaganda, with an un-presidential photo and a lead headline in a purported "news magazine": "She's bad news for the GOP--and everybody else, too." The goal is to give Palin opponents ammunition to fight her popularity. Newsweek issue dated Nov. 23, 2009
  1. Deliberate propaganda: Presenting bias with the intention of benefiting the media establishment.
  2. Institutional bias: The reporters and editors of a media organization may hold political views, which influence their reporting. Reporting on the Vietnam war has been cited as a notable example of such.
  3. Sensationalism: Media depends on viewership for financial support from advertisers. Thus stories that have little political value but much entertainment value may receive attention disproportionate to their impact. Scare stories are also an example of sensationalism.
  4. Omission: The inverse of sensationalism, media may overlook important but boring stories.
  5. Political correctness or sensitivity: Fearful of appearing racist or discriminatory, media may avoid any stories which reflect negatively on an ethnic, social or religious group, especially if the group is a minority.
  6. Confirmation bias: a type of selective thinking whereby people tend to report what confirms their beliefs, and to ignore, or undervalue what contradicts their beliefs.
  7. Audience bias: Readers or viewers tend to read news sources with which they agree. Thus, media must reinforce the existing views of their audience, or risk losing them. This source of bias can also reinforce the effect of a moral panic. In this case, the public may receive a distorted perspective that is a result of their own preferences, because the news media will deliberately deliver news not only suitable and desirable to the general public, but may also incorporate bias that would similarly suit the viewer.

Academic Studies and theories of media bias

The Media Elite, co-authored in 1986 by political scientists Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Lichter is among the most cited academic study of political bias in news reporting. These researchers surveyed journalists at national media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and the broadcast networks. They found that most of the responding journalists were Democratic voters whose attitudes were far to the left of the general public on a variety of topics: homosexual rights, abortion, affirmative action, and so on. The study argued that the way in which journalists wrote about controversial issues was directly related to their personal political positions.

Independently corroborating the findings above, is the 2002 book length study by political communication researcher Jim A. Kuypers: Press Bias and Politics: How the Media Frame Controversial Issues. In this study of 116 mainstream US papers (including The New York Times, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle), Kuypers found that the mainstream print press in America operate within a narrow range of liberal beliefs. Those who expressed points of view further to the left were generally ignored, whereas those who expressed moderate or conservative points of view were often actively denigrated or labeled as holding a minority point of view. In short, if a political leader, regardless of party, spoke within the press-supported range of acceptable discourse, he or she would receive positive press coverage. If a politician, again regardless of party, were to speak outside of this range, he or she would receive negative press or be ignored. Kuypers also found that the liberal points of view expressed in editorial and opinion pages were found in hard news coverage of the same issues. Although focusing primarily on the issues of race and homosexuality, Kuypers found that the press injected opinion into its news coverage of other issues such as welfare reform, environmental protection, and gun control; in all cases favoring a liberal point of view.

Liberal media bias

For a more detailed treatment, see liberal bias.

Academia and liberal elitism

See also: Academia and liberal elitism

Politicizing hiring

In 2013, a study found that academia was less likely to hire evangelical Christians due to discriminatory attitudes.[5] See also: Atheism and intolerance

Academia and liberal values

Andrew Breitbart, the founder of the conservative news site Breitbart News Network, at one point intended to create a category "Big Education" in order to expose professor values, but he died before he could implement it.

An extremely high percentage of professors disagree with conservative principles, but very few replace them with the discredited philosophy of postmodernism.[6] Professors' common value system typically includes anti-Christian politics, censorship, socialism, unjustified claims of expertise and knowledge (for example, the dogmatic promotion of the theory of evolution[7]), liberal beliefs, liberal grading, liberal bias,[8] historical revisionism, anti-patriotism, anti-Americanism, lack of productivity, bullying or discouraging conservative students (for example, homeschoolers),[9] and promotion of sexual immorality.[10] Although a majority of academics believe in God, a disproportionate percentage of academics are atheists compared to the general public (see: Atheism and academia).

Such attitudes are also shared by educators in the public education system from grade school through high school, and even by members of public school boards who take an elitist attitude toward parents of the children being indoctrinated with those same beliefs (particularly the promotion of sexual immorality and the encouragement of experimenting with homosexuality) by liberal educators.[11][12][13] These same educators, knowing that what they are doing is wrong, go out of their way to deliberately hide the truth from their students' parents, who they know would not support what they do in the classrooms and would call for the resignation or firing of the offending teachers and school board officials who support them; to that end, liberal elitist school boards stand up for the teachers and the professor values they support by ignoring parents' complaints, denying any wrongdoing to them, attempting (by means of deceit and disinformation) to discredit any information on educator wrongdoing uncovered by parents,[14] blocking their inquiries and even resorting to intimidation and making criminal threats against them (and later denying making such threats when publicly called out on them afterward)[15] in an attempt to silence parental opposition to what are clearly illegal actions against underaged students.

An excellent example of academics going beyond their expertise is the example of the cryonics movement. Cryonics is a pseudoscience that tries to extend life or achieve immortality in a non-theistic way after a person is legally dead (Cryonic procedures are performed shortly after a person's death).[16] Robert Ettinger was an atheist and American academic who some consider to be "the father of cryonics" because of the impact of his 1962 book The Prospect of Immortality.[17] Isaac Asimov was a popular American science fiction writer and a professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was also an atheist.[18] According to The Cryonics Society, Asimov said of cryonics, "Though no one can quantify the probability of cryonics working, I estimate it is at least 90%..."[19] See: Atheism and cryonics

In a Zogby poll, 58% of Americans said that the bias of professors is a serious problem, while 39% said it is a "very serious" problem.[20] The survey demonstrated further that "an overwhelming majority also believe that job security for college professors leaves them less motivated to do a good job than those professors who do not enjoy a tenured status—65% said they believe non-tenured professors are more motivated to do a good job in the classroom."[20] One study in 2008 found that "Texas university professors overwhelmingly favor Democratic candidates in their campaign contributions."[21]

Professors rarely engage in wrongdoing while completing research. "About 1,000 potential incidents of fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in scientific research go unreported every year, according to a survey that suggests such misconduct is far more prevalent than suspected....[A]bout 22 percent was by a professor or senior scientist."[22]

There is no place on earth so close-minded as the modern University. The lack of diversity of thought is unmatched anywhere on earth.[23]

See also

  1. The smug style in American liberalism by Emmett Rensin at Vox, April 21, 2016
  2. The smug style in American liberalism: It’s not helping, folks — but there’s a better way by Conor Lynch, Salon, March 2017
  3. Nat Brown - National Review
  4. First They Came For The Climate Scientists
  5. Alexander, Rachel (June 10, 2013). "Suspicions confirmed: Academia shutting out conservative professors". Townhall.com.
  6. Rothman, Stanley, et al. (March 2005). "Politics and professional advancement among college faculty". The Forum, vol. 3, iss. 1. Abstract retrieved from De Gruyter Online website. $42 Fee required for article access. "90 percent of United States professors called themselves liberal or moderate."
  7. For example, a $100,000 "environmental" prize was awarded for work on a politically correct "theory of convergent evolution." "Biology prof. awarded environmental achievement prize" (April 4, 2008). The Stanford Daily, vol. 233, iss. 30, p. 3. Retrieved from archive at stanforddailyarchive.com website.
  8. Melby, Ernest O. and Johnson, K.C. (August 26, 2005). "Proving the critics' case". Inside Higher Ed website/Views.
  9. Multiple references:
  10. Multiple references:
    • Jablonski, Joe (October 2001). "Porn studies latest academic fad". Accuracy in Academia website/Campus Reports/2001. Retrieved from July 8, 2009 archive at Internet Archive.
    • Capel, Michael (October 1998). "Pedophilia 101 at Cornell". Accuracy in Academia website/Campus Reports/1998. Retrieved from July 8, 2009 archive at Internet Archive.
  11. "Comprehensive sex-ed" battle in Omaha gets huge coverage in state's largest newspaper at MassResistance
  12. How schools & libraries bring pornography to vulnerable children at MassResistance
  13. Diversity? Pro-LGBTQ Bias at Metea Valley High School in Aurora, Illinois Exposed at Americans for Truth
  14. School district strikes back at Omaha parents’ group that exposed graphic "comprehensive sex-ed" curriculum at MassResistance
  15. How Colorado parents were threatened, ignored, and deceived by school officials after exposing hardcore pornography available via middle school’s Internet portal at MassResistance
  16. Multiple references:
    • "Cryogenesis: A review" (Winter 2012). Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science. Reprinted at Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science website on March 11, 2012.
    • Barbaro, Valerie (July–August 2011). "Heaven for atheists". The Humanist. Reprinted at TheHumanist.com website on June 17, 2011.
  17. Multiple references:
    • "Robert Ettinger" (July 24, 2011). The Telegraph [U.K.] website/News/Obituaries/Science Obituaries. Retrieved May 1, 2013. "Despite his Jewish roots, he grew up a determined atheist."
    • Klein, Bruce (August 13, 2004). "The Father of cryonics, Robert C. W. Ettinger". LongeCity website/Community/Community resources/Creative. Retrieved May 24, 2009.
  18. Asimov, Isaac (Spring 1982). "Isaac Asimov on science and the Bible". Interview with Paul Kurtz. Free Inquiry magazine. Quoted at "Quote by Isaac Asimov: 'I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long...'". Goodreads website/Isaac Asimov/Quotes/Quotable Quote. Source located by Adherents.com website.
  19. "Cryonics and critics" (2012). The Cryonics Society website.
  20. 20.0 20.1 "Zogby poll: Most think political bias among college professors a serious problem" (July 10, 2007). Zogby International website. Retrieved from July 17, 2007 archive at Internet Archive.
  21. Dunham, Richard and Brendel, Patrick (May 5, 2008). "Texas professors give to Democrats over GOP 3-to-1". Houston Chronicle website.
  22. Lopatto, Elizabeth (June 18, 2006). "Scientific fraud may be more widespread than thought, poll says". Bloomberg News. Reprinted at Bazaarmodel.net/Phorum/Archive.
  23. ConservativeArtist (May 10, 2011, 2:38 pm). "There is no place on earth so close-minded as the modern University. The Lack of diversity of thought is unmatched anywhere on earth." Tweet by @THEAtheistAnti [known by YouTube user name Atheist Antidote].