There will be a change..
Reader comment on item: Conservative Professors, an Endangered Species
in response to reader comment: Simpler possible explanations

Submitted by Ezra (United States), Feb 20, 2006 at 23:23

All truly great thinkers are described as "beyond their time". Liberalism is a product of a few men who knew something their colleagues didn't. Those individuals influenced future generations of thinkers by exposing the fallacies of the conservative view.

Now liberal thought is settling itself in academia, just as Aristotelianism did among the scholastics. Academia will find itself erring in its produce by not hearing the arguments of an opposing viewpoint. There will be no Socrates to inflict aporia into the thought of the now liberal academia. What will happen is the students will start to become skeptic of their teachers, who are now considered liberal, and will be able to uncover the problems with their thought.

From this will emerge new a new thought contrary with Liberalism, which would probably considered conservative now. The problem is is that as this Liberals become older, and the older Conservatives die out, the new liberal generation will become considered Conservative due to the age of their thought. So when the new form of thought emerges among intellectuals, it will be considered Liberal, due to its want to become separated from the indoctrinated thought of the previous generations thinkers who have become solidified in their thought.

Liberals who think they are intelligent because they dismiss the views of the "dumber" conservatives deserve to be laughed at. Its like someone thinking they are strong because they are able to beat up physically handicapped individuals. If Liberals' ideas are truly profound, it should be able to stand up against an intelligent argument. Thankfully Liberals aren't smart enough to realize that they are defeating their agenda by slowly producing a better prepared class of contrary thinkers. All the liberal students on campus do not have to come up with better defenses for their beliefs, they simply learn to accept arguments that fancy them.

I think if Liberals were truly more intelligent they would learn how to obtain office and learn how to effectively influence social policy. The right understands what it takes to get office, and they understand that what is needed to win office is to get votes. They also understand, as Liberals do not, that the majority of Americans aren't intellectuals. What they do is pander to the majority, and when in office they are able to make substantive changes to society. If liberals truly believed in their cause, they would figure out how to obtain votes, which they can't, and then enact the policy they "know" will turn the world into their utopia.

"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them." Mark Twain

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened for relevance, substance, and tone, and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome, but comments are rejected if scurrilous, off-topic, vulgar, ad hominem, or otherwise viewed as inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the Guidelines for Comments. For informational purposes, we identify countries from which comments are sent.