The REAL Truth About Regressives...

karen straughan: Regarding 'The Truth About the Regressive Left' David Pakman Show, I'm enjoying this so far, but I do have to call David out on his characterization of regressive behavior and shutting down debate as a "right wing tactic". It is an apolitical political tactic, if you will. It is nothing more than power attempting to preserve itself. It is the political underdog who will always promote liberal values such as freedom of speech, press and assembly, civil liberties, tolerance of unpopular or "offensive" opinions and free and open debate. In the 60s on US campuses (and prior), the underdog was the progressive left, and the establishment was deeply conservative--even "centrist" positions were conservative compared to what they are today.
Because it was the right that was in power (overall--not just in government, but in social and educational institutions), it had the ability to suppress differing viewpoints and challenges to its hegemony, and it did so. The left were the political underdog, and thus valued freedom of expression (because they relied on it in order to be allowed to voice their unpopular opinions). It was here that the political left became conflated with certain liberal values, and the right associated with illiberal ones. The campus free speech movement in the US was, by necessity, a movement of the left because it was students on the left whose voices were being marginalized. NOT because holding freedom of speech as sacrosanct is an inherent property of leftism, but because at the time, the left absolutely depended on freedom of speech. Now, we look at universities in the US, and what do we see? 80% of faculty describe themselves as democrats, socialists or on the political left. This ratio isn't so extreme in STEM, but in the Humanities, the social sciences, interdisciplinary studies, arts, psychology, philosophy and essentially all similar faculties, the ratio goes up to about 40 to 1. That is, 40 left-leaning faculty members for every one conservative one. Keep in mind, there is very little politics involved in solving a Navier-Stokes equation. There's a definite correct answer, and all other answers are incorrect. When it comes to the softer disciplines, the questions asked here are not correct/incorrect questions--they're much more vulnerable to political interpretations. And in these very faculties, leftist professors outnumber conservative ones about 40 to one. I expect most would describe themselves as feminists, too. That is leftist political hegemony in every university faculty and program where politics actually matter. And like the right wing faculty and administration did during the 1960s, it will do what it can to preserve itself, even if that means throwing free speech, open debate and other liberal principles under the bus. And who is fighting for freedom of speech on campuses now? Why, what do you know? It's anti-feminists. It's conservatives. It's Christians. It's pro-life activists. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education spends most of its time defending the rights of these people more than anyone else these days, despite the fact that its founder came up during the leftist free speech movement of the 60s. Not because liberal values like freedom of speech and open debate are intrinsic properties of the right, or of religion, either, but because now it's THEIR turn to need it. Liberal values are not about left or right--they're about limiting political hegemony and preserving the right to heterodoxy, no matter who is in power. This is WHY so many of them are written into the constitutions of various countries. Because neither the right nor the left will truly value them when they can afford to set them aside. This is not a right or left problem, it's a human problem.

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