Fundie Leftie Perfessor

This is a letter a retired Fundie Leftie perfessor from a local university sent to our local paper. They gave her a prominent place on the Open Forum OpEd page. My response is below it.

Funny thing is, they didn't print mine!

Shocking. Just shocking.

__Original Article______________________________

Liberals on campus? Of course, because they think

I read with incredulity the panic-filled news analysis claiming that university campuses are teeming with liberal professors (The Press-Enterprise, May 2). As a retired professor from the Cal State University system, I agree that "liberals" dominate most university faculties.

First of all, the term "liberal" seems to have taken on the same connotation as "communist" in the 1950s and early 1960s. The label "conservative," too, has taken on a new life and no longer evokes intellectuals such as William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater.

Reasoning and thinking are skills found in properly educated people, whether they are liberal, conservative or middle-of-the-roaders.

Such individuals research and consider before making decisions on issues.

The common connotations of liberal and conservative have changed radically. Simply said, conservatives today are loyal, flag-waving supporters of the Bush administration and all its actions and policies. Those who disagree are dirty, disloyal, unpatriotic liberals.

This stance is causing quite a bit of confusion among intellectuals. Old-definition conservatives who do not back the present administration find themselves grouped with unpatriotic liberals. These conservatives have no idea how this happened. On the other hand, we liberals who have been teachers and have taken active parts in our government and its policies are also deemed unpatriotic. This seems kind of strange to me.

I hate the blanket condemnation of dissenters: when they were called communists and put on black lists and persecuted; when we were called freaks for opposing the Vietnam conflict and put on enemies' lists; and now when we are called "liberals" because we oppose Bush's crooked policies and have to worry about homeland security measures.

I'm beginning to wonder what is happening to the First Amendment and the Constitution in general.

No matter the guise, name-calling is a form of unpatriotic propaganda used to take the place of reason. That's a label that can be applied "liberally."

So back to the college campuses, people who have doctorates have been trained to reason, and in this day and time that has come to mean liberal. Yipes! Neoconservatives may find educating their children may expose them to new methods of thinking contrary to their beliefs.

But perish the thought: Various religious denominations maintain colleges that don't even teach evolution or any opposing theories but their own.

Send them there.

BARBARA PUGH

Mira Loma

PE.com

__Original Article______________________________

Subj: Re: Liberals on campus? Of course, because they think
Date: 5/7/04
To: letters@pe.net (The Press-Enterprise), staff@campus-watch.org (Campus Watch)


Editor - The Press-Enterprise:

Barbara Pugh's letter (Press-Enterprise May 7) is instructive in the current thinking of Liberalism in the UC system, if not American academia on the whole. The writer's evident intellectual elitism aside, the presupposition she is right, and her doctorate and current leftist hegemony on campus proves it, is disturbing.

Rather than reasoning and open debate, the intellectual coercion and intimidation modeled by liberalism and radical leftism on campus is to be credited.

A case in point: respected Conservative Professor Daniel Pipes, Director of The Middle East Forum and a member of the United States Institute of Peace, was invited by the Israel Action Committee and Berkeley Hillel to speak at UC-Berkeley, Feb. 10, 2004, but was subsequently subjected to an overt campaign of disruption and disorder by "activists," and I use that term sparingly, in a bid to muzzle him. Conduct like this on UC campuses towards Conservative ideas and students who have the temerity to disagree with their radical professors has become the rule, and not the exception.

This is academic freedom, the idea that assumes no one outlook has the monopoly on truth and that truth emerges from professional debate? No, this is tyranny, the conduct of liberal ideologues, and not intellectuals.

Those who have been fortunate enough to escape the indoctrination—uh, "training to reason" and "proper education," of the academically unbalanced UC system and other American universities have remained silent much too long in the face of this bullying and coercion under the guise of academia. If anything, the repercussions of the failed social, economic, and political philosophies of liberalism are now being faced full force by the citizens of California—the outworking of our state's institutes of "higher learning."

But this is changing. The objective, reasoned, analytical and critical conclusions drawn by the majority is seeing to that.

Mike ~