Debate Over
POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Friday, September 1, 2006 00:38
VIEWED: 4120
PAGE 8 of 8
Hi DT,
Sorry to get back to you so late. I tend to be off the i-net for days at a time, and by the time I get back the topics have dropped a long ways down.
I was born and raised outside of Buffalo by immigrant /firstgen Polish parents and went to school at SUNYAB, so we come from the same end of the continent. 
The ppl I hung out with back in my other incarnation were all Canada-philes, a great shaggy herd leaning on the wire strands looking for a way north to those blue skies with high white clouds and open fields and forests. I spent a fair amount of time in Canada, and I knew, and know, a fair number of Canadians / Canadiens. So I feel that my formative years were influenced by being brought up in one culture, living in another, and heavily influenced by a third.
My experience with 'up-staters' (for non-NYS people, that means anything outside of NYC's direct influence 
) is that those from larger cities tend to be politically liberal (though personally conservative), while rural and small-town up-staters are extra-ordinarily conservative. That's probably the reason for our political divide - we are both the results of our environments.
But we agree on this - I personally feel no learning is ever wasted.
We could probably have an interesting correspondence on biochem, neurochem etc., along with SignyM who's been an avid researcher by necessity and apt student by nature.
When shall we get together to rule the world with our superior knowledge ??
JUST kidding !!!
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Rue,
It took me many years among the conservative rural folk here to realize that they were right. I was emersed in the whitewash of liberal intellectual thought too, but in time, i've dried out.
The way I see it now is that liberal academia and the intellectual elite are high on their own ideas, and never seriously consider any dissenting opinion. As a community, they are trapped inside their own heads and egos, and they become a monotony of their own ideas reiterated through generations. If an idea was wrong or misguided, it was never tested, never questioned, and so it got passed from generation to generation through the education system, as each new class was indoctrinated into the same old ideas.
It's been pretty much true for a while, liberalism increases with education, conservatism increases with life experience. The most fringe liberals tend to be young intellectuals, like citizen, and the most conservative tend to be old people, I assume say geezer. I've come to see this education thing as more of an indoctrination now. A lot of liberal conditioning is embedded into our education system, by teachers who are a product of that system. The basic fallacy arguement we're given is: There are two kinds of people in the world, those who want to give away money, help people and puppies (liberals,) and those who want to steal all the money and kill people and puppies (conservatives.)
All of this doesn't really define partisan. I think political parties are basically inherited. About 90% of people vote for the party their parents voted for, which is odd considering only 10% or listen to the same music, or in general try to follow the same life path.
So, when you get down to politics, you have all these people who were taught to be liberals, supporting the democrats, who never do a damn thing for poor people, puppies, etc. The educated intellectual left fall back on their education, which has taught them that the ultimate ideal is the far left, and the only reason it can't be enacted is that people who disagree are stupid and evil. The new liberals will now reject the democrats as being "not left enough" because that's the way their education has taught them. They'll go on to dream about ideologies such as socialism, that, in spite of many years of disasterous failure in practice (need I enumerate?) remains as the intellectual ideal, untempered by reality. The only acceptable excuse for past social experiments is that "They just didn't do it right."
Which is not to say that conservatives are perfect, there's a fair amount of ignorance involved sometimes, you can get to 90 without knowing a damn thing, and people do it. And so those people are led to support these people (Bush and co) in spite of them having like nothing in common.
But Bush and co themselves are products of the intellectual community. They were the arrogant pricks who thought they knew better. They were the most avid students of socialism, and they sat up in their brain trust clubs and dreamt up ways to improve on the idea. No one had ever done it right, because no one was as smart as them, and they could take markers to marx, and write their own new great social plan.
So, not to nitpick, no learning is wasted, but some is misguided programming disguised as learning.
Logically, I think we can deduce that the villagers in africa are far more conservative than the many liberals who strive to help them. Just a thought.
As for this area. Particular places are centers of liberalism. It's radiated by universities. Ithaca is probably the most extreme, and not coincidentally, one of the most advanced, because education is a good idea, even if it is laced with indoctination rhetoric.
Me and barb, the now absence limi, discussed this in an earlier thread, and came to the conclusion that conservatives dropped the ball, and basically sat around while liberal took over education, and that led to this result.
BTW the most conservative folk here don't have towns.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
"BTW the most conservative folk here don't have towns."
From my observation near Lake St George and Candor, there are two very conservative types of ppl. One set lives in, literally, tar paper-shacks, does construction and tourism-related jobs during the summer, and hunts and traps during the winter. The other set is the nouveau, high-tech well-educated off-the-grid types. No offense.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Nah, I think there's just one type. Those of us who build spiders on the internet in our free time are actually the same ones who farm tomatoes. There's something else out there that's stolen the name conservative, but it's a doppleganger, and I like to call it commie. Commieservative? Hmm. How about christo-fascist. Judeo-fascist. That has a better ring to it. No offense to any of the above.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME