Harvey Mansfield -- The Left on Campus

[@nevyntanis2665]

I was a liberal once and what he says is very true, conservatives are way more tolerant of others, it was something I noticed almost immediately.

[@keithweber753]

same boat man---used to be the same way. it's totalitarian. liberals love diversity.....as long as they think the same way

[@bangthehankers1985]

Same experience.

[@Ostrya303]

***** I have to disagree with you. I see the law you are referring to as the epitome of tolerance. It allows you to be a bigot if you want to be. It tolerates your views, no matter how disturbing they may be. To force someone to operate within your view is the embodiment of intolerance. Consider it this way - I like my asshats to wear signs. Refusing to serve gay people is just the sign I like to see. I see that sign and I keep walking to the place that allows everyone to sit and eat together. I don't even dislike the people who would refuse to serve gay people. They have a principle and are willing to stand for it. Good for them. I applaud people with a spine. I just don't support their view. I think it reprehensible and a very poor business decision.

[@EK-iz2jk]

***** Both sides demonize but, having been raised on the left and "converted" to the right, I've seen much more intolerance from the left. By in large, conservatives view liberals as naive or young but mostly people with great intentions that don't realize the dangers of expanding government. By in large, liberals view conservatives as either greedy, evil bastards (i.e., your view of the Koch brothers) or stupid (i.e., "voting against their own interests"). We get called Nazis, racist, sexist, etc. As to the gay tolerance issue, while there are some intolerant conservatives, most would prefer a "live and let live" philosophy. The Christian-owned pizza shop recently in the news never kicked gay people out. They were served pizza along with straight people. The owners just didn't want to be forced to participate in a ceremony they were religiously opposed to. Most Christians are incredibly tolerant of gays, so long as they aren't forced to participate in same-sex marriages. Unfortunately, most on the left are unwilling to tolerate the fact that Christians want to be allowed to live their faith out even when they own a business. Now a that a Republican state passed a religious freedom law nearly identical to the federal law passed unanimously in the Congress and signed by Pres. Clinton (and also passed in over 20 states, liberal and conservative), that law is being used as "proof" that conservatives are intolerant.

[@dillotank9421]

Lucian, do you know that Labor Unions were formed to keep blacks out of the labor market? 'Liberals' claim to support racial minorities and working people. When it comes to supporting real people, 'liberals' are strangely AWL. They love to pretend they are morally superior, but they do not, in fact, help the people the claim to support.

[@NestoriusAlpha]

It encourages me greatly that a man like this still has a place at Harvard.

[@GarenGarson]

How lonely this poor man must be, crying in the woods, while the fires of the left destroy our once great American society.

[@DrCruel]

Feminism isn't meant to help women - it's meant to help feminists. Gender and racial equality is not about equal opportunities - it's one of many means to get more Leftists into academic positions. It's meant to help someone like Angela Davis, not Thomas Sowell. Faculties with overwhelming numbers of Leftists isn't a problem for the Left. It's the point. For them the real question would be, "How did those dissenters get by us, and how can we get rid of them without being noticed?"

[@Gregoryt700]

Fascinating talk; rings true on many levels. I've been in academia for 30 years (including Ivy League schools), one thing I am certain of is that truly open-minded academics are a rarity. I also used to self-identify as a liberal (still am in some areas, though I would insist on the term classical liberalism); but increasingly I am uncomfortable with the agenda of the far-left, and perhaps would now most closely identify with libertarianism. At any rate, I fear our academic culture will not improve any time soon.

[@ArthurKaletzky]

Classical liberalism makes no sense, it is almost an oxymoron. Marx and his successors definitively demolished it. Libertarianism is a mere euphemism for propertarianism, a complete sellout of society and government to the owners of the means of production, distribution and exchange, i.e. exploiters. Try to think what would happen to libertarianism if the violent state were to cease to protect private property.

[@brainlife]

Wonderful talk.

[@ncbncb77]

Few men have regard for wisdom these days. It's a relief to know these words are still out there.

[@samhilgartner988]

As a person of primarily left politics albeit with a great intrigue and engagement with right intellectualism, I cannot help but find the bulk of the arguments made during the interview to be not only relevant and perspicuous, but also undermining to much of the foundations of left popular identity based politics.

[@dillotank9421]

The modern Left is not liberal. American 'conservatives' are not conservative in the classical sense. They are only conservative in the sense that they seek to conserve the classically liberal principles articulated in the U.S. Constitution.

[@dillotank9421]

Dave Rubin (The Rubin Report) recently said, "My Liberal values often cause me to support the Republican Party."

[@qdav5]

I would take your statement a step farther. Not only are Prof Mansfield's arguments "relevant and perspicuous," but also objectively correct.

[@jnbalmer448]

So relevant today

[@jameswatkins309]

So the inmates are running the asylum. Very well put.

[@dukerwong3900]

I also agree with him that the conservative is more tolerate. Because the conservatism often live inside of the frame of being self controled of hard working, obeying the laws, remembering the traditional moralities, honesty, sincereness. ..etc. The frame often will hold self to move cautiously and often only walk inside of the frame, try not exceed the lines. Good or bad, hard to say. However, conservative people often cherish our exceptional systems better, also will be harder to make the movement too. Because of the frame, this will for sure to only walk instead of the leaps. Slow paste won't waste much energy, also not easy to loose the weight. Fast paste would be very tired, but easier to loose the weight. However, I understand what does he mean.

[@Dylvente]

A conservative voice easier to listen to than those who just hurl accusations of socialist and America-hater, etc. An actual argument offered. I'd love to see a discussion between Mansfield and a liberal of equal intellectual caliber.

[@nickmelucci]

13:20....Though I am not a professional academic myself; I venture to guess that this is because the assessment of students' work has come to do less with its specific merits, (i.e. composition, coherent rhetoric, grammar and depth of analysis), and more with the degree that its overall thesis coheres to the left-wing academic paradigm.

[@oladejiadelekan8062]

wow..this is still true today

[@numbnuts3020]

and even more true today

[@dukerwong3900]

I don't comment anything professor Mansfield Said right or wrong. However, partially, by the facts he said very much make sense of our society's routine life. Nowadays most university faculties are more and more left. Especially in a few prestigious famous universities. Because of the functions of the trends. In the begining, probably, there's nothing subjects the certain trend. Older fashion, common traditional western thinking, freedoms and entrepreneurship as naturally as the common sense and as the common sense of what supposed to be. Gradully people take as granded and forget how hard the freedoms were approched, gradually feel nothing are fresh as the routine life anymore. Day by day, people enjoy the freedoms and entrepreneurship daily, nothing new, nothing worse. Other countries's revolutionary incidents a little bit surprised by people here, but nothing will affect the emotions too much, because people still enjoyed the freedoms and entrepreneurship here, when the time went by, the foreign revolution just like the stories, listened, talked, put it behind, ignored and forgot. The concept of the freedoms and entrepreneurship have been working greatly and quietly and showed the results of pushing America to the most modern and super rich country with the strong military defense capabilities and remaind the freedoms and entrepreneurship and constitutions as the solid foundations of the guaranteed Exceptional prosperity at the same time. The most established time, people from all over the world started to dream to come to America to just try their luck and hope to see if America's prosperity could give them a bit of shine. The traditional Americans had much prosperous life and lived happily without much to worry. Comparing with the rest of the world, Americans knew they lived better, didn't think and didn't bother to think, didn't even wanted to think why we would live better, how long could we live better, how to guarantee we would live better for long or longer. More migrations came, different recognitions due to the different backgrounds. When a super power country has been lasted super rich conditions for decades, the spoiled lifestyle and living conditions will often ignored the educations of the patriotism and focused on only the routine educations. Gradully, the fashion of the working women become the popping symptoms of the modern life. More independent, more confidece, more demandings. The new fashion made them more realistic and believed that the children are not much useful, but the burdens. Actually in the modern society, it could be true realisticly. The Gov't didn't spend efforts to teach and train the importance of the own kind of the population. Indeed, dramaticly decreased own kind population mixed with the ones with same America's spirit, ones with the less, ones with the Nazism and ones with the terrorism, ones with the Europeaan socialism, ones with the Communism. Life is still the same, environmental atmosphere are changing. Our Gov't still ignored the America's patriotism. The ones have patriotism by nature, the ones don't have, no one cares. Gradully the trend are formed by influences, because newcomers are less financially successful, and domestic poorer will understand them better to form the newer modern trend. The new poors, original poors, poorer and middle classed would form the strength, sometimes even the rich or super rich will be interested the popular ideologies. Together, the ideologies can be more influencial and more powerful and more convincing to the people less experienced of the Communism suffering. The younger would be the simpler, that is why the university would be always be the ones to join the trend. The influential books, speeches are easier come from there. Some people are followers by the modern trends, some people are solid leftists, some people don't join, don't care, some people don't like it, but afraid to say much. This is why the appropriate education of the America's spirit and patriotism are important, in order to maintain our country's exceptional systems.

[@studinthemaking]

i like this guy he a REAL american

[@gyniest]

When he mentions (radical) students pushing universities to the New Left, I'm surprised he didn't bring up post-modernism.

[@0HippyHunter0]

Well worth listening to

[@lotsofsports2251]

Peter Robinson did 'The Dab' first!!

[@Barbara-cp6zx]

Grades follow the money.

[@brendanmcmahan2368]

Commentary of 27 January 2014 J.R. Nyquist Continuing our analysis from last week, we now must look at the U.S. domestic situation. The best overview, which largely remains current, is that offered by James Burnham in The Suicide of the West, p. 249: During the current century the liberal ideology has gradually increased over the formation of public opinion within the United States, Britain, Italy and to a greater or less degree [in] nearly all the advanced Western nations; and at the same time liberals, or persons accepting the liberal ideas relating to the decisive issues of war and the social order, have come to occupy more and more of the key positions of government and social power. This has meant a basic shift in the governing 'mix' of Western civilization: the foxes have been getting rid of the lions; the lions, as one of them put it a few years ago, have been fading away.... Burnham is here referring to Vilfredo Pareto's sociological theory in which the balance between lions and foxes within the elite of society has been upset, with the foxes now taking complete control. This signals the society's decadence and decline. According to Burnham, liberalism is not only an ideology of decadence. It is the ideology of Western suicide.

[@chatsociety]

Politics and education, not really something that should be mixed, left or right.

[@imblessedso]

This was the reason for the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages ended when the fragmented little tribal territories that replaced the Roman Empire began to form competent and functioning political states which then reinvested in the knowledge (through universities, libraries etc.) that the Church had preserved and fed into them.

[@7_red24]

Progressivism, Classical Liberalism, and the Blight of Crony Capitalism: Crony capitalism is as old as the human race. It is the economic system embedded in tribalism and as such has been the dominant system for all of human history. Through the ages, powerful cronies latch onto political and economic philosophies and distort them in the process, but this is just window dressing. The first real effort to rethink and challenge the tribal crony capitalist system came from classical liberal thinkers. Laissez faire, the economic philosophy embedded in classical liberalism, was not, as most progressives have been taught, a rationalization for oppressing workers, but rather a reform movement trying to free middle class merchants from being strangled by the economic cronyism of the courts. Laissez faire reforms made possible the industrial revolution in the UK and US. For example, when cotton first appeared in 17th century Europe, the wealthy woolen, flax, and silk cronies persuaded the French monarchy to ban it in order to protect their own businesses. Tens of thousands of people were made galley slaves or executed for importing or selling or even wearing cotton garments in France. The same attempt to ban cotton almost succeeded at the Tudor court in England, but fell short. British cotton textiles then became the basis of the industrial revolution. Laissez faire modified the crony system in the UK and US, but did not begin to eradicate it. As we all know, the next wave of “reform,” progressivism, took the opposite tack of increasing government control of the economy. This led to what I called in my earlier post the progressive paradox: as government takes more and more control of the economy, allegedly in order to right wrongs, it leads private special interests to put more and more effort into taking over government. They usually succeed, because government does not offer much resistance. Indeed government, whatever it says, often initiates and usually welcomes the process. ...[The rampant crony capitalism of today] is not what the early progressives imagined progressivism would be. It was supposed to protect the poor and middle class from the powerful. It has done the reverse. ...The simple truth, reflected in both fact and logic, is that free market economics and libertarianism are the only possible solution for the age old plague of crony capitalism. - Hunter Lewis [mises dot org/blog/free-market-economics-and-crony-capitalism]

[@dillotank9421]

Excellent analysis, 7_Red. This is exactly what people need to understand. Please post more of this.

[@criss5405]

Reading theologians who study Patrology and Scholastics, I realized that Enlightenment would have not appeared on the stage of Europe without the pre-existence of Christian thought school. Just think at the concept of free-will and the individual-social changes it initiated. To practice free-will instead of blind submissiveness, people needed to have a reflection on all sort of matters. That develops reasoning!

[@Kurtlane]

Other than femininity and working women, I argee with everything he says. Particularly at the end, where he says that university's mission should be to open minds, not to close them. It shouldn't declare that certain people shouldn't be listened to and easily dismissed. And what do we have in reality?

[@dmg46664]

@VictorLepanto This is an overly simplistic view. Knowledge is not easily destroyed by the invading forces. When Athens fell in ancient Greece from invading forces, a great deal of knowledge had already been dispersed. The same is true for the fall of Rome or Egypt or where-ever. It could just as easily be argued the West was really born in the Enlightenment, and that any contributions from the ancient societies was really only groundwork. If Newton hadn't invented Calculus, Liebniz would. etc.

[@dukerwong3900]

Everything we are talking about actually is the factor of the principles only. The principles is based upon the confidence in the principles, the purpose of establishment of the principles, the strength of the principles, the continued principles for our own routined life, because without principles, we may make mistakes, or made mistakes without realizing it as own individual life. Honesty, following the rules of the laws, righteousness, sincerity, toward the principles, I guess it is each individual's own principles too. It may not easy to be that way under the Nazism era, terrorism system, or Communism system countries, but our country America is a Capitalism country of the principles of America's own established Foundations and Constitutions to maintain, protect and defend America's own principles for this great country and Americans of all to enjoy freedoms and equality of the opportunity. Right or left, conservative or liberal are only the any individual's groups' own concept, but all must follow up America's own established rules of the laws of Constitutions to measure the correctiveness of either thoughts, concept, or behaviors for America's greatness. We can confuse our thoughts, but not the principles, because the principles are established and written rules of the laws. We ordinary peoples may confuse, but surely be able to learn. Our Government lead and govern by our own country's rules of the laws instead by any individual, or groups' concept, because our country's own Constitutions are there to maintain, protect and defend America's own principles of the freedoms and the equality of the opportunity for Americans of all to enjoy without worry and America's own greatness as well as the future freedoms and equality of the opportunity for the whole world too. The Tolerance or aggressiveness, generous mind of the forgiveness, are only the partial of the manners as own individual appearance, but the principles are the solid there, or supposed to be solid there as what the Constitutions mean, I guess. I also believe that principles are there to make sure without regrets in the future as well as not rebelling to our country's own Founders' intention to found this great country altogether, so Americans of all will be able to enjoy the freedoms and the equality of the opportunity for long as our future generations too. I believe schools of all bare the huge responsibility for educations of America's own principles as well as America's own patriotism too besides the major subjects of educations. Also it is our media's partial principles and responsibility besides reporting news. Our country's unity were based on our country's own principles and will be continued for that. Our own generous mind of the forgiveness and willingness to learn more to understand more and do better will be the best catalyst for our great country's unity for our country's principles, I guess. I listened to President Reagan and President Bush's speeches and also others' too to try to understand and learn some from it too.

[@gyniest]

@VictorLepanto Why not? Part of the reason the Roman Empire fell (by no means a simple topic in history) is that outsiders wanted in so badly. That is, they wanted what Rome had. (Btw, the Church, and Christianity in toto, wouldn't exist without pre-Christian elements giving rise to it to begin with). I really don't see how you can give Christianity all the credit, rather than its Greco-Roman heritage.

[@thenrepeat9124]

Heather MacDonald for pres. & Dan Carlin, VP. I would be so HAPPY and they could do it! Just shut up they could do it!

[@imblessedso]

@dmg46664 And what exactly is the point of making this observation without any regard for the actual people groups you're discussing? When Ancient Greece fell Alexander's kingdom was there to collect the knowledge (and then the Romans) . This also happened with previous kingdoms. The problem was, this time there was not another great civilization waiting in the wings to continue the legacy. Rome was not conquered like the others, it dissolved. Victorlepanto is simply relating history.

[@criss5405]

It's a pity that this simple truth is denied openly by many.

[@TansyZ]

seriously? University of Toronto Science streams purposely make our class average to be around high 60s to low 70s..... which is C+ to B minus.......

[@kanteannightmare]

once you pass, the rest of us who will use your discoveries can rest assured you didn't developed a delayed acting acid suppository by mistake.

[@Ibnalwaqt]

Interesting..

[@kcgrappler]

Itink I saw a series with Buchanan just recently on UK - check it out.

[@IsaacDarcheMusic]

"I believe in objective standards...that's what western civilization is about: it's not one authoritative answer, but instead, problems and questions". lmao

[@mikeoli]

Why don't you have a discussion on cultural marxism or the school of Framkfurt or Tavistock or Rand corp or are these topics too real.

[@grubernitsch]

22:45 :"the gender neutral society is an experiment... Moving on..."; I try to be polite: This format has serious authenticity issues.

[@givinitsome]

@mikeoli Cultural Marxism? I think there are enough sources on the history of socialist regimes, such as Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, Stalin's majestical 3 harvests a year propaganda or his treatment of Polish soldiers et cetera.

[@Aphoresis]

No he's not worthy.

[@nomocey]

actually yes, the degeneration of roman culture coincided, but was maybe not caused by, the rise of Christianity. i disagree it is the gift of the church, after all, it would in that case be also the gift of the muslin/islamic world which incubated knowledge for the West while we we in a little something called the dark ages

[@danielweiner774]

The larger irony of this video is that while bemoaning the lack of intellectual challenge in university, the host makes it an exercise in assent, only enthusiastically playing catch with the same idea. Not to say the ideas are bad, but imagine if it wasn't the interviewer feigning astonishment ("This is just crazy how you say this...") and instead some other independent intellectual to actually contribute or challenge. One interesting further irony is his position that liberalism determines people as victims of historical tide, not their own individuals. He later on gives his being criticized for the usage of "you people" as an example of oversensitivity, needlessly taking offense. But even if not a racist comment, the fact that he would engage with an audience as "you people" raises the question: what defines the subject of the sentence? Who are "you people?" If the identifying trait is indeed African heritage, being women, being whatever, then we must ask what meaning the usage has since he himself just promoted the conservative philosophy of individual as individual, not bound to any one trait.