Student Rep Seeks Space For Revolution

George Mason, Liberty, and Hillsdale are a few exceptions to overwhelming left-wing dominance in higher education. Yale and other universities have turned away from the concept of a liberal education to embrace orthodox leftism. Our law schools, particularly Yale and UConn, seek to train lawyers not as indifferent professionals but as social justice warriors to use the courts to impose values that elected branches may reject.

So THREEFIFTHS, there is this thing called "whataboutism" in debates and arguments. Its when you don't actually address someone's statement or argument but instead go "oh yah, what about this?" or "Oh yah, how about this?" and simply switch to a different topic. In doing "whataboutism" you are failing to refute or counter any statement or argument given. Its actually something you see children do a lot.

Capitalism may be rapacious, but it is not decaying. In our lifetimes,

You seem to have a Wonderful insight into how Capitalism that has indoctrinated each generation as the ONLY economical system that works, by our educational system that in turn is run by Capitalists. How about how Governments of most nations of the world who have been taken over by the Powerful Capitalists pushing aside the citizens who now have very little or no say in how their governments, which are touted as being of the people and for the people is run.

My Bad.Answer this,How come China a Socialist countryowns roughly $1.08 trillion worth of U.S. debt?

China is no longer a socialist country. It is capitalist with an authoritarian (arguably dictatorship under Xi) government. "To get rich is glorious," Chairman Deng Xiaping. Deng harnessed our natural greed to pull China out of poverty. Socialism sort of worked in the Soviet bloc, but citizens wanted more wealth and political freedoms, which they could see in North America and western Europe. People are naturally greedy and lazy, so they long for things they do not have. The Chinese had bicycles under Mao, but bought cars under Deng, and now Xi.
https://theconversation.com/to-get-rich-is-glorious-how-deng-xiaoping-set-china-on-a-path-to-rule-the-world-156836

3/5's, you do engage in WHATABOUTISM a lot and it clutters your argument. I do the same but I'm trying to be better.

whataboutism meaning: 1. the practice of answering a criticism or difficult question by making a similar criticism

Sorry What I write is far from whataboutism.I write based of Facts Data and Analysis.

PS--- since you mention Congo's exploitation, I will remind you that the govt there is a willing participant in exploiting their countrymen.

Those willing participant you are talking about who are exploiting their countrymen.Those countries are not under African control They are controlled by western governments and foreign corporations who are The puppet master of USA Imperialism.Read about neo-colonialism which relies heavily on the betrayal of Africa’s people by Africans with the help of The puppet master of USA Imperialism.Look up,Mobutu Sese Seko of Congo, who during his tyrannical tenure stole much of the country’s treasury and had innumerable people killed.The U.S. and Western Europe turned a blind eye to his crimes for many years because he allowed foreign interests to steal and exploit Congo’s resources.

Sorry.Like I said.What I write is far from whataboutism.I write based of Facts Data and Analysis.And you are free to look what I write up.

What do you mean by the black equivalent.?

I keep digging at you for being a black nationalist.
You left out Pan-African Black Nationalist.

THREEFIFTHS, I once again tried to answer this but I believe with too much contempt in my tone, so I'll try again.

Black nationalists hold many of the same ideas that members of the KKK hold in regards to biological race (which have been disproven by modern science), racial segregation, what the foundation of a nation should be (biological race), and what is acceptable to achieve their ends (violence).

Pan-Africans have a belief system that in many ways mirrors the Nazi Party of old. Nazis wanted a biologically racialy homogenous Europe, Pan-Africanists want a biologically racially homogenous Africa, Nazi's had a scapegoat backed by a conspiracy theory (Jews and a international capitalist Jewish banking cabal), Pan-Africanists have a scapegoat backed by a conspiracy theory (white people and a international capitalist colonialism cabal). Both Nazis and Pan-Africanists believe that it is acceptable to violently expel their scapegoat.

Are you starting to see the similar themes here?

Its called Free Enterprise THREEFIFTHS. Look it up.

But they are still a socialist country.And to top it off.China Holds over $1 Trillion in U.S. Debt which has nothing to do with Free Enterprise.In fact there are a whole lot of socialist countries the good old USA deal with.You need to look it up.

THREEFIFTHS, US Treasury Bonds are considered the safest Fixed-Income Product in the world. Everyone who can buy them does to one degree or another. When we implement economic sanctions on countries like North Korea we bar them from purchasing US Treasury bonds among other things. If China attacks Taiwan I guarantee one of the first things we would do is cut them off from purchasing US Treasury bonds and prevent the transfer of the existing bonds they hold (the US debt as you think of it) so that they can't sell those bonds to generate cash in bulk or trade them for goods and materials.

Capitalist countries can co-exist alongside socialist ones, its just that socialist countries typically offer a lower quality of life, are less productive, and are less competitive in almost every way.

That's why it's a socialist thing to believe that socialism can only truly work in the absence of capitalism, essentially because capitalism makes socialism look bad by comparison.

The rich always do well . The poor have all the welfare. Many in the world who long to come here know what real poverty is. Americans know nothing of real poverty. Even drug addicts are supplied with methadone. Tapper is correct that capitalism has lifted more out of poverty than communism. Otherwise; communists would not have been routed around the world. Even the Chinese went state capitalist. Cruz should move to China and try his whining there.

Your statement that the middle class is dying is a myth. What data shows is that rich people have gotten wildly richer since the 80s and middle class income has only marginally increased (in adjusted dollars). But increased it has.
Please do argue about wealth inequality because that does exist, but cease repeating myths.

https://www.clevelandfed.org/en/publications/economic-commentary/2020/ec-202003-is-middle-class-worse-off#

I tend to agree with your comments on "what they are being taught". However, I am not sure how much of this is outside the core curriculum but the focus for NHPS should be on the child's educational foundation, not controversially social sciences.

Unbalanced analysis and a lack of raw data cloud critical thinking. One MUST look at all sides of the argument and design a reasonable model where weights are proposed for each argument.

Depending on whether you are a Positivist or Interpretivisit Social Scientist, the core issue is how much of "the science" is conjecture and subjective theory vs objective testable truths.

We do have this problem in other natural sciences, but far more so in the social sciences, especially social research, which in my opinion, lacks much of the same discipline we find in other sciences. There is nothing wrong with the two, per se, as long as you make it clear to an impressionable young student about what they are being taught is subjective and that the other side of the argument needs to be evaluated in order to sustain critical thinking.

Perhaps it would be accurate to define China as National Socialist. There is vast inequality of wealth, and poverty, in China, perhaps more than the US. It is certainly more nationalist than the US, as with many Asian countries racist and closed to immigration. China, like the US, over-invests in higher education leading to a lot of unemployment among college graduates who feel themselves too good for factory jobs but for whom no jobs requiring their level of education exists. The same problem existed in pre-revolutionary China, as scholars considered manual labor beneath them but had no gainful employment. The Economist recently ran a piece saying college is a good investment in the SU, and not as expensive as some would say. Nonetheless, there's a lot of money to be made in higher education, so institutions, both for and non-profit, encourage students of dubious quality to enroll in studies of dubious. marketability. Making institutions responsible for their students' debt would go a long way toward ensuring that students only go into debt when they have a good chance of re-paying it. Easy money for colleges also encourages spending on things like climbing walls, driving up costs.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/07/23/american-universities-have-an-incentive-to-seem-extortionate
https://www.economist.com/china/2019/08/01/the-growing-ranks-of-unemployed-graduates-worry-chinas-government
https://www.economist.com/china/2023/04/20/what-chinas-graduates-really-think-about-their-job-prospects

re: Justin .... Good points, and very nicely put too.

You said.
Let me just reword this for you and tell me if you see the similarities

"Not true. Nazism is a general term for various movements in Germany and Europe that have as their common goal the unity of Aryan Europeans and the elimination of Jewish colonialism and Jewish supremacy from the continent."

Look at the Nazi Party Platform taken from Holocaust Encyclopedia

https://www.vaholocaust.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/25Points.pdf

Now Look at the Pan-Africanism Platform

Pan-Africanism, the idea that peoples of African descent have common interests and should be unified. Historically, Pan-Africanism has often taken the shape of a political or cultural movement. There are many varieties of Pan-Africanism. In its narrowest political manifestation, Pan-Africanists envision a unified African nation where all people of the African diaspora can live. (African diaspora refers to the long-term historical process by which people of African descent have been scattered from their ancestral homelands to other parts of the world.) In more-general terms, Pan-Africanism is the sentiment that people of African descent have a great deal in common, a fact that deserves notice and even celebration.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pan-Africanism
Read Both Platforms and show me similarities

You said.My answer is that all forms of legally enforced racism from the former colonial governments should definitely be removed. As for all the people that have moved there now in the last 140 years? Should they be removed? Their businesses taken from them? No.

So if the land was stolen your saying they should not have give the land back? Did you know under the The South African 1913 Natives Land Act thousands of black families forcibly removed from their land by the apartheid government. The Act became law on 19 June 1913 limiting African land ownership to 7 percent and later 13 percent through the 1936 Native Trust and Land Act of South Africa.
Part One

Part two.
As for all the people that have moved there now in the last 140 years? Should they be removed? Their businesses taken from them? No.
Sorry The land was never there land.It was stolen.Look at South Africa.The Land was stolen under apartheid 1913 Native Lands Act,The act limited black ownership to just 7% of the land. The vast majority of viable land was allotted to whites.Even President Cyril Ramaphosa recently described the Lands Act as South Africa’s “original sin.”

“In my own family it happened twice, where land was taken, we were moved from where my parents had grown up owning land, working the land, they were moved and dropped into an arid place with no compensation whatsoever,” said Ramaphosa .So so then not give back the land they stole? And do not get me started on the stolen diamond mines.

Africa is a myriad of different languages, cultures, and religions, traditional tribal government structures, various post colonial government structures, different economic systems. And you would unify all of that around what? Skin color?
Who said any thing about Skin color? You seem to be the one who keeps bring race.

The terrible transatlantic slave trade which hasn't been around for 160 years? A made up sense of what it is to be truly African that you then force upon all the people on the continent?
LOL!!! Have you every been to the Mother Land?

You say.Should all foreign entities and government interests pull out of Africa? Probably not.

If they do not allow the African countries as a whole benefit from foreign investment,Then they must go.

THREEFIFTHS, here are the similarities between Nazism and Pan-Africanism, both ideologies are centered around a believed biologically racial identity
which should be the basis of a nation, both ideologies have a scapegoat enemy that is blamed for any shortcomings of the ideological movement, and both ideologies seek to establish a reason to justify violence against a population that is NOT the same population that perpetrated the wrong that the ideology is obsessed with.

"Who said any thing about Skin color? You seem to be the one who keeps bring race."

Bro, you are the self identified "Black Nationalist", don't try to gaslight me. I'm not the one adhering to a biologically racially centered ideology.

You can go live by socialist principles right now and no one is stopping you. So go and do it, and stop trying go force it on everyone else.

I am not forcing anything on any one.Socialist principles? I told you before.
I am for Democratic Socialism,Not Socialism.
Understanding Democratic Socialism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcAQB3oPzt0

THREEFIFTHS, I understand that Democratic Socialists believe that a strong adherence to the democratic process will stave off the typical quick roll into outright totalitarianism that Socialism typically brings.

I'm pretty skeptical about this however due to the prevailing consequentialist mindset that prevails amongst Socialists which makes it very easy to outright manipulate the democratic process through any means necessary to achieve what they believe are just ends.

MTR, I have someone on the line for you. It's the 60s! The 60s are calling!

I think it made a LITTLE more sense to be a domino theorist back then, before it became abundantly clear that countries could and would/did establish Communist & varying degrees of socialist governments without being appendages of the Soviet Union. Even then, it was still extreme hubris to try to predict the future of a system as chaotic and complex as the geopolitics of THE ENTIRE WORLD -- and morally indefensible to use that wild speculation as a justification to commit atrocities. A million people died in Vietnam because the U.S.'s "domino theorists" sided with Vietnam's former colonial ruler against a popular uprising -- and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

But in 2023, to still be a domino theorist... wow. To use your word: "SERIOUSLY?"

P.S. To your point about the environment (which I assume was in response to my comment about us destroying the planet, i.e. carbon emissions & climate change): Red Scare "Soviet hegemony" fantasies aside, it turns out that countries on the socialist/communist spectrum produce WAY fewer greenhouse gas emissions per capita than "advanced" capitalist countries like the USA. (See https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/12/climate/cop26-emissions-compensation.html for more.) And in China in particular, one of the great benefits of state involvement in the economy has been the growth in use of renewables as a % of total energy used.

How come I never Hear you talk about U S imperialism which is the highest advanced stage of capitalism, requiring monopolies to exploit labour and natural resources, and the exportation of finance capital, rather than manufactured goods, to sustain colonialism, which is an integral function of
imperialism.

America and the west aligned nations should totally have just let Soviet Russia spread its tendrils and influence throughout the world in the wake of WWII until we were all living in literal parallel to 1984.

Blame Henry Kissinger,The former secretary of state who is identified with an endless list of atrocities perpetrated by American imperialism.

ethanjrt, the Cold War was not a joke or a pointless game, it was THE game from the 1950s - 1980s, the stakes were everything, and massive amounts of manpower, money, material, and subterfuge were deployed by the Soviets and on our side. The US and its allies fought and undermined Soviet Hegemony at every location where it was trying to be established and that is why it didn't take root. We sit here now in a world of American hegemony where we have the capacity to put our boot on the neck of any country in the world through military or economic means and you don't believe the Soviets could have achieved the same if left unchecked?

I'm not going to apologize for or excuse atrocities, you are right in one way, the world is extremely complicated, and plans go wrong, poor decisions are made, some fights that didn't need to be fought were, and innocent people died.

But I'm happy to live in the world that we do. If one country has to be the tyrant of the world I'm glad that it is the good old USA.

As for your comments about carbon emissions you are right, high levels of consumerism and manufacturing capacity lead to those things, its hard to get around. But to hold up China which has more coal power plants than the entirety of the world combined, and continues to build more coal plants, China which has devastated and contaminated its environments being the worlds bulk manufacturer, where you can't drink the tap water, and where heavy metals are often found in its bottled water, as some sort of paragon of environmental progress is ridiculous.

THREEFIFTS. I'm not going to apologize for American hegemony, I think that it is more or less a good thing. Lol, but no one wants monopolies, they stifle innovation and slowly but inevitably lose operational efficiencies and capacity achieved by their scale up to a monopoly. I think that we are certainly due in the US to break up some companies into smaller unaffiliated entities.

MTR, what about my comment made you think I saw the Cold War as a "joke" or a "pointless game"? It was obviously a very deadly struggle for power with very real human consequences. But again, at the risk of repeating myself: the idea that all communist & socialist movements were somehow necessarily arms of & subject to the Soviet Union has proven completely false as a historical matter. So, much of the premise of the Cold War (including your idea that without military interventions the Soviet Union would have come to rule the world) belongs in the dustbin of "stupid ideas from the 60s." Repeating those claims in 2023 when they've been proven false is just embarrassing.

You seem to think that the world somehow needs or trends toward the hegemony of a single power -- and that too is fundamentally incorrect / not based in fact. With China's rise, we are about to see what a multilateral world looks like. (And frankly, as long as the U.S. doesn't start WWIII, it's probably going to be fine.)

In all, you seem to be very pro boots-on-necks. In fact, I think that if you had a boot on your neck, you'd quickly find that it didn't much matter to you whose boot it was.

Re China: Energy & GHG figures make zero sense if they're not listed per capita. ("Tuvalu uses so little energy! Shocking!") China is a country of 1.4 billion people, and it's not even in the top 10 per capita coal users -- Germany, for example, is higher. Plus, Western consumer demand is (as you alluded to) a huge factor in China's energy consumption, so we bear a lot of responsibility. No one said China is a "paragon of environmental progress" (straw man much?) but the fact remains that the U.S. is, per capita, doing FAR more to push our planet to the climate change brink.

So enough "whataboutism" from you, please. We could talk all day about, e.g., the many major U.S. cities that have been under boil water orders over the last few years (some ongoing) -- but GHGs are what is going to destroy our planet.

ethanjrt, when you say " the idea that all communist & socialist movements were somehow necessarily arms of & subject to the Soviet Union has proven completely false as a historical matter", I have to laugh. I am aware that current socialist revisionism of history is a thing, but man, you seem deep in that literature. You guys want so bad to divest the ideology from Soviet association but they were inescapably the largest advocates and spreaders of socialist ideologies that the world has seen to date. It must be difficult to cope with the fact that a murderous totalitarian regime was the greatest champion of your movement and that they absolutely intended to use socialism (of which they had become self appointed spiritual leader of sorts) as a means of exerting control over other nations. We typically focus on the direct aid given in the proxy wars, but we gloss over the fact that they were actively soliciting as many nations as they could to come join them under the glorious socialist umbrella, they were offering political and economic advisors, they were sponsoring and flying people out to camps to learn about labor organization with an aim to a global proletariat workers movement under their control. There is literally no historical precedent showing that if ground had been given to them that they would have stopped or become less ambitious.

I will give you one thing though, I agree that by the end of the 1960s coordinated efforts on behalf of America and its allies made for certain that the possibility of Soviet hegemony was impossible, but we continued to ham up the threat of Soviet domination for our own ends, but that did not mean that there wasn't a 20 year period following WWII where Soviet hegemony was entirely possible.

As for Chinas energy consumption, I wasn't aware that we were forcing them to construct coal plants or not dispose of chemical refuse correctly. Also, can you name a single major city in China where you can drink the tap water?

It's straw man after straw man with you, isn't it, MTR?

I point out that many socialist & communist governments clearly developed "without being appendages | arms & subjects of the Soviet Union," and you somehow think I have to prove to you that the Soviets were not "the largest advocates and spreaders of Socialist ideology."

I point out that advanced capitalist countries are by far the greatest per capita contributors to the GHG emissions that are destroying our planet, and your answer is that water is not drinkable in any major Chinese city. (I assume you mean "for you," right? Due to local bacteria? Because of course you're aware that there are many major Chinese cities with lead levels within acceptable U.S. ranges where locals drink the water on a day-to-day basis -- like Shanghai, which incidentally has a higher life expectancy than any U.S. metro.)

Anyway... I'm done repeating myself. You're engaging with your own imagined arguments, not mine.

"I point out that many socialist & communist governments clearly developed "without being appendages | arms & subjects of the Soviet Union,""

Because we won the cold war! That's what it was about ethanjrt lol, preventing the spread, unification, and alliances of socialist states under Soviet influence, and the US and its allies made it pretty clear to the world that a State wishing to become socialist under the wing of the Soviet Union did so at its own economic and even mortal peril. Our efforts were extremely successful.

Tankies man, you guys are ridiculous. I suppose you are all for allowing China to conquer the sovereign democratic state of Taiwan?