Comments on: Teachable Moment

By: Jim H

Jim H — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:37:00 +0000

What’s the old saying –
“If you’re not a democrat at 18 you don’t have a heart, and if you’re not a republican at 28 you don’t have a brain”.

Pretty well sums it up

By: hayden fisher

hayden fisher — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:25:40 +0000

I’v always thought that academia (of which I’m a part-time member) drifts to the left because it’s insulated from the colder and harder realities of day-to-day business. Professors can focus solely on their ideas, case studies and areas of interest without having to worry about making payroll or facing their peers after having suffered a business setback. This is not to say that academia is not without its own internal challenges and competitions; but it’s more or less a socialistic institution that rewards seniority or the indicia of seniority (lots of published materials) and philosophy as opposed to measurable achievement–quite the opposite of the business world. Necessarily, academia focuses upon the evolution of ideas. So I’ve always viewed the liberalism of academia as a beneficial check on the steely interests of business in a capitalistic society. Academia makes large contributions to society, unquestionably, and its idealism is, frankly, refreshing, even if it’s too far afield to be substituted for day-to-day policy. Academia ensures that the envelopment of those day-to-day polices is always pushed and tested.

By: Swordsman

Swordsman — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:25:55 +0000

Please tell me you are not referring to Joe the Plumber.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:22:38 +0000

In terms of economics many people are doubting the advice of Economists that win the Nobel Prize like Myron Scholes who founded the hedge fund Long Term Captial Management that was bailed out by the Fed ten years ago and almost took down the world economy back then. He is now managing a hedge fund that lost 29% of its value in the first half of October and has stopped withdrawals. Hedge funds are supposed to in theory make money all the time regardless of economic conditions. Obviously, Scholes theories are massively flawed.

So flawed in fact people might be better off taking investment advice from hmm… A plumber????

By: Jeremy D. Mayer

Jeremy D. Mayer — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 02:14:30 +0000

Hi Richard–thanks for the kind plug on your site. We just had our book party tonight, and Lee and I would have loved to have you there. I remember yours at Politics and Prose for the Flight book (You had better turnout, but we had better food–Lebanese Taverna). I think we can revise our essay on the election to include some interesting stuff on Palin as a signal, to those afraid of the cultural shifts you write about, and (unintended) to those who are relishing them. Incidentally, check out Mark Lilleks in the WSJ–brilliant piece on the passing of a tradition of conservative intellectualism. Best part is where he says the liberal sin of the 60s and 70s of “radical chic” is now paralleled by the equally stupid and dangerous sin of “populism chic” in which the economic views of plumbers are put ahead of those of Nobel prize winning economists–with a sneer.

By: Richard Florida

Richard Florida — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 15:07:47 +0000

Elizabeth –

Me too. I worked closely and on urban issues with scholars who were marxist, neo-marxist, centrist, liberal, conservative, and neo-conservative scholars and this was near universally true. Save for one very well known liberal professor while in graduate school for political science. But instead of trying to push me to the left, he did just the opposite. In my research paper on the housing finance crisis of the time, he thought some of my ideas were too left-leaning (I was trying to employ some neo-marxist theory of the day) and made me rewrite it, as a comparative analysis of neo-conservative and liberal as well as neo-marxist approachers. Hmmm..

By: Elizabeth M

Elizabeth M — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 15:00:30 +0000

In what I recall from my own college years, professors had plenty to say but they pretty much stuck to their subject area – I don’t really remember any of my instructors expressing political views in the classroom.