So what’s new in DuhSantistan?

Who should decide what is a proper college lesson and what is indoctrination? The last person I would want in charge of this decision is an elected official. By supporting this, you are also endorsing the next governor’s power to ban teaching the ideas of Thomas Jefferson because he owned slaves. Empowering politicians to block channels of academic inquiry is never going to end well.

 

While I do generally agree with you, I worry that the adults have left the room a long time ago.
We’re looking at the consequences of liberal academia gone too far. It’s the pushback you don’t like and I get it. Since academia is easily dominated by liberals, I don’t hate seeing them run for cover on this one.

 

Its hard for me to bend on this one, because I see no point to reign in this power. If we support academic freedom unless the freedom has gone too far, do we really support academic freedom? Who decides when it has gone too far. Who decides when academia is overrun by liberals? Maybe the next governor thinks there are too few liberals and conservative thought has gone too far. I can’t really see a middle ground here, as we simply cannot have an objective criterion for “too far”.

 

Such a bang up job our baby fascist in charge is doing.

 

But the liberals are running their own show. Do you really expect them to self police and turn themselves in?
It’s like asking congress to push for term limits…lol.

 

But this is the problem. DeSantis thinks he is the only adult in the room, and as you can see just from this Board, there’s many people who think he is the LEAST qualified to be deemed the “adult in the room.” He should not be the arbiter of what is taught in a classroom. Shoot, he was educated in the best schools in the country, and he claims he had a horrible education. He has no business dictating education content.

School Boards, presumably and historically non-partisan locally elected leaders (pre-DeSantis takeovers), are in the best situation to approve curriculum. That’s their job. Let them do so without the color of politics dictating their mission.

 

And that is exactly what is taking place. DeSantis abuses his power here and censors education, causing an alt-left governor elsewhere to mandate the fringes of what is being banned here tone taught there.

Politics has NO PLACE in the setting of our educational content.

 

This is actually the exact point I’m making. Can we expect any class to self police and turn themselves in? The one monopoly that has total power is government. You can choose your own college or professor, but you can’t choose your own governor. While liberals may make up 72% of academia, Ron DeSantis alone makes up 100% of the governorship.

Because of this, we have to count on institutions rather than philosopher kings, to approach the best outcome. This other 28% of academics (and even some of 72%) can help to balance the majority. And several bottom up movements, such as FIRE, have already sprung up to meet this challenge. And maybe they aren’t “winning” just yet, but they are getting some wins.

University of Alabama recommits to First Amendment obligations, says it won’t punish subjectively offensive speech

If we don’t think an entire citizen community, such as academia, can police itself, why should we believe that Governor DeSantis or Gillum or Christ could?

 

If only you saw the irony and hypocrisy of your statement from my eyes. It’s the Rufo’s of the world that have started this travesty and perpetrated a political lie to change our education into propaganda. The fact that you claim it is the “libbies” is the parroting of a narrative Rufo created from whole cloth.

 

Libbies complain about the imbalance of the Supreme Court.
Pubs get to complain about the imbalance in academia…media/journalism, Hollywood…

 

Oh complaining I am all for. What I cannot support is a liberal president unilaterally passing an executive action to change the makeup of the Supreme Court because it’s conservatism has gone too far. That is the issue we have with DeSantis here.

 

Seems like everyone’s falling in line behind DeSantis, if only accidentally ...

Neocons Endorse Ron DeSantis’s Foreign Policy Prudence

 

The title of the article is incredibly deceptive. It actually begins by bashing the prominent neocons who criticized the isolationist pro-Russian position of MAGA nation.

A partial roll call includes John Bolton, who tweeted he was “disappointed” and that DeSantis was “badly wrong.” Bill Kristol, who ran the Weekly Standard into the ground, imperiously demanded that the editors of still-publishing conservative media outlets “not only come out strongly against DeSantis on Ukraine, but also discuss whether being on the wrong side of the defining foreign policy issue of our time isn’t disqualifying for the presidency.”

David French, who has sold out his conservative Christian principles all the way to a New York Times gig, declared DeSantis is projecting “moral confusion and profound timidity” and that a DeSantis victory would mean that “the Reagan Republican Party is truly lost, its moral clarity is gone.” National Review’s Jay Nordlinger proclaimed, “Ukraine is the frontline of a broader contest between freedom and tyranny. If Putin were allowed to eat Ukraine, he would not be sated. He would go on to his next meal. Aggression, if it goes unchecked, will aggress on. Once more, a dictator is redrawing the borders of Europe by force. We have seen this before.”​

The proverbial picture being worth a thousand words the cartoon below perfectly illustrates the position of the Republican Party back when it was the party of Reagan in contrast to the Ron DeSantis position of referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a "territorial dispute" a term also used by Xi of China.

 

Bastions of liberalism that, ironically, DeSantis likes to bash. Hypocritical, no?

 

Man, what a great point, but missed by some.

 

If you follow my posting history, you’ll know that I find Rade to be among the best on the board.

 

I wasn't thinking of you. Rade is very thoughtful and eloquent.

As for you, we don't agree on a lot, but I sense you'll meet me halfway, and that's all anyone on thks board can ask. I suspect if we sat down and debated an issue with an open mind, we could understand each other's position and COMPROMISE. In fact, I think that's what most people could do, and which Congress is not doing because of the extremes. How is it possible, for example, to find common ground with MTG or AOC? But that's who we're electing these days.

 

DeSantis isn't the only one. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to name two other MAGA politicians were also products of Ivy League or Ivy League type (Hawley undergrad Stanford) schools. Even the Dear Leader who loves the uneducated earned his degree from an Ivy League school ironically a point that he loved to emphasize during his presidential election campaign.

 

This is a really good point on common ground. I’ve become somewhat partial to the hypothesis that gerrymandering facilitates the election of extremists because the general election typically cannot act as a safeguard against the extremes in very safe districts.

I’m intrigued by the forward party of Andrew Yang party, which is basically founded to combat the culture or contempt that has consumed our political discourse. In addition, the party seems focused more on issues of fairly making decisions rather than on the specific outcomes of the decisions. This is going to be a tough road to hoe, but at least someone is trying.

 

I'm more annoyed with his pandering to Putin over Ukraine. Russian interference in the 2024 election is a given, DeSaster is just trying to get Putin to favor him.