Exactly. What is your point?
After Koch and their minions successfully vanquished 36 year veteran Republican Senator Richard Lugar in a primary, most others got the message that compromise will be punished and there stopped being any rational healthy debate in both chambers. Olympia Snowe retired over this.
IMHO, this is exactly why it’s hard to find any healthy rational debate on campuses that attract the most intellectual students either. The open minded center has been virtually eliminated from public life leaving nobody for intellectual conservatives to have intelligent conversations with. What remains are extreme positions where nobody is willing to see an alternative rationale point of view. As with Congress, this has gotten out of control on many campuses to the point of absurdity. I applaud the healthy actions taken by the University of Chicago to make sure that all points of view are welcome and that debate is based on principles, and not personal attacks.
We’re from Boston and my family tends to lean left, but what I saw when we went to visit campuses like Swarthmore made my skin crawl. I encouraged my kids to try to find schools where they would meet good well meaning folks who lean right and have honest respectful conversations, not view them as the enemy. I think both of my Ds are richer for the experience, and though they still lean left, they now see things like tradeoffs and recognize that not every problem has a simple minded solution. In fact my D has had real problems with some extremely liberal friends who begrudged her for making good money while they complain that the non-profits that they chose to work for don’t pay well enough. I just scratch my head.
Mr. Austere, I’m not sure what exactly you mean by openness and what you object about it.