intolerant leftists at Smith?

laureldj
Sun, 27 Aug 2006 16:39:18 +0000

I think that S&P gave you an excellent answer. I would add that you need to be very discerning about Internet “news” and opinion sites. Many sites, such as this one, are crafted for the single purpose of promoting a particular agenda. The agenda could be anything but the information usually places somewhere on the scale from being presented in a slightly biased way to being completely slanted and distorted.

IMHO, the “grain of truth” in the article is that there are more “liberal” students and faculty members at Smith than there are “conservatives” and that a percentage of all people are intolerant of other’s views. Therefore, there are more intolerant “liberals” at Smith than there are intolerant “conservatives.” I would also say that many young adults are very passionate about their views, whatever they are, and may debate ummmm… rather stridently at times. But the majority of Smith students are fairly open minded and tolerent.

I actually don’t like to use the terms liberal and conservative or left and right because I think that most people, including most Smith students, just don’t fit within the popular defenitions of such simplistic and polarizing labels. Most people I know are more politically moderate, supporting some issues and causes traditionally identified as “liberal” and some that are traditionally defined as “conservative.”

The whole conservative = patriot, liberal = traitor/terrorist slant from the far right and the conservative = idiot war monger, liberal = enlightened humanitarian from the far left is just bulls**t that sells a lot of books and garners a lot of speaking engangements for the bull-slingers, but it doesn’t represent how most people think.

BTW, the site that you’re referring to sells “conservative” t-shirts with “patriotic” slogans such as “Iran want nukes? Then give them to them” with a lovely picture of an exploding nuclear bomb on the front (modeled by a beautiful, busty, smiling brunnete). I have many “conservative” friends and family members who would find that sort of thing very offensive and not at all representative of their views or attitudes. hmm… probably not a good source for information. :-)