Why Liberals Can’t Argue

from Stand Firm by David Fischler 

A Harvard Law School student offers a stunningly clear-sighted perspective on the ideological uniformity that dominates law faculties (and indeed, graduate and undergraduate faculties across the board in the humanities, social sciences, journalism and education) in the United States. Joel Alicia writes at the Washington Times:

But the intellectual homogeneity of the legal academy poses a deeper problem than the marginalization of conservative students. It is the predominantly liberal student body at elite law schools that is most harmed by the dearth of conservative voices. Many of these students graduate from law school without having encountered a cogent articulation of conservative views in the classroom, without having had their own ideas subjected to rigorous examination and debate.
As a result, these liberal students do not truly know why they hold the beliefs that they do, and they have little understanding of what a great proportion of their fellow citizens believe. For a group of students aspiring to be our nation’s leaders, that is serious indeed, and for a country likely to be led by such students, it presents an important problem. It is tempting to think that the ideological insularity of the legal academy need not concern those outside the Ivory Tower, but an out-of-touch academy produces out-of-touch graduates who go on to serve as judges, senators and, perhaps, presidents. The liberal academic monolith not only harms the intellectual development of students; it does grave damage to the nation’s capacity for future leadership.

This, in a nutshell, is a significant part of the reason why so much of our country’s political discourse is so polarized and guttural–an awful lot of the people taking part in that discourse have never been exposed to opposing ideas except as objects of scorn and ridicule. There are certainly conservatives who are just as incapable of discussing ideas without resorting to invective and ad hominem, but I genuinely think that there is a good deal more of this coming from the left because that is what the academy–an overwhelmingly leftist institution–has taught its students.

I think that this also explains a lot about the level of theological argument in the mainline churches. By and large, the mainline seminaries no longer teach, they indoctrinate, and their faculties make clear that historic Christian faith and teaching is out-moded, superstitious, backward, racist, sexist, homophobic, abusive, irrational (or hyper-rationalistic, depending upon who’s doing the attacking), anti-intellectual, unscientific, anti-scientific, right-wing, and just plain foolish. Mainline liberals, then, tend to treat those who disagree with them in one of two ways: either they condescend to their opponents as ignorant children, or else treat them as the evil propagators of an evil religion. Yes, evangelicals give it back as good as they get it, but they do so by analyzing and taking apart liberal theology. They don’t simply dismiss it as unworthy of examination or confrontation.
Anyway, Alicia’s article is worth a full read.