> The 10-point memo urged viewpoint diversity in faculty, students and staff, including revising governance structures and "transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas."
Yes. And partisans who control the United States government will ensure their preferred political ideas get taught by private institutions under the guise of “ideological diversity”. No diversity will be required from conservative organizations. None of this is constitutional and none of it should be happening in our country.
“The U.T. System has been reviewing courses on gender identity taught at all UT institutions to ensure compliance and alignment with applicable law and state and federal guidance, and to make sure any courses that are taught on UT campuses are aligned with the direction and priorities of the Board of Regents,” the UT System said in a statement to the Texan.
Some, especially some smart HN commenters, would say that conservatives just want to have an honest discussion without being insulted or being made to feel their opinions are wrong by default.
How do you effectively deal with flat earthers, or people who believe other countries pay our tariffs? Or people who don't believe in graph slopes and just say "climate has changed before"?
I think that's fair. But I also think table stakes for conservatives to expect an honest discussion and respect is to criticize and distance themselves from deeply wrong and unconstitutional proposals like the one in TFA.
The 'Studies' departments, most likely. Gender, Queer, Colonial, Women's, Ethnic, African, Fat, Whiteness, you name it. Anything which either starts with 'Critical ...' or ends with '... Studies'.
Does it get state and federal funding? If it does, it should conform. If it's private and does not get funding, then I guess it can continue doing what it does...
A quick reminder that the First Amendment of the Unites States Constitution bars the Federal government from forcing private institutions to participate in chosen political speech. The question of whether you get funding from the Federal Government should not matter, since it's the Federal Government that's constitutionally constrained from doing this.
Of course if we're no longer in a place where the rule of law applies, then sentences like "if it's private and does not get funding..." hardly matter.
Yes. It receives federal grant funding for its faculty. Students receive federal loans for tuition. And international students can receive visas to attend it.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition...There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
The problem I see is that the term "conservative" is not defined. There are many places where current "conservatives" would be at odds with "conservatives" of just a few years ago. If you're a fiscal conservative, where did the tea party go?, you'd by furious by the spending of the current "conservatives".
I think framing this stuff as even a protection of conservative views is going to miss the point. They seem to want a hiring preference for conservative views and seem to want to punish non-conservative organizations at universities (e.g. LGBT organizations or views). This won't be the end to this push, it's just another step in a longer context.
Edit: with NSPM-7 you can sorta see the angle they are likely to push. With a lot of the oppositional views to the government being labelled as promoting terrorism and violence.
They were never in favor of merit. They were always in favor of "fuck them libs." The attacks on DEI are just attacks on racial minorities, women, and queer people in positions of any authority or influence.
It's great that they've declared war on DEI claiming it elevates people to positions they don't deserve to hold over more qualified candidates and then immediately proceed to elevate the least qualified, most corrupt, despicable pieces of shit they can find to every position they can while firing everyone who disagrees with anything they say.
That’s exactly what it is. In the free marketplace of ideas, conservatism was gradually shut out because of its refusal to adapt to changing times. A populace embraces conservative values in generally two scenarios: a golden era that they don’t wish to see end and is dependent upon certain ideals, or a populist movement during a downturn or empirical collapse where a certain segment of the population seeks scapegoats instead of reform.
Especially given the origins of the internet and the bulk of folks who maintain or create for it, conservative values were always the extreme minority. Rather than reform or improve their ideology and platform, they seek forced acceptance and indoctrination along with the exclusion or elimination of their perceived enemies.
So yes, they’re using a form of coerced “DEI” to ensure their viewpoints are forcibly represented to a populace that has consistently told them to fuck off, but only for the narrative of DEI as a means of institutional harm against white conservatives.
The objection was never the hegemony of a specific ideology: private evangelical universities like Liberty, Bob Jones, etc. have had much stricter demands on ideological conformity for much longer, and nobody raised a peep. The problem was always that it wasn't their ideology being promoted; anyone who thought otherwise and that their complaints about groupthink or whatever were genuine was a useful idiot for the regime.
I suspect you are aware of the existing 'progressive' bias in academia and the dearth of 'institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against progressive ideas' on the average campus while the Humanities are rife with '${identity_group} studies' departments where the discourse is centred around challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are fundamentally shaped by power dynamics between dominant and oppressed groups. Beyond just understanding and critiquing these dynamics, it explicitly aims to transform society through praxis and collective action with an explicit sociopolitical purpose (a citation straight from Wikipedia and as such certainly approved by those same departments).
As to whether the approach taken here is the best there is room for discussion. Instead of censoring those departments it may be more effective to have those institutions erect new departments which take aim at what those 'Studies' departments and others peddle as 'their truth'.
Here's an idea, now listen well. Most if not all academical institutions have sporting arenas or at least access to them. How about they fight it out in those arenas, a regular (bi-weekly or monthly) battle of ideas between the ${identity_group} studies departments and their (equally well-funded and staffed) ideological opponents? Traditional debating rules shall be followed, no shout-me-downs, tantrums, walkouts, no paint or ketchup or pie throwing, none of the sort. If the debate ends inconclusive the fight may be continued in a boxing ring following amateur boxing rules and using protective gear. Outside of these battles the departments shall behave like normal, traditional academic institutions. If some studies department wishes to transform society through praxis and collective action they can do that in their own time, off-campus, using their own funding and at their own risk. This goes for all departments no matter where they stand politically.
Yet, there have been several high profile violent acts committed by the political left recently. Charlie Kirk. The healthcare ceo. Multiple attempts on Trump’s life on the campaign trail. And so on.
People on the left think conservative political violence is worse. But conservatives don’t see it that way. Both sides of American politics think the other side has a worrying amount of political violence.
We'll see what shakes out of the trial, but odds are leaning that way, yeah.
> The healthcare ceo.
Last I checked the guy's history read as right-leaning and it was a personal grievance that motivated it? I remember this because lots of people online were surprised/disappointed when he turned out not to have clear leftist motivations. But I admit I haven't kept up on this since the first few weeks, maybe the picture's shifted again.
> Multiple attempts on Trump’s life on the campaign trail.
One right-leaning guy motivated by notoriety-seeking more than politics, and the second one was some nut with a very weird past (lots of felony charges including related to firearms but somehow also lots of foreign travel to conflict zones?) and tough-to-bucket politics.
> People on the left think conservative political violence is worse. But conservatives don’t see it that way. Both sides of American politics think the other side has a worrying amount of political violence.
One side's leaders routinely call for violence. The other's almost never do. There's a clear difference. There's even a clear difference with Republicans pre-Trump and the modern MAGA party—their talking heads used to sometimes call for political violence, but at least their elected and appointed officials rarely did. Both do, now, and have since Trump's first campaign (remember when he suggested his followers shoot Hillary if she won? On stage, to a crowd, with cameras and everything?)
Why are they forcing unpopular viewpoints on people? We do not need to be teaching creationism or teaching that climate change isn't real (to name a couple examples) just because they're less popular.
Even the chart the White House shared to say there's an increase in left wing violence this year showed years of history where right wing violence absolutely dominated left wing violence.
>Some of the most sweeping commitments are aimed at promoting conservative viewpoints. Universities would have to ensure their campuses are a “vibrant marketplace of ideas” where no single ideology is dominant, the compact said. They would have to evaluate views among students and faculty to ensure every department reflects a diverse mix of views.
This is completely unconstitutional. The journalist author fails the reader not explaining how the First Amendment works, or quoting a law expert who does.
> "The guidance is likely to raise due process and privacy concerns in light of the Trump administration's recent attempts to deport pro-Palestinian students. The attempts have faced legal challenges."
By "faced legal challenges" they should write they were ruled unconstitutional.
https://www.lawdork.com/p/judge-william-youngs-ruling-agains... ("[T]his Court rules that here the Plaintiffs have shown that Secretaries Noem and Rubio are engaged in a mode of enforcement leading to detaining, deporting, and revoking noncitizens’ visas solely on the basis of political speech, and with the intent of chilling such speech and that of others similarly situated. Such conduct is not only unconstitutional, but a thing virtually unknown to our constitutional tradition.")
I'm not sure what you mean, other than the fact that the Senate confirms Supreme Court justices? But this typically happens over the span of many years, across different Congresses.
Also, nominees are purposely vague about how they would rule on future cases, sometimes to the consternation of the President who appointed them.
> not sure what you mean, other than the fact that the Senate confirms Supreme Court justices?
This is the entire text of Article III [1]. Section 1, the part that concerns itself with the Supreme Court, is 64 words. That and the Appointments clause [2] are all the Constitution has to say about our entire judiciary.
Everything else is a creature of statute. Which means a simple majority of the House and Senate, together with the President, can change it.
Congress could also simply impeach the President again and this time remove him from office for such nonsense.
My point, though, was that the First Amendment, cited by the OP, is not necessarily going to stop this particular action, because as things stand now, barring a fundamental change in structure that nobody in the Congressional majority is currently proposing, the current Supreme Court decides what the First Amendment means, and the majority seems content to allow the current President to do basically anything he wants.
> Congress could also simply impeach the President again and this time remove him from office for such nonsense.
It's not as simple in that case because the Constitution requires a 2/3 vote in the Senate to remove, which cannot be overridden without an amendment. The nation is split pretty much 50/50 not 60/40, so a 50 vote threshold is easier to achieve.
> as things stand now, barring a fundamental change in structure that nobody in the Congressional majority is currently proposing
I mean yes, SCOTUS rules supreme until at least 2026. My point is Democrats have had two trifectas in the last 20 years. We used one to pass ACA. We wasted the second.
The idea that the current structure of SCOTUS is immutable has somehow become lore. It is not true. The Constitution is brief on the courts because it left constructing them to Congress.
> The idea that the current structure of SCOTUS is immutable has somehow become lore.
1. I did not say that it was immutable.
2. There was actually quite a bit of public debate during the Biden administration about expanding the Supreme Court, which Biden himself explicitly rejected. So you're not telling me anything I didn't already know.
Theoretically Congress has a lot of power over the Supreme Court, if they're sufficiently unified and motivated.
The confirmation aspect is one end, but Congress also has the power to impeach Supreme Court justices. So, theoretically, Congress could impeach all the justices that are believed to be acting in unconstitutional ways, and then refuse to confirm any new nominees that are believed would act similarly.
Nope. The whole point is the Congress can restructure the Supreme Court in highly profound ways.
Shadow docket? The whole thing where the court chooses which cases it tries? The lack of a standard of ethics? These are not Constitutionally empowered. (Hell, the fact that the Supreme Court is a permanent bench of justices versus a rotating set chosen by lot for each case?)
Worst case I guess you need 60 votes in the Senate to remove.
Well, it looks though like these 60 votes required to change these rules will not happen. Which makes me think these rules do not matter for most of the people. This ties in with my other comment in this thread - the US population is living comfortably enough that they simply do not care about any of these things (Supreme court packed with conservative for 2 decades at least, Bill of Rights gutted, ubiquitous surveillance, etc...).
If it was that simple, the current administration would've gotten rid of the Supreme Court.
It's not that simple, for a reason.
To abolish the Supreme Court, the Constitution itself would need to be changed. This requires a constitutional amendment, which requires much more than simply 60 senators and a majority in the house.
It's almost as if our country wasn't founded by complete morons - who had the insight to figure out that at some point in the future, it would be possible for morons to get a simple majority.
You can expand the supreme court with 60 senators - but that's only happened a handful of times (13 - 4 of which happened under FDR, 5 of which happened from 59-69, so 4 times outside of that, and only once since 79 after the 2008 meltdown).
> If it was that simple, the current administration would've gotten rid of the Supreme Court
Remember the nuclear option [1]? That was the Senate removing the 60% rule for judicial appointments.
("Originally, the Senate's rules did not provide for a procedure for the Senate to vote to end debate on a question so that it could be voted on, which opened the door to filibusters. In 1917, the Senate introduced a procedure to allow for ending debate (invoking cloture) with a two-thirds majority, later reduced in 1975 to three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn (60 if there is no more than one vacancy).")
> To abolish the Supreme Court, the Constitution itself would need to be changed
To abolish, yes. To restructure, no. Again, § 1 of Article III and the Appointments Clause are everything the Constitution has to say about the supreme Court.
> You can expand the supreme court with 60 senators
You can expand it with 50. Nothing in the Constitution says anything about 60 Senators--the only time it requires a supermajority is in § 3 of Article I in respect of impeachments [2].
Senate rules say 60 Senators. A simple majority can amend the Senate's rules.
> You can expand the supreme court with 60 senators - but that's only happened a handful of times (13 - 4 of which happened under FDR, 5 of which happened from 59-69, so 4 times outside of that, and only once since 79 after the 2008 meltdown)
Nothing here is correct.
SCOTUS was expanded five times: 1801, undone in 1802, 1807, 1837 and 1863; then thinned in 1866 and 1867; then expanded again in 1869 [3]. FDR threatened to expand the court, but didn't. Nothing happened in 1979 or 2008.
Most of those votes did not occur with a supermajority (we literally don't even have the vote counts for many of them). None of them required 60 votes because during all of them the Senate had fewer than 100 members.
I actually really like the idea of having a supreme court of 50 justices where 9 are selected randomly for each case. There's obvious problems with this but I don't see how it's obviously worse than what we have now... which is awful.
> actually really like the idea of having a supreme court of 50 justices where 9 are selected randomly for each case
Simpler: just use the appelate bench's 179 judges [1]. They become the "Judges of the supreme Court" [2]. (The only time a chief Justice is mentioned in the Constitution is when it pertains to impeachment (Art. 1 § 3). That could just be defined by statute as the longest-serving circuit judge.)
Every case is assigned 9 random judges. They decide whether to hear the case. If they pass, precedent stands. If not, they hear the case and write an opinion.
A supreme Court with 50 partisan hacks, where no decision means anything, because you just continuously roll the dice until you get the ruling you want.
> you just continuously roll the dice until you get the ruling you want
Judges are already randomly assigned to cases in practically every jurisdiction. You don't get to re-roll.
If you mean continuously re-rolling issues, that problem is preserved whether we choose by lot or by appointment. The difference is choosing by lot out of a large group makes it more difficult to stack.
> Hell, the fact that the Supreme Court is a permanent bench of justices versus a rotating set chosen by lot for each case?
I've been making noise about this option but it doesn't seem to have entered even the online-politics-discussion mainstream yet. Everyone's like "expand the court" but I think both expanding it to match the count of circuits, and forming it by lot from lower courts each session (or multiple lots for a session—it might be good to at least have one group choose the cases, and a different one hear and rule on them) is a far more elegant solution and provides longer-lasting protection against problems, while also depoliticizing the reform to a degree (it wouldn't just be whoever's in control instantly gaining several justices) which I think makes it far more likely to actually be an achievable and durable reform.
It's even got a phase-in option that'd be immediately beneficial and also side-step any questions about whether an SC justice can be "demoted" to merely another federal judge: leave the current ones in place, start drawing the new seats by lot immediately. Existing justices' seats fall under the lot system as they come open. Done.
When things involve taking money from the government, it's really not that simple. You're failing your readers by ginning them up with false simplicity.
Part of the problem with current American affairs is that, and with the judicial process especially, is that commenters demand and assert that complex issues are actually gordian knots to be cut and anyone not picking up the sword is actually an enemy.
It really is pretty simple. The courts have repeatedly ruled that Federal Aid can't be use to force Universities to teach specific political viewpoints or ideologies. The exceptions that exist are very narrow, and involve either (1) conduct that isn't speech or viewpoint, or (2) declining to subsidize specific activities in the case where this doesn't require Universities to adopt a specific viewpoint or ideology.
No doubt this Court will dispense with those precedents because it's not really a Court of law anymore. But that's how you make Federal funding work within the bounds of a nation that has a First Amendment.
> Signatories shall maintain institutional neutrality at all levels of their administration. This requires policies that all university employees, in their capacity as university representatives, will abstain from actions or speech relating to societal and political events except in cases in which external events have a direct impact upon the university.
How do you teach political science, history, basically any social science, or even freaking literature, while doing that? Even if it only required you to be "neutral" (which is not what it says), that would be impossible.
But most of it doesn't seem to be that blatant. The majority of the text seems to be about setting up expectations that sound reasonable until you see how they actually get interpreted later. Most of which is prolly still unconstitutional, mind you...
> How do you teach political science, history, basically any social science, or even freaking literature, while doing that? Even if it only required you to be "neutral" (which is not what it says), that would be impossible.
By keeping it descriptive instead of prescriptive. As to whether staff should be allowed to make prescriptive statements, I think there's an argument for both sides. Personally, it irked me when professors used the time I paid for to "enlighten" me about their personal worldview during time that could've been used for learning about the subject and leaving the student to decide what to make of it.
> By keeping it descriptive instead of prescriptive.
First of all, what it says is that they aren't allowed to talk about those matters at all. Read it.
Second, even if that were not the case, I guarantee that if you write what you think is a "descriptive" syllabus, there are a bunch of other people who'll think it's extremely biased political indoctrination.
A friend of mine is an atmospheric science professor who publishes research on climate change modeling. His work is descriptive. He regularly gets hate mail from conservatives.
Another friend of mine is a medieval history professor. When they teach intro courses they discuss more than just european perspectives on medieval history. They regularly get students complaining that their essays on why the crusaders should have killed every single muslim person get bad grades.
Being descriptive is nowhere near sufficient to keep conservatives from screaming at professors.
On the subject of surveilling foreign students without warrants and demanding schools hand over data when asked, fuck off. Students - domestic or international - deserve a campus where they can explore new ideas without fear of reprisal at home or abroad. This mandate is reprehensible, as is the mandate that these marketplaces of ideas demand students listen to viewpoints they consistently rebuff (conservatism, namely). Free speech means people are allowed to talk, not that others are required to listen or attend.
On the other items, namely tuition caps and restrictions on foreign students…yeah, hate to say I agree with those, but I do. A domestic education system should prioritize domestic students, but the lax tuition rules in the USA has meant tuition surged to fleece foreign students at the expense of domestic students. Tuition is way too high given the return on investment, and the allowance of theoretically unlimited foreign enrollment means colleges don’t have to worry about domestic enrollment at all if they’re elite enough.
This is the part I’ve been dreading, to be honest. Fuck the current regime, even if I agree with a few technical points along the way. They’re couching what I feel are decent policy changes in xenophobia and bigotry, which I refuse to abide by.
> Students - domestic or international - deserve a campus where they can explore new ideas without fear of reprisal at home or abroad.
That's a bit naive in today's world. Not every person who identifies as a student is there with the best of intentions, or without ulterior motives, some even being directed by foreign governments. To make them off limits from scrutiny, is to leave your door wide open, and susceptible to abuse and manipulation by enemies.
> Not every person who identifies as a student is there with the best of intentions, or without ulterior motives, some even being directed by foreign governments.
The "being directed by foreign governments" was an issue even when I went to school a few decades ago. I see nothing that warrants a sudden change now compared to then.
I’m talking undergrad campuses, not research departments (which is often where this critique is lobbed towards). Obviously students engaged with sensitive research should have a higher degree of accountability, but undergrads should be permitted to engage freely with the marketplace of ideas to understand the advantages and disadvantages of different positions, cooperation across ideologies, and how to effectively combat harmful ideas without resorting to violence.
Foreign "spies" and agents can identify as undergrads just easily as people in more sensitive areas. Not everyone who calls themselves a student is pure of heart and there just for the pursuit of knowledge and personal development.
I refuse to engage in surveillance just to satisfy a hypothetical bad actor when it comes to freedom of speech, and I will not abdicate that position.
Take your neo-McCarthyism to someone less firm in their support of free speech as to believe hypothetical spies warrant constant surveillance of innocents.
Very naive. You're putting a gaping hole in your countries defenses. There's nothing wrong with foreign visitors being subject to extra security; to ensure that they are operating within acceptable bounds, and if not, having their visitor status revoked.
> On the subject of surveilling foreign students without warrants and demanding schools hand over data when asked, fuck off.
While I agree with your sentiment, keep in mind that every university (public or private) in the US needs the government's approval to allow foreign students to study on their campus. If you set up a new college, there's a whole process you need to do to get that status, and to maintain it.
As an example, pre-9/11, universities were lax with students who were out of status (including Elon Musk). After 9/11, the government gave them a clear message: If they don't report it, or continue to give them documents of legality when they were clearly out of status, the government would revoke the university's ability to have international students study there.
To a large extent, they do get to dictate rules for foreign students. How much of that has been tested in courts - I don't know. Freedom of speech is a tricky topic.
I will concede that I hear and see that narrative a lot, but short of compelling universities to disclose how that higher tuition is actually spent on subsidies for domestic students (what kinds of subsidies? How many benefitted? From what backgrounds? To what extent? Etc), I’m still hugely suspect on it.
Resident tuition at state schools is below their average per-student expenditures. That's a subsidy from which they all benefit. It's enabled, in part, by the fact that foreign student tuition is above the schools' average per-student expenditures.
As someone who is familiar with the budget for a large university, I'll tell you that yes, it is true that these foreign monies help keep tuition low for domestic students. It's not through any subsidies or formal program of any kind, just the fact that if that cashflow didn't exist we would have to raise our tuition prices to keep delivering the same level of service.
I'll give you an example. I teach at a not well known school but it's got a nice enough reputation for undergrads. Our MS program is nothing to speak of though. Our MS class consists almost entirely of foreign students from Asia who pay full tuition just so they can get a stepping stone into America. They come to America, study at our program, then go to work in big tech firms around the country with a degree from a US university, which opens doors for them.
For the university's part, that full tuition money is where any "profit" could possibly come from if the university were a business -- every other functional aspect we have from UG education to PhD education to research is break-even or operating at a loss. But because foreign students are so eager to come to America that they are willing to pay full tuition, the MS program actually makes money. And because the University is nonprofit, we use that money to keep costs lower and to fill in budget gaps in other areas.
The upshot is if all that money dries up, because the US is no longer a desirable place for foreign students to want to live and learn and work, then that means the budget gaps will have to be filled in by raising tuition on... you guessed it: domestic students.
So I don't know whether you believe any of that or not, but that's how it works at least in one instance.
I genuinely appreciate the shared perspective and information! This is, admittedly, an area I lack concrete data in because it’s not required to be public in many cases, and I have no way to effectively judge the accuracy or transparency of the data that is; your sharing helps fill in gaps, which I’m appreciative of.
Alright then, let’s assume I am woefully mistaken in my understanding of how international student tuition affects domestic student tuition. There’s still the reality of college tuition grossly outstripping inflation and COLA, even accounting for the prior government subsidies on tuition older generations enjoyed. Yet despite the cost of tuition skyrocketing, the return on investment continues to dwindle - namely that credentials alone no longer guarantee even a middle class existence, nevermind a potential ticket into the upper classes.
In that context, why does tuition remain so high, and how would you recommend we address the issues of tuition cost relative to ROI? Should we raise admission standards to deter enrollment and divert students to tradework? Should we eliminate credentials from non-specialized roles, thereby further depressing the ROI and thus future enrollment? Or is the answer just baking-in a college education into primary schooling, and making a Bachelor’s gratis via government subsidy at state/public schools?
Genuinely curious where you’d recommend I focus my efforts or learning on, because you have a better grasp on this than I do.
> There’s still the reality of college tuition grossly outstripping inflation and COLA, even accounting for the prior government subsidies on tuition older generations enjoyed.
I talked about this a little in my reply to your comment's sibling, but I'll say more here. Yes this is a reality, but it's also vastly more complicated than that because the cost one actually pays to attend an institution can vary between sticker price and them actually being paid to attend (through tuition remission and stipends). There are still free community college, elite institutions offer free tuition to low income students, there are merit programs at state colleges that are free, you can get into PhD programs without having to pay tuition...
But yes, we can broadly say college is getting more expensive to attend. But it's also true that colleges are expected to teach more. 50 years ago there were hardly any Computer Science departments. Today, every school has a CS program, and now they are starting to have AI programs. Schools that started serving small towns have now grown to eclipse the size of those towns, becoming cities of their own. This kind of growth is nonlinear -- once you reach a certain size the security office becomes a police department, the nurse's office becomes a full health clinic, the cafeteria becomes a food distribution network, the IT department becomes an ISP. Tuition at these schools is less about credits for classes and more like a membership fee for a private city.
But then there's the question of ROI. The ROI for attending college is twofold:
1) education. For some reason, this is never really included when people talk about ROI of college because maybe it's implicit, or maybe it's not actually part of what they value, but that is the whole point.
2) the network. Even if you don't value the education per se, the network is probably more economically valuable to you. But also it's socially valuable, as you'll meet a lot of friends and lovers in college. As they say the real value was the friends made along the way.
That brings me to the value of the credential. It's true, for most of my life at least, this has been the selling point of attending college: you go to college to earn more money. But the problem with this selling point is it's self-defeating -- the only reason the credential was ever valuable in the first place was because corporations were willing to pay more for degree holders if it absolved them of having to train them. But of course as it became normalized to hold a degree, they now simply expect it as a given, and won't pay more for it. So the value of the credential has dwindled, and maybe that makes going to college less appealing to the middle class given the tuition. I feel that, which is why they should have more affordable options. I don't think the value of the credential is coming back.
--
Anyway I've talked a lot about problems, and I don't have any solutions. But I think the pathway forward is to stop treating every school the same in these discussions. Some schools are mini cities and should be treated differently from a school that's a couple departments and a handful of students and faculty. To a large extent, small schools are just existing in a marketplace that's set by larger institutions.
They also have difficulty operating as nonprofits in a capitalist system, where the product they deliver (education) is regarded has not being a return for what they pay. It's very frustrating delivering a quality education to someone, for them to turn around and say "Yeah, but corporations won't pay me more, so you haven't done anything for me".
What they're really saying is "it wasn't worth it" and I feel that, education should be cheaper and accessible to anyone. To that end, I think if we want to go back to the tuition of the 80s we should start by going back to a 46% corporate tax rate. Maybe that means fewer people are able to pay that sticker price. But in a world where the rich pay $100k for a car and $150K for a country club dues, I don't see a $70k tuition bill at Stanford coming down anytime soon.
When we are talking about full tuition, does that include the full cost of the student for which could (in concept) be scaled infinitive without any additional funding and support from the government? For example, if there was more foreign students than space in existing buildings and land, could the university buy more land and build more buildings using only the tuition, on top of paying operational costs, and still gain profits?
It's tough to talk about these things because the words we're using are so overloaded. Because some "schools" are bread and butter educational institutions that teach students and that's it. Other "schools" are small cities or playgrounds for kids of the elite. So "tuition" means different things at different institutions.
Full tuition at Yale and Stanford essentially represents the maximum amount of money rich families are willing to pay for membership into an elite club, and doesn't bear close resemblance to the actual cost of delivering the service, which is funded from myriad sources so it's hard to frame it as a typical profit-maximizing corporation. IIRC Stanford is free for students whose parents are under a certain threshold, so there's all kinds of funny accounting at work to come up with the Stanford tuition rate.
This is a key reason why tuition at elite colleges has outpaced inflation -- rich families' income has also greatly outpaced inflation. And because they aren't qualified for any financial aid or support, schools want to charge them as much as much as they can (which is a lot but not infinity). Rich people are used to dropping 10s of thousands on club memberships or private daycares and boarding schools, so elite colleges set their tuition at a level rich people grumble about but nevertheless pay. Note that for this segment of the population, paying more than everyone else is actually a flex. Like they will moan about how high the tuition bill is, but they're happy to moan about it because it lets everyone know they're paying full tuition at Stanford.
Note this is only a strategy for the elite schools that get those uber-rich families. But the economic effect downstream is that all college tuitions are inflated. So because we want everyone to have an education, we've tried to ease the economic burden on the middle class by instituting loan programs, grants, scholarships, etc.
Which brings us to how colleges expand - typically it's not going to be through tuition. Again, growing a university depends on exactly what/how (new department? new laboratory? new library? new academic building?) Ultimately it's usually through a combination of state/local/federal/private partnerships depending on the kind of school. For example an existing school might partner with a hospital to create a med school. Or they might get some wealthy individual to donate a bunch of cash and put his name / her on the building (there are several Gates' centers for Computer Science).
The most effective way to "resist" would be to implement popular policies while in power, help the public, and win elections. Losing elections and trying to resist while in the minority is far less effective.
Unfortunately, leaders of both parties are owned by or are identical to the wealthy donor class. The two parties are just different factions of the donor class.
> leaders of both parties are owned by or are identical to the wealthy donor class
To the extent donors have corrupted the Democrats, it’s been on pushing niche leftist issues like the climate and gender activism, on which donors are disconnected from the electorate, and to a minor degree crap like the carried interest deduction.
> The two parties are just different factions of the donor class
What would you suggest the minority party do? Democrats control 0 / 3 of the branches of federal government. And a minority of state governments.
All they can do is talk. And filibuster in the Senate. And they did filibuster the budget.... And the Trump administration has updated web pages with statements that explictly blame the Democrats for the current shutdown. And mandated OOO messages from furloughed agencies contain language blaming the Democrats.
Do you want Democrats in Congress to resort to violence? I don't think ends the way you want...
Governors should be arresting ICE agents illegally detaining their citizens. Democrat states generate federal tax surpluses—gum up those payments. Filibuster everything.
GOP does not do anything you mentioned.
Democrats are filibustering pretty much all they can do - with no shame (and kudos to them for the lack of shame).
About detaining ICE agents and not sending withheld federal taxes to Washington - this will happen only if the Democrat states would separate from the Union. Which I really wish would happen. Unfortunately the Union will not break because both separating parties would have to split national debt and nuclear arsenal. So we (Democratic states) are stuck with the deplorables....
The GOP shut down the government in the name of repealing the ACA. Texas’s governor took immigration--a federal prerogative--into his own hands [1].
They stopped when the courts told them to. I’m not suggesting Democrats ignore the courts. But push them, like the GOP has.
> detaining ICE agents and not sending withheld federal taxes to Washington - this will happen only if the Democrat states would separate from the Union
Not at all. The point would be to trigger court cases and gum up the works. Not to permanently detain or freeze funds.
The mode of operation of this administration is to do things first and deal with push back from the courts later. Court cases do not "gum up the works" effectively.
The two items you mentioned (detaining ICE agents and not sending federal tax money to Washington DC) are against federal law. States can do these things only if states refuse to obey federal laws. This would work only if states would secede from the Union.
> mode of operation of this administration is to do things first and deal with push back from the courts later
When they take the initiative. That's the point. The current political environment strongly favours taking the initiative over reacting.
> The two items you mentioned (detaining ICE agents and not sending federal tax money to Washington DC) are against federal law
Yes. So are the things Trump has been doing. As you say, one can "do things first and deal with push back from the courts later." That's what the GOP is doing. I'm saying Democrats need to do the same (or concede the game).
We can remake the judiciary to have more teeth later, when everyone is in compromise mode or one side has won.
I finally understand what you mean. So Democrats should not send tax money to Washington and arrest ICE agents for whatever reason. And then deal with the courts later. I think I finally understand your point.
It will be interesting to see if this causes a war between the US Federal forces and whatever local armed forces the states could muster.
> will be interesting to see if this causes a war between the US Federal forces and whatever local armed forces the states could muster
It wouldn't. It would provoke Trump into an overreaction. But war takes two to tango, and Democrats aren't--and shouldn't be--ready for civil war. (If Trump spent the next three years fighting Gavin Newsom for jailing his ICE agents, that's a win. It means he has less time to do something else.)
And how can the states arrest ICE agents without using force? You think ICE agents will just willingly walk into custody?
The minute states use force against any US Federal agents the US Federal Government will use its military force.
BTW - this also works in the following scenario: Trump's federal court finds Gavin Newsom guilty of something and US Federal Marshals to take him into custody. If Gavin tries to use California's forces to protect him against Marshals then US Federal Government will use military force to detain Gavin.
> how can the states arrest ICE agents without using force? You think ICE agents will just willingly walk into custody?
If ICE start shooting at cops, we've won the battle.
> minute states use force against any US Federal agents the US Federal Government will use its military force
Sure, that's the overreaction. Nobody is ordering police to shoot back.
> this also works in the following scenario: Trump's federal court finds Gavin Newsom guilty of something and US Federal Marshals to take him into custody
Sure. I'd guess he wins the Presidency if Trump does this.
Ordering state officers to detain ICE agents for breaking state law isn't criminal. Newsom's trial would become the media sensation of the next few years. Not whatever nonsense Trump conjurs up on a daily basis to earn media.
Thanks for responding to my messages. I really do not think that if "ICE start shooting at cops we have won the battle" I do not think Gavin wins the presidency if Trump puts him in custody.
In both of these situations I think the follow up is civil war. (which makes me wish we could separate from the deplorables peacefully. Unfortunately we cannot)
> really do not think that if "ICE start shooting at cops we have won the battle"
It wouldn't be ICE shooting at cops, it would be an ICE agent (or group of agents) shooting a cop attempting to detain them. (The easiest reason for the arrest would be enforcing California's new mask law.)
The optics--shooting a cop--are bad. The precedent--violently resisting arrest--is bad. The entire situation is so dumb that I'm doubtful even the goons they're hiring at ICE would think it's a good idea.
> do not think Gavin wins the presidency if Trump puts him in custody
The track record of any elected being put in jail by their opponent, internationally and across history, is a massive jump in popularity.
> In both of these situations I think the follow up is civil war
The only real move if this is the path we're going down is a Governor trying to seize nuclear weapons. I don't think we are there. Not even close.
The Trump admin has already demonstrated that court cases don't effectively gum up the works. Courts are eventually effective, but turns out you can ship a lot of people to a lot of places in the time it takes for "eventually".
Court cases did not stop DOGE from destroying significant parts of our government.
How the heck are Democrats supposed to stop us from bombing Venezuela? Trump is the rightfully elected commander in chief
>Nobody cares about foreign policy except for comfortable wonks.
Except for all the people who insisted that trump wouldn't get us into foreign wars and demonstrably haven't turned on him now that he bombed Iran, helps Israel do pretty awful things with the explicit goal of turning Gaza into a resort, and possibly has turned to helping Ukraine in it's war, which was literally a point that Democrat politicians pushing for that exact same outcome took serious heat for.
The voters want aggression and pain and harm to those they dislike, especially if Trump tells them to dislike someone. The democrats cannot cater to that desire without just abandoning all the things that make them not republican politicians. Even if they literally adopt republican policy wholesale, they still will not be elected.
The problem starts with what American voters want. As long as they want "Not democrat" and "Big strong man", democrats will not have power. I mean sure, they should probably stop putting up black woman for the presidency if they want even a chance of winning something, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Democrats are demonstrably better for the economy, and have been for a very long time, but republicans are still voted in on the back of "Better for the economy"
The exact Americans who claimed they wanted to vote for "Free speech" are pretty happy that Trump will be compelling speech on American college campuses. If the Supreme court strikes this down, they will not turn on Trump, they will turn on the Court.
>Okay, then the Democrat governor wins. I’m not seeing the problem.
Then Trump does it anyway, and the republicans in congress do not impeach him for doing crime, which the Supreme court has said is fine. The democrat governor "wins" on paper, as people continue to be deported and silenced and oppressed. ICE still roams like the SS, with no identification. Next election, Trump says "look how the left tried to stop me" and gets more votes.
Reality doesn't matter. Rhetoric does. Democrats don't have to be "Right" to get into power and fix things, they have to be popular, really really popular because of gerrymandering, and significant portions of the country make "democrat bad" significant parts of their identity.
> Except for all the people who insisted that trump wouldn't get us into foreign wars and demonstrably haven't turned on him now that he bombed Iran, helps Israel do pretty awful things with the explicit goal of turning Gaza into a resort, and possibly has turned to helping Ukraine in it's war
Yes. That's my point. American voters don't care about foreign policy. Pretty much no federal election in peacetime (i.e. absent a draft) is decided based on any foreign policy.
> democrat governor "wins" on paper
You're describing Democrats reacting to Trump. I'm describing them taking initiative. If the Democrat governor is taking initiative and they ignore the court, their initiative stands.
I must have hallucinated, say, that long period during Mitch McConnell openly stated he was going to prevent votes on any of Biden's judicial nominees (and followed through on that). Or the business with Tommy Tuberville trying to prevent any military officers from getting confirmed (and, after he failed to totally prevent it, to slow it down and waste Senate time) until he got unrelated concessions on abortion. Those are off the top of my head...
> that long period during Mitch McConnell openly stated he was going to prevent votes on any of Biden's judicial nominees (and followed through on that)
Not relevant—they held the Senate.
> the business with Tommy Tuberville trying to prevent any military officers from getting confirmed
McConnell found it necessary to prevent some of the nominations from coming to a vote, because he didn't have the votes to stop them. So, yeah, they held enough of the Senate to dick around procedurally, but not enough to win an up or down vote. Which is kind of not that different from a filibuster, which is also a procedural move you use when you'd lose an up or down vote.
And it's one thing to vote down a single nomination, and a different thing to categorically state that you're going to torpedo all of a President's nominations. If there's a Constitutional requirement for "advice and consent", then the Senate has a duty to engage with that.
McConnell had a majority in the Senate. That's a huge difference from Democrats today.
The relevant examples should come from when Democrats had a federal trifecta. The GOP still managed to fuck things up. That should be the inspiration. (But not limit.)
If he'd been confident in his majority, he would have just taken every nomination to the floor and had them voted down. He didn't do that because he didn't think he'd win. I mean, losing a floor vote is kind of the opposite of "having a majority".
And I don't think the Democrats in recent memory have had as strong a whip as the Republicans.
This is unfortunately probably going to be necessary, and should start happening soon while they still have any power. It's been going on like this for decades, since Gingrich IMO.
It feels like the idealism of some on the left is failing to understand the prisoner's dilemma, and so they just keep losing. There's probably as many or more people from centre right to far left who'd be just as interested in sticking it to the right (let's just call it MAGA), as the right has been interested in owning the libs.
I get that the election says otherwise, but I have a hunch that MAGA isn't nearly as popular as they think they are. I suspect a lot of people are just tired of the wet noodle Kumbaya politics from some on the left, upset with the status quo, really upset with the economy, etc.
Do you ever come back from this though? No idea...
Enlightenment era philosophy is dying. Powerful people are rejecting it in favor of more darwinian ideas of society (maybe not directly Darwinian) that will allow them to consolidate their personal power.
The democrats are simply too weak willed and divided to survive in that environment.
I’m generally critical of the left. But this is one game they got right. It’s imbeciles hiding behind the cowardice of aimless moderation who are sinking America. The left is ready to fight.
> Do you ever come back from this
Yes. See: Andrew Jackson. The American Whigs. The British Whigs. The New Deal.
What you don’t get back from is a lack of opposition.
I hope you're right. By idealism, I meant not fighting dirty. There's this moral superiority / higher ground thing with some politicians, that while I admire it, I doubt it's the right attitude for the moment.
For example, the retaliatory gerrymandering proposed by some democratic states is the right response IMO, as horrible as gerrymandering is. In fact, they should probably stop apologizing for it and just take a page from MAGA and sell it as "sticking it to MAGA" instead of calling it a necessary evil.
> For example, the retaliatory gerrymandering proposed by some democratic states is the right response
Is it, this is just a hunch, but I’d imagine Texas or Ohio republicans stand to gain a lot more from redistributing districts than democrats in California do.
Maybe I'm being too generous then. I suspect it's a mix of both and I'm even a little cynical that there are plenty on the left who secretly like this new age of grift. /shrug
>It feels like the idealism of some on the left is failing to understand the prisoner's dilemma, and so they just keep losing.
The "idealism" of the left is increasingly just bigotry. There is a small set of people and problems they like and a large set they dislike or are simply disinterested in. This becomes indistinguishable from fascists who seek racial superiority for a particular group. It's not there yet but it's certainly going in a direction.
The left hates the south, hates poor white people, hates rural people, hates men. The left is comfortable with open expression of this hatred. The left has a severe sense of "we know better than you" superiority and confusion as to why folks "vote against their own self interest".
The left forgot that they made most of their societal progress by slowly normalizing things instead of loudly shoving changes in people's faces. The left wants to fight a culture war and when they win something they look for more things to be angry about accelerating divisiveness instead of slowing it down.
The left doesn't want everyone to just be people, they've grown increasingly obsessed with categorizing people and then demanding performative celebration of new categories, you can't just be a person you've got to have a collection of adjectives.
The active left are mostly bored people who want to fight for other people's problems and feel inadequate letting those people do it for themselves.
The bigotry and divisiveness of both active sides of the political spectrum are becoming indistinguishable, the silent majority is leaderless. There is no one standing up rejecting both extremes arguing for sanity, rationality, and fairness.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité should be the goals we're fighting for
In the Weimar Republic there was the Iron Front with this flag with three arrows representing opposition to monarchy, fascism, and communism and what we need is some modern version of this opposed to the divisiveness, authoritarianism, and rejection of reason common across the political spectrum of America. We need the center to unite and reject both poles and return to a sense of individual thought and decision-making in our leaders instead of one thought per party.
Democrat states generate federal tax surpluses—gum up those payments
Uh, almost all federal taxes flow directly from business to the IRS or other federal agencies. Your payroll and income taxes? ADP/Paylocity send the funds straight to the IRS; they don't flow through the state.
The GOP doesn't do those things. They instead just not vote for Democrat things, and because they always have almost 50% of every house all the time, all they need is one Democrat defector to kill anything democrats want to do, which is easy to find when people like Manchin are "Democrats".
When McConnell refused to vote to appoint new supreme court justices, he was exercising the power given to him by the constitution.
You want Democrats to wield power? You have to give it to them first.
Our state's governor is a Democrat, and shes trying to sue the admin and fight it, but a lot of the shit Trump is doing is popular, so that might just result in yet another state going red.
Democrats haven't really held power in the US since Reagan blasted the entire party out of the water by doing exactly what Trump does but cleaner. Jimmy Carter lost the election in a landslide so bad it nearly killed the party.
Americans don't vote for Democrats or empathetic policy. They had to adopt neoliberalist bullshit and "hard on crime" crap to get elected with Clinton, and despite running the country very well and doing good things for 8 years, the public still chose to vote for a literal dynasty who then got us into criminal wars killing brown people for made up things, set trillions of dollars on fire for no gain, and set the worlds energy economy on fire, and america reelected him after that was clear.
>Governors should be arresting ICE agents illegally detaining their citizens.
So you are out there citizens arresting ICE agents right? Oh you aren't? Because you don't want to be shot and die?
Remember, that democrat state senator was murdered by someone with clear political motivations and who dressed like a cop. She didn't even get the flag at half staff for a second, let alone the days that Charlie got.
> When McConnell refused to vote to appoint new supreme court justices, he was exercising the power given to him by the constitution
Yes. I mentioned legal powers. Congressional obstructionism as the minority was turned an art by the GOP. Every step in committee and on the floor can be gummed up.
And in states, Democrats do have power. What they aren’t doing is using it.
> Democrats haven't really held power in the US since Reagan
We’ve had two trifectas!
> you are out there citizens arresting ICE agents right? Oh you aren't?
You just talked about legitimate power…
> that democrat state senator was murdered by someone with clear political motivations and who dressed like a cop
Is the argument might makes right? Or law? Your comment is all over the place.
When? The 50 days Obama had a "trifecta" that couldn't actually pass democrat policy because 49 + A guy who refuses to push democrat policy isn't an actual "majority"?
When Democrats had actual power under Clinton but again, that was neoliberal bullshit to try and have any power again, and despite doing very well, americans still rejected those politicians for literal political dynasty and reelected a war criminal who lied to their face to start a war.
Notice not just the significant change in how we have more split governments now, and how "majorities" are rarely more than a couple politicians. Republicans empirically "fall in line" for votes more than "democrats" which often includes people who are not even registered democrats (not in this graph though).
> Congressional obstructionism as the minority was turned an art by the GOP. Every step in committee and on the floor can be gummed up.
They weren't the minority. They were exercising majority powers.
>Is the argument might makes right? Or law? Your comment is all over the place.
I made no such claim to either. The voters have the power, and they have demonstrably decided that republicans deserve that power more. Democrats are told that they should change their policy, but research shows that voters just don't vote for you as much if you have (D) next to your name, regardless of policy proposal, and hopefully the previous few elections have shown that policy literally doesn't matter because Americans don't care about good policy plans or apparently real life.
There is a double standard. If republicans literally break the law to do things, as Trump keeps doing, they still get re-elected. If a democrat does the same, the entire party suffers.
So sure, lets have the tiny amount of democrats remaining in government do blatantly criminal things so they can all be put in jail and their states outright taken over by the current admin which is popular.
There is no short term solution. There is no solution that Democrat politicians can do on their own.
The long term solution is Americans finally re-learning the Republican governance doesn't work well. History shows that will take decades, and significant suffering. You can ask the current remaining democrat politicians to sacrifice themselves on the altar of "Don't just stand by", but polling shows that doing illegal things to protect brown people or trans people will not win elections. Americans are not that empathetic.
> The 50 days Obama had a "trifecta" that couldn't actually pass democrat policy
The ACA?!
We wasted our trifecta under Biden, but that's the point.
> 49 + A guy who refuses to push democrat policy isn't an actual "majority"?
Anyone who believes this doesn't deserve to govern. You know what we'd have if we had a few more Manchins and Sinemas today? A majority.
> "majorities" are rarely more than a couple politicians
Sure [1].
> Republicans empirically "fall in line" for votes more than "democrats"
Source? Trump 1.0 was Republicans constantly falling over themselves. Even this time, McCarthy versus cocaine Chucky almost blew up the party.
> They weren't the minority
Republicans were in a complete federal minority when we passed the ACA, and in a legislative and executive minority in 2021.
> If republicans literally break the law to do things, as Trump keeps doing, they still get re-elected. If a democrat does the same, the entire party suffers
We don't know this! Obama was, erm, creative with a lot of limits. He won re-election.
> lets have the tiny amount of democrats remaining in government do blatantly criminal things
Totally unnecessary.
> There is no solution that Democrat politicians can do on their own. The long term solution is Americans finally re-learning the Republican governance doesn't work well
If Democrats can't use their state majorities and federal minority productively, they can't govern. The choice, then, isn't between Republicans and Democrats, because the latter gave up the game. (Biding time doesn't work when the other side is strategically repositioning to their advantage.)
Donate to the lawyers in the courts (You can look at briefings to find plaintiffs and defendants but the ACLU's a good bet). These folk are absolutely securing wins against this administration and pushing back, but it's extremely expensive and this is an all out onslaught.
That's something you can do right now, and encourage others to do with very little impact on your day to day.
Then, go to protests. Protests are best when they're non-violent and massive. These send the message to the people in power because in the end they are nothing but other people. Courage is contagious, get out, bring friends.
Then call your reps, you may not think they are listening, but they are. Call them at the local, state, and federal level and tell them what you think. Encourage your friends to do the same.
Boycott companies that kowtow to this administration. I've been boycotting Amazon for ages so that wasn't tough but social media and corporate media and a lot of these tech companies and a lot of other companies are run my megalomaniac out of touch narcissists who will bend the knee before risking their profits. Simply take the hit and stop using their products. Encourage friends to do the same.
It's not too late. Don't let them make you think it is. We are not 1937 Germany yet. Push back now. Small actions done in concert have real world effects.
Then... take the news off your phone and go outside and get some sun and make sure to take care of yourself.
The roughly 40 million people registered with the party?
Or th 8,000 Democrats holding elected office?
Or do you specifically mean the 213 Democrats in the US House and the 45 Democrats in the Senate?
>Whether or not there are leaders to oppose them varies. Or do we have to wait until the only opposition option is open war?
No one in this country has the ability to care about anything at all anymore that isn't directly necessary for survival unless you're a millionaire (and we all know which side they're on). The result is that it makes the individually rational choice to keep your head down and just deal with it. We are at the brink, and there is just no other option than to watch in horror and pray you aren't affected.
"Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future. In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much."
- On Tyranny by Timothy D. Snyder
Keeping your head down and just dealing with it as a choice that you can make and it is the choice that they count on you making. But it's not the only choice.
> No one in this country has the ability to care about anything at all anymore that isn't directly necessary for survival
We say as the richest country in the richest age of human existence, where most Americans have no practical constraints on access to food or emergency medicine, luxuries unimaginable to most of our ancestors.
There are options but those options won't end up well for you as an individual. The only way things can change is collective action and people are too glued to their social media bubbles to realize that we're not as different as we think.
I'm not "glued to the social media bubble", I'm paying rent, so I don't end up on the street where a Fox News host says I should be forcibly murdered, and millions of my fellow citizens explicitly agree.
I don't work for FAANG or make a huge salary, I don't own property, I don't have anything.
Most of us aren't privileged enough to be able to walk away from work.
I need medication to live a partially functional life. Am I supposed to just magically acquire that medication while I'm being fired from work, losing my insurance, and being arrested for daring to have a democratic opinion?
Hell, my state is mostly Democrat right now. Am I supposed to go live in another state for a while and get arrested there so the right wing news can cry about how liberals are literally invading other states?
We were screaming and crying about how all this was going to go down for decades. Some of us even back in the red scare days. We were called socialist and unamerican.
But no, "Both sides" You would cry, or "Free market" to prevent us from reigning in corporations that own our lives. "We don't need a software developer union, what if the guy next to me makes more money! I can definitely negotiate better against literal behemoths than a collective group of people!" You cried.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to attack you either. I meant the royal "you"
In both Germany and the USSR, a lot of people died making zero progress (and maybe even negative progress in some ways) liberating their country.
I just think, as long as Trump's rhetoric and claimed policy is popular, there's no "resistance" possible. Americans want this crap. They'll keep voting that way until they get it as hard as possible.
So many people are insisting that people like me have to rise up and take back our country, ignoring that our country wants this and chose this, multiple times.
McCarthyism worked. It suppressed speech and activity, and basically eliminated socialism in the US for a century. History is rhyming.
Me neither and I share your concern. That being said it's my opinion this popularity is propped up by algorithms that tend to push people towards this type of dumb shit. If there was a way to get through to these misguided idiots I think this country may have a shot at not being a complete hellhole. Is it idealistic and naive? Maybe. Just my two cents y'know.
A bit hyperbolic, ain't it? Lots of people who are not millionaires care about much more than survival. Like for example the family I drove by a couple of months ago - they were very concerned about fitting 3 dirt bikes (1 adult size, 2 kid ones) in a pick up trailer. This family was not millionaire.....
> Democrats in Congress just helped shut the government down
Eh, Democrats crapped their pants in Texas. Crapped their pants in March. Haven’t yet excised Biden elements who straight up lied to the electorate from the party. The Constitution is being shredded, yet you wouldn’t know it from the generic ballot [1].
Bring back the Bull Moose Party. Between the death of conservatism in the GOP and the loss of a backbone outside the left among Democrats, there is room-maybe a need—for a Teddy in our politics.
It's all a distraction. Get everyone riled up about free guv bux and not address the high cost of tuition or the loopholes that let us companies skip debt-laden grads for foreign labor.
> or the loopholes that let us companies skip debt-laden grads for foreign labor.
Note that as we speak, AI is replacing junior roles and c-suites are bragging about doing layoffs because of it. There are zero restrictions to it's use in the workplace, and it will only get better at taking your work, year over year, while paying zero taxes.
You're being distracted by anxiety over immigrants, whose entry is limited, and who, well, do pay taxes.
Bring up AI too. Where are the Dems with their new tax? Let's tax AI and use it to pay grads' student loans off. I don't have anxiety about immigrants but my work looks like India, it's not diverse. The company clearly doesn't want Americans working there
While I certainly have a better idea of where that money should go, I'm not sure payroll-taxing corporations employing AI for the purpose of shrinking their white-collar payroll... is morally equivalent to the myth of Joe the Plumber paying for Frida's degree in underwater basket-weaving.
Moral equivalence is irrelevant. Nobody likes their taxes benefiting people more fortunate than themselves. And the college/non-college divide is politically active at the moment.
Again, I'm not sure how such a tax on AI could possibly be felt by a non-college educated person to be a tax that 'they' are paying. The non-college educated aren't employing LLMs, or people to work with LLMs.
You're conveniently ignoring Kamala's plan to raise taxes on corporations (which turned tech and big business fully against the Dems), and Trump's plan to raise taxes (tariffs) on consumers, and give a massive tax gift to the wealthy in the BBB. While cutting benefits.
If you're expecting progressive taxation from MAGA, or blue collar Republicans to vote for their self-interest, you'll be waiting a while.
I’m not waiting for progressive taxes or forgetting anything. I’m addressing your point on how people can “feel” like they are paying a tax unrelated to them.
We are in the grievance era. People view any spending that goes to an “other” as a wealth transfer from them to that other (even while most of maga don’t pay any federal tax!) so if you pick an other to support it shouldn’t be one as unsympathetic as white collar workers.
> The 10-point memo urged viewpoint diversity in faculty, students and staff, including revising governance structures and "transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas."
So only conservative ideas deserve protection?
Yes. And partisans who control the United States government will ensure their preferred political ideas get taught by private institutions under the guise of “ideological diversity”. No diversity will be required from conservative organizations. None of this is constitutional and none of it should be happening in our country.
Not just the US government but especially state governments, which control state universities: https://thedailytexan.com/2025/09/30/ut-system-announces-aud...
> "transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas."
So what "units" do they think these are, and how are they supposedly doing it?
Is that what the "units" themselves think they're doing?
The math and economics departments? They don't really specify, and it can easily be argued that those two departments belittle conservative ideals.
Could be. Although if that's what they're getting at, it's more likely they mean earth sciences and biology.
"Yes, dumping all that CO2 into the atmosphere has measurably changed the climate and is likely to change it more".
"No, the world was not created in 6 days 6000 years ago, you moron."
It's a fair cop.
Some, especially some smart HN commenters, would say that conservatives just want to have an honest discussion without being insulted or being made to feel their opinions are wrong by default.
How do you effectively deal with flat earthers, or people who believe other countries pay our tariffs? Or people who don't believe in graph slopes and just say "climate has changed before"?
I think that's fair. But I also think table stakes for conservatives to expect an honest discussion and respect is to criticize and distance themselves from deeply wrong and unconstitutional proposals like the one in TFA.
The "units" of critical thinking and meeting people who are different than you.
> So what "units" do they think these are
The 'Studies' departments, most likely. Gender, Queer, Colonial, Women's, Ethnic, African, Fat, Whiteness, you name it. Anything which either starts with 'Critical ...' or ends with '... Studies'.
I wonder if Liberty Univ will be diversifying its viewpoint.
Does it get state and federal funding? If it does, it should conform. If it's private and does not get funding, then I guess it can continue doing what it does...
They count students paying with federal grants and loans, so yes.
A quick reminder that the First Amendment of the Unites States Constitution bars the Federal government from forcing private institutions to participate in chosen political speech. The question of whether you get funding from the Federal Government should not matter, since it's the Federal Government that's constitutionally constrained from doing this.
Of course if we're no longer in a place where the rule of law applies, then sentences like "if it's private and does not get funding..." hardly matter.
Yes. It receives federal grant funding for its faculty. Students receive federal loans for tuition. And international students can receive visas to attend it.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition...There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Wilhoit's Law continues to be an accurate lens.
That setup sounds like Apartheid Israel, before the genocide. Now they just bomb them. At least we're not at late stage Conservatism in America.
I was being sarcastic =)
> At least we're not at late stage Conservatism in America.
We seem to be doing our best to run there as fast as possible.
The problem I see is that the term "conservative" is not defined. There are many places where current "conservatives" would be at odds with "conservatives" of just a few years ago. If you're a fiscal conservative, where did the tea party go?, you'd by furious by the spending of the current "conservatives".
I think framing this stuff as even a protection of conservative views is going to miss the point. They seem to want a hiring preference for conservative views and seem to want to punish non-conservative organizations at universities (e.g. LGBT organizations or views). This won't be the end to this push, it's just another step in a longer context.
Edit: with NSPM-7 you can sorta see the angle they are likely to push. With a lot of the oppositional views to the government being labelled as promoting terrorism and violence.
Not only that, but this sounds a lot like DEI to me… I thought conservatives were against DEI?
They were never in favor of merit. They were always in favor of "fuck them libs." The attacks on DEI are just attacks on racial minorities, women, and queer people in positions of any authority or influence.
It's great that they've declared war on DEI claiming it elevates people to positions they don't deserve to hold over more qualified candidates and then immediately proceed to elevate the least qualified, most corrupt, despicable pieces of shit they can find to every position they can while firing everyone who disagrees with anything they say.
That’s exactly what it is. In the free marketplace of ideas, conservatism was gradually shut out because of its refusal to adapt to changing times. A populace embraces conservative values in generally two scenarios: a golden era that they don’t wish to see end and is dependent upon certain ideals, or a populist movement during a downturn or empirical collapse where a certain segment of the population seeks scapegoats instead of reform.
Especially given the origins of the internet and the bulk of folks who maintain or create for it, conservative values were always the extreme minority. Rather than reform or improve their ideology and platform, they seek forced acceptance and indoctrination along with the exclusion or elimination of their perceived enemies.
So yes, they’re using a form of coerced “DEI” to ensure their viewpoints are forcibly represented to a populace that has consistently told them to fuck off, but only for the narrative of DEI as a means of institutional harm against white conservatives.
Stephen Colbert put it best: "Reality has a well known liberal bias"
The objection was never the hegemony of a specific ideology: private evangelical universities like Liberty, Bob Jones, etc. have had much stricter demands on ideological conformity for much longer, and nobody raised a peep. The problem was always that it wasn't their ideology being promoted; anyone who thought otherwise and that their complaints about groupthink or whatever were genuine was a useful idiot for the regime.
So you're saying [...]
https://iea.org.uk/the-newman-peterson-interview-was-symptom...
I suspect you are aware of the existing 'progressive' bias in academia and the dearth of 'institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against progressive ideas' on the average campus while the Humanities are rife with '${identity_group} studies' departments where the discourse is centred around challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are fundamentally shaped by power dynamics between dominant and oppressed groups. Beyond just understanding and critiquing these dynamics, it explicitly aims to transform society through praxis and collective action with an explicit sociopolitical purpose (a citation straight from Wikipedia and as such certainly approved by those same departments).
As to whether the approach taken here is the best there is room for discussion. Instead of censoring those departments it may be more effective to have those institutions erect new departments which take aim at what those 'Studies' departments and others peddle as 'their truth'.
Here's an idea, now listen well. Most if not all academical institutions have sporting arenas or at least access to them. How about they fight it out in those arenas, a regular (bi-weekly or monthly) battle of ideas between the ${identity_group} studies departments and their (equally well-funded and staffed) ideological opponents? Traditional debating rules shall be followed, no shout-me-downs, tantrums, walkouts, no paint or ketchup or pie throwing, none of the sort. If the debate ends inconclusive the fight may be continued in a boxing ring following amateur boxing rules and using protective gear. Outside of these battles the departments shall behave like normal, traditional academic institutions. If some studies department wishes to transform society through praxis and collective action they can do that in their own time, off-campus, using their own funding and at their own risk. This goes for all departments no matter where they stand politically.
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It has been well documented that conservative political violence far outnumbers liberal in the US.
Yet, there have been several high profile violent acts committed by the political left recently. Charlie Kirk. The healthcare ceo. Multiple attempts on Trump’s life on the campaign trail. And so on.
People on the left think conservative political violence is worse. But conservatives don’t see it that way. Both sides of American politics think the other side has a worrying amount of political violence.
> Charlie Kirk.
We'll see what shakes out of the trial, but odds are leaning that way, yeah.
> The healthcare ceo.
Last I checked the guy's history read as right-leaning and it was a personal grievance that motivated it? I remember this because lots of people online were surprised/disappointed when he turned out not to have clear leftist motivations. But I admit I haven't kept up on this since the first few weeks, maybe the picture's shifted again.
> Multiple attempts on Trump’s life on the campaign trail.
One right-leaning guy motivated by notoriety-seeking more than politics, and the second one was some nut with a very weird past (lots of felony charges including related to firearms but somehow also lots of foreign travel to conflict zones?) and tough-to-bucket politics.
> People on the left think conservative political violence is worse. But conservatives don’t see it that way. Both sides of American politics think the other side has a worrying amount of political violence.
One side's leaders routinely call for violence. The other's almost never do. There's a clear difference. There's even a clear difference with Republicans pre-Trump and the modern MAGA party—their talking heads used to sometimes call for political violence, but at least their elected and appointed officials rarely did. Both do, now, and have since Trump's first campaign (remember when he suggested his followers shoot Hillary if she won? On stage, to a crowd, with cameras and everything?)
> People on the left think conservative political violence is worse. But conservatives don’t see it that way.
It doesn't matter if they "see" it that way. The statistics don't change because they don't like them.
I know and I agree. But politics are more often driven by perception than reality.
Why are they forcing unpopular viewpoints on people? We do not need to be teaching creationism or teaching that climate change isn't real (to name a couple examples) just because they're less popular.
> conservative ideas should be considered as equally valid as non-conservative ideas.
In what academic world should young earth creationism be considered as equally valid as science?
> As violence against conservatives has been normalized for quite a while, it's a good idea.
You wanna support that claim?
Even the chart the White House shared to say there's an increase in left wing violence this year showed years of history where right wing violence absolutely dominated left wing violence.
You should look at the data not the rhetoric.
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"Fight cancer," are you saying that AIDS doesn't matter?
>Some of the most sweeping commitments are aimed at promoting conservative viewpoints. Universities would have to ensure their campuses are a “vibrant marketplace of ideas” where no single ideology is dominant, the compact said. They would have to evaluate views among students and faculty to ensure every department reflects a diverse mix of views.
Thought police.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-asks-9-colleges-...
This is completely unconstitutional. The journalist author fails the reader not explaining how the First Amendment works, or quoting a law expert who does.
> "The guidance is likely to raise due process and privacy concerns in light of the Trump administration's recent attempts to deport pro-Palestinian students. The attempts have faced legal challenges."
By "faced legal challenges" they should write they were ruled unconstitutional.
https://www.lawdork.com/p/judge-william-youngs-ruling-agains... ("[T]his Court rules that here the Plaintiffs have shown that Secretaries Noem and Rubio are engaged in a mode of enforcement leading to detaining, deporting, and revoking noncitizens’ visas solely on the basis of political speech, and with the intent of chilling such speech and that of others similarly situated. Such conduct is not only unconstitutional, but a thing virtually unknown to our constitutional tradition.")
Effectively, the Constitution is whatever 5 Supreme Court justices say it is.
> Effectively, the Constitution is whatever 5 Supreme Court justices say it is
The Supreme Court is more defined by acts of Congress than by the Constitution. The Constitution is ultimately what the Congress says it is.
I'm not sure what you mean, other than the fact that the Senate confirms Supreme Court justices? But this typically happens over the span of many years, across different Congresses.
Also, nominees are purposely vague about how they would rule on future cases, sometimes to the consternation of the President who appointed them.
> not sure what you mean, other than the fact that the Senate confirms Supreme Court justices?
This is the entire text of Article III [1]. Section 1, the part that concerns itself with the Supreme Court, is 64 words. That and the Appointments clause [2] are all the Constitution has to say about our entire judiciary.
Everything else is a creature of statute. Which means a simple majority of the House and Senate, together with the President, can change it.
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-3/
[2] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3...
Congress could also simply impeach the President again and this time remove him from office for such nonsense.
My point, though, was that the First Amendment, cited by the OP, is not necessarily going to stop this particular action, because as things stand now, barring a fundamental change in structure that nobody in the Congressional majority is currently proposing, the current Supreme Court decides what the First Amendment means, and the majority seems content to allow the current President to do basically anything he wants.
> Congress could also simply impeach the President again and this time remove him from office for such nonsense.
It's not as simple in that case because the Constitution requires a 2/3 vote in the Senate to remove, which cannot be overridden without an amendment. The nation is split pretty much 50/50 not 60/40, so a 50 vote threshold is easier to achieve.
> as things stand now, barring a fundamental change in structure that nobody in the Congressional majority is currently proposing
I mean yes, SCOTUS rules supreme until at least 2026. My point is Democrats have had two trifectas in the last 20 years. We used one to pass ACA. We wasted the second.
The idea that the current structure of SCOTUS is immutable has somehow become lore. It is not true. The Constitution is brief on the courts because it left constructing them to Congress.
> The idea that the current structure of SCOTUS is immutable has somehow become lore.
1. I did not say that it was immutable.
2. There was actually quite a bit of public debate during the Biden administration about expanding the Supreme Court, which Biden himself explicitly rejected. So you're not telling me anything I didn't already know.
Theoretically Congress has a lot of power over the Supreme Court, if they're sufficiently unified and motivated.
The confirmation aspect is one end, but Congress also has the power to impeach Supreme Court justices. So, theoretically, Congress could impeach all the justices that are believed to be acting in unconstitutional ways, and then refuse to confirm any new nominees that are believed would act similarly.
> Theoretically Congress has a lot of power over the Supreme Court, if they're sufficiently unified and motivated
Far from theoretical. We got the New Deal because the Congress bullied the court.
This is debated.[1] And sufficient unity and motivation do not exist in Congress now. Theoretically was appropriate.
[1] https://balkin.blogspot.com/2012/04/who-won-new-deal-confron...
Tell that to all of the independent executive agencies they've created over the past century.
The SCOTUS majority has very clearly stated that they are starting with an originalist analysis for everything.
Assuming a functional Supreme Court, not completely filled with partisan hacks.
> Assuming a functional Supreme Court
Nope. The whole point is the Congress can restructure the Supreme Court in highly profound ways.
Shadow docket? The whole thing where the court chooses which cases it tries? The lack of a standard of ethics? These are not Constitutionally empowered. (Hell, the fact that the Supreme Court is a permanent bench of justices versus a rotating set chosen by lot for each case?)
Worst case I guess you need 60 votes in the Senate to remove.
Well, it looks though like these 60 votes required to change these rules will not happen. Which makes me think these rules do not matter for most of the people. This ties in with my other comment in this thread - the US population is living comfortably enough that they simply do not care about any of these things (Supreme court packed with conservative for 2 decades at least, Bill of Rights gutted, ubiquitous surveillance, etc...).
> it looks though like these 60 votes required to change these rules will not happen
Then change that rule. The sixty-vote threshold can be changed by the majority. They're literally chamber rules, not even statute.
> US population is living comfortably enough that they simply do not care about any of these things
I wouldn't say this. Americans care about pocketbook issues. Not democratic ideals. Not foreign policy.
If it was that simple, the current administration would've gotten rid of the Supreme Court.
It's not that simple, for a reason.
To abolish the Supreme Court, the Constitution itself would need to be changed. This requires a constitutional amendment, which requires much more than simply 60 senators and a majority in the house.
It's almost as if our country wasn't founded by complete morons - who had the insight to figure out that at some point in the future, it would be possible for morons to get a simple majority.
You can expand the supreme court with 60 senators - but that's only happened a handful of times (13 - 4 of which happened under FDR, 5 of which happened from 59-69, so 4 times outside of that, and only once since 79 after the 2008 meltdown).
> If it was that simple, the current administration would've gotten rid of the Supreme Court
Remember the nuclear option [1]? That was the Senate removing the 60% rule for judicial appointments.
("Originally, the Senate's rules did not provide for a procedure for the Senate to vote to end debate on a question so that it could be voted on, which opened the door to filibusters. In 1917, the Senate introduced a procedure to allow for ending debate (invoking cloture) with a two-thirds majority, later reduced in 1975 to three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn (60 if there is no more than one vacancy).")
> To abolish the Supreme Court, the Constitution itself would need to be changed
To abolish, yes. To restructure, no. Again, § 1 of Article III and the Appointments Clause are everything the Constitution has to say about the supreme Court.
> You can expand the supreme court with 60 senators
You can expand it with 50. Nothing in the Constitution says anything about 60 Senators--the only time it requires a supermajority is in § 3 of Article I in respect of impeachments [2].
Senate rules say 60 Senators. A simple majority can amend the Senate's rules.
> You can expand the supreme court with 60 senators - but that's only happened a handful of times (13 - 4 of which happened under FDR, 5 of which happened from 59-69, so 4 times outside of that, and only once since 79 after the 2008 meltdown)
Nothing here is correct.
SCOTUS was expanded five times: 1801, undone in 1802, 1807, 1837 and 1863; then thinned in 1866 and 1867; then expanded again in 1869 [3]. FDR threatened to expand the court, but didn't. Nothing happened in 1979 or 2008.
Most of those votes did not occur with a supermajority (we literally don't even have the vote counts for many of them). None of them required 60 votes because during all of them the Senate had fewer than 100 members.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option
[2] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_St...
I actually really like the idea of having a supreme court of 50 justices where 9 are selected randomly for each case. There's obvious problems with this but I don't see how it's obviously worse than what we have now... which is awful.
> actually really like the idea of having a supreme court of 50 justices where 9 are selected randomly for each case
Simpler: just use the appelate bench's 179 judges [1]. They become the "Judges of the supreme Court" [2]. (The only time a chief Justice is mentioned in the Constitution is when it pertains to impeachment (Art. 1 § 3). That could just be defined by statute as the longest-serving circuit judge.)
Every case is assigned 9 random judges. They decide whether to hear the case. If they pass, precedent stands. If not, they hear the case and write an opinion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_...
[2] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3...
A supreme Court with 50 partisan hacks, where no decision means anything, because you just continuously roll the dice until you get the ruling you want.
> you just continuously roll the dice until you get the ruling you want
Judges are already randomly assigned to cases in practically every jurisdiction. You don't get to re-roll.
If you mean continuously re-rolling issues, that problem is preserved whether we choose by lot or by appointment. The difference is choosing by lot out of a large group makes it more difficult to stack.
Inconsistency from random assignments at lower levels is mitigated by all judges participating at higher levels.
> Hell, the fact that the Supreme Court is a permanent bench of justices versus a rotating set chosen by lot for each case?
I've been making noise about this option but it doesn't seem to have entered even the online-politics-discussion mainstream yet. Everyone's like "expand the court" but I think both expanding it to match the count of circuits, and forming it by lot from lower courts each session (or multiple lots for a session—it might be good to at least have one group choose the cases, and a different one hear and rule on them) is a far more elegant solution and provides longer-lasting protection against problems, while also depoliticizing the reform to a degree (it wouldn't just be whoever's in control instantly gaining several justices) which I think makes it far more likely to actually be an achievable and durable reform.
It's even got a phase-in option that'd be immediately beneficial and also side-step any questions about whether an SC justice can be "demoted" to merely another federal judge: leave the current ones in place, start drawing the new seats by lot immediately. Existing justices' seats fall under the lot system as they come open. Done.
When things involve taking money from the government, it's really not that simple. You're failing your readers by ginning them up with false simplicity.
Part of the problem with current American affairs is that, and with the judicial process especially, is that commenters demand and assert that complex issues are actually gordian knots to be cut and anyone not picking up the sword is actually an enemy.
It really is pretty simple. The courts have repeatedly ruled that Federal Aid can't be use to force Universities to teach specific political viewpoints or ideologies. The exceptions that exist are very narrow, and involve either (1) conduct that isn't speech or viewpoint, or (2) declining to subsidize specific activities in the case where this doesn't require Universities to adopt a specific viewpoint or ideology.
No doubt this Court will dispense with those precedents because it's not really a Court of law anymore. But that's how you make Federal funding work within the bounds of a nation that has a First Amendment.
I think its a fair enough description since the SCOTUS could still rule that it doesn't violate the constitution.
This is fun...
> Signatories shall maintain institutional neutrality at all levels of their administration. This requires policies that all university employees, in their capacity as university representatives, will abstain from actions or speech relating to societal and political events except in cases in which external events have a direct impact upon the university.
How do you teach political science, history, basically any social science, or even freaking literature, while doing that? Even if it only required you to be "neutral" (which is not what it says), that would be impossible.
But most of it doesn't seem to be that blatant. The majority of the text seems to be about setting up expectations that sound reasonable until you see how they actually get interpreted later. Most of which is prolly still unconstitutional, mind you...
> How do you teach political science, history, basically any social science, or even freaking literature, while doing that? Even if it only required you to be "neutral" (which is not what it says), that would be impossible.
By keeping it descriptive instead of prescriptive. As to whether staff should be allowed to make prescriptive statements, I think there's an argument for both sides. Personally, it irked me when professors used the time I paid for to "enlighten" me about their personal worldview during time that could've been used for learning about the subject and leaving the student to decide what to make of it.
> By keeping it descriptive instead of prescriptive.
First of all, what it says is that they aren't allowed to talk about those matters at all. Read it.
Second, even if that were not the case, I guarantee that if you write what you think is a "descriptive" syllabus, there are a bunch of other people who'll think it's extremely biased political indoctrination.
A friend of mine is an atmospheric science professor who publishes research on climate change modeling. His work is descriptive. He regularly gets hate mail from conservatives.
Another friend of mine is a medieval history professor. When they teach intro courses they discuss more than just european perspectives on medieval history. They regularly get students complaining that their essays on why the crusaders should have killed every single muslim person get bad grades.
Being descriptive is nowhere near sufficient to keep conservatives from screaming at professors.
That quote sounds like something straight out of Russia, do not talk about those in power or what they do, stay silent.
Actual text: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/1...
Accessing from South America: "Sorry, you have been blocked"
I’m of two minds about these proposed changes.
On the subject of surveilling foreign students without warrants and demanding schools hand over data when asked, fuck off. Students - domestic or international - deserve a campus where they can explore new ideas without fear of reprisal at home or abroad. This mandate is reprehensible, as is the mandate that these marketplaces of ideas demand students listen to viewpoints they consistently rebuff (conservatism, namely). Free speech means people are allowed to talk, not that others are required to listen or attend.
On the other items, namely tuition caps and restrictions on foreign students…yeah, hate to say I agree with those, but I do. A domestic education system should prioritize domestic students, but the lax tuition rules in the USA has meant tuition surged to fleece foreign students at the expense of domestic students. Tuition is way too high given the return on investment, and the allowance of theoretically unlimited foreign enrollment means colleges don’t have to worry about domestic enrollment at all if they’re elite enough.
This is the part I’ve been dreading, to be honest. Fuck the current regime, even if I agree with a few technical points along the way. They’re couching what I feel are decent policy changes in xenophobia and bigotry, which I refuse to abide by.
> Students - domestic or international - deserve a campus where they can explore new ideas without fear of reprisal at home or abroad.
That's a bit naive in today's world. Not every person who identifies as a student is there with the best of intentions, or without ulterior motives, some even being directed by foreign governments. To make them off limits from scrutiny, is to leave your door wide open, and susceptible to abuse and manipulation by enemies.
> Not every person who identifies as a student is there with the best of intentions, or without ulterior motives, some even being directed by foreign governments.
The "being directed by foreign governments" was an issue even when I went to school a few decades ago. I see nothing that warrants a sudden change now compared to then.
I’m talking undergrad campuses, not research departments (which is often where this critique is lobbed towards). Obviously students engaged with sensitive research should have a higher degree of accountability, but undergrads should be permitted to engage freely with the marketplace of ideas to understand the advantages and disadvantages of different positions, cooperation across ideologies, and how to effectively combat harmful ideas without resorting to violence.
Foreign "spies" and agents can identify as undergrads just easily as people in more sensitive areas. Not everyone who calls themselves a student is pure of heart and there just for the pursuit of knowledge and personal development.
I refuse to engage in surveillance just to satisfy a hypothetical bad actor when it comes to freedom of speech, and I will not abdicate that position.
Take your neo-McCarthyism to someone less firm in their support of free speech as to believe hypothetical spies warrant constant surveillance of innocents.
Far from hypothetical, it's happening in the UK on behalf of China
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvn308789go
What do you propose should be done to stop that? Ban all Chinese students from applying or communicating with home?
Very naive. You're putting a gaping hole in your countries defenses. There's nothing wrong with foreign visitors being subject to extra security; to ensure that they are operating within acceptable bounds, and if not, having their visitor status revoked.
> On the subject of surveilling foreign students without warrants and demanding schools hand over data when asked, fuck off.
While I agree with your sentiment, keep in mind that every university (public or private) in the US needs the government's approval to allow foreign students to study on their campus. If you set up a new college, there's a whole process you need to do to get that status, and to maintain it.
As an example, pre-9/11, universities were lax with students who were out of status (including Elon Musk). After 9/11, the government gave them a clear message: If they don't report it, or continue to give them documents of legality when they were clearly out of status, the government would revoke the university's ability to have international students study there.
To a large extent, they do get to dictate rules for foreign students. How much of that has been tested in courts - I don't know. Freedom of speech is a tricky topic.
The student paying expensive foreign tuition may increase resources rather than displacing anyone.
Foreign students are in fact a major "profit center" for a lot of universities, and do in fact subsidize domestic students.
I will concede that I hear and see that narrative a lot, but short of compelling universities to disclose how that higher tuition is actually spent on subsidies for domestic students (what kinds of subsidies? How many benefitted? From what backgrounds? To what extent? Etc), I’m still hugely suspect on it.
> what kinds of subsidies
Resident tuition at state schools is below their average per-student expenditures. That's a subsidy from which they all benefit. It's enabled, in part, by the fact that foreign student tuition is above the schools' average per-student expenditures.
As someone who is familiar with the budget for a large university, I'll tell you that yes, it is true that these foreign monies help keep tuition low for domestic students. It's not through any subsidies or formal program of any kind, just the fact that if that cashflow didn't exist we would have to raise our tuition prices to keep delivering the same level of service.
I'll give you an example. I teach at a not well known school but it's got a nice enough reputation for undergrads. Our MS program is nothing to speak of though. Our MS class consists almost entirely of foreign students from Asia who pay full tuition just so they can get a stepping stone into America. They come to America, study at our program, then go to work in big tech firms around the country with a degree from a US university, which opens doors for them.
For the university's part, that full tuition money is where any "profit" could possibly come from if the university were a business -- every other functional aspect we have from UG education to PhD education to research is break-even or operating at a loss. But because foreign students are so eager to come to America that they are willing to pay full tuition, the MS program actually makes money. And because the University is nonprofit, we use that money to keep costs lower and to fill in budget gaps in other areas.
The upshot is if all that money dries up, because the US is no longer a desirable place for foreign students to want to live and learn and work, then that means the budget gaps will have to be filled in by raising tuition on... you guessed it: domestic students.
So I don't know whether you believe any of that or not, but that's how it works at least in one instance.
I genuinely appreciate the shared perspective and information! This is, admittedly, an area I lack concrete data in because it’s not required to be public in many cases, and I have no way to effectively judge the accuracy or transparency of the data that is; your sharing helps fill in gaps, which I’m appreciative of.
Alright then, let’s assume I am woefully mistaken in my understanding of how international student tuition affects domestic student tuition. There’s still the reality of college tuition grossly outstripping inflation and COLA, even accounting for the prior government subsidies on tuition older generations enjoyed. Yet despite the cost of tuition skyrocketing, the return on investment continues to dwindle - namely that credentials alone no longer guarantee even a middle class existence, nevermind a potential ticket into the upper classes.
In that context, why does tuition remain so high, and how would you recommend we address the issues of tuition cost relative to ROI? Should we raise admission standards to deter enrollment and divert students to tradework? Should we eliminate credentials from non-specialized roles, thereby further depressing the ROI and thus future enrollment? Or is the answer just baking-in a college education into primary schooling, and making a Bachelor’s gratis via government subsidy at state/public schools?
Genuinely curious where you’d recommend I focus my efforts or learning on, because you have a better grasp on this than I do.
> There’s still the reality of college tuition grossly outstripping inflation and COLA, even accounting for the prior government subsidies on tuition older generations enjoyed.
I talked about this a little in my reply to your comment's sibling, but I'll say more here. Yes this is a reality, but it's also vastly more complicated than that because the cost one actually pays to attend an institution can vary between sticker price and them actually being paid to attend (through tuition remission and stipends). There are still free community college, elite institutions offer free tuition to low income students, there are merit programs at state colleges that are free, you can get into PhD programs without having to pay tuition...
But yes, we can broadly say college is getting more expensive to attend. But it's also true that colleges are expected to teach more. 50 years ago there were hardly any Computer Science departments. Today, every school has a CS program, and now they are starting to have AI programs. Schools that started serving small towns have now grown to eclipse the size of those towns, becoming cities of their own. This kind of growth is nonlinear -- once you reach a certain size the security office becomes a police department, the nurse's office becomes a full health clinic, the cafeteria becomes a food distribution network, the IT department becomes an ISP. Tuition at these schools is less about credits for classes and more like a membership fee for a private city.
But then there's the question of ROI. The ROI for attending college is twofold:
1) education. For some reason, this is never really included when people talk about ROI of college because maybe it's implicit, or maybe it's not actually part of what they value, but that is the whole point.
2) the network. Even if you don't value the education per se, the network is probably more economically valuable to you. But also it's socially valuable, as you'll meet a lot of friends and lovers in college. As they say the real value was the friends made along the way.
That brings me to the value of the credential. It's true, for most of my life at least, this has been the selling point of attending college: you go to college to earn more money. But the problem with this selling point is it's self-defeating -- the only reason the credential was ever valuable in the first place was because corporations were willing to pay more for degree holders if it absolved them of having to train them. But of course as it became normalized to hold a degree, they now simply expect it as a given, and won't pay more for it. So the value of the credential has dwindled, and maybe that makes going to college less appealing to the middle class given the tuition. I feel that, which is why they should have more affordable options. I don't think the value of the credential is coming back.
--
Anyway I've talked a lot about problems, and I don't have any solutions. But I think the pathway forward is to stop treating every school the same in these discussions. Some schools are mini cities and should be treated differently from a school that's a couple departments and a handful of students and faculty. To a large extent, small schools are just existing in a marketplace that's set by larger institutions.
They also have difficulty operating as nonprofits in a capitalist system, where the product they deliver (education) is regarded has not being a return for what they pay. It's very frustrating delivering a quality education to someone, for them to turn around and say "Yeah, but corporations won't pay me more, so you haven't done anything for me".
What they're really saying is "it wasn't worth it" and I feel that, education should be cheaper and accessible to anyone. To that end, I think if we want to go back to the tuition of the 80s we should start by going back to a 46% corporate tax rate. Maybe that means fewer people are able to pay that sticker price. But in a world where the rich pay $100k for a car and $150K for a country club dues, I don't see a $70k tuition bill at Stanford coming down anytime soon.
When we are talking about full tuition, does that include the full cost of the student for which could (in concept) be scaled infinitive without any additional funding and support from the government? For example, if there was more foreign students than space in existing buildings and land, could the university buy more land and build more buildings using only the tuition, on top of paying operational costs, and still gain profits?
It's tough to talk about these things because the words we're using are so overloaded. Because some "schools" are bread and butter educational institutions that teach students and that's it. Other "schools" are small cities or playgrounds for kids of the elite. So "tuition" means different things at different institutions.
Full tuition at Yale and Stanford essentially represents the maximum amount of money rich families are willing to pay for membership into an elite club, and doesn't bear close resemblance to the actual cost of delivering the service, which is funded from myriad sources so it's hard to frame it as a typical profit-maximizing corporation. IIRC Stanford is free for students whose parents are under a certain threshold, so there's all kinds of funny accounting at work to come up with the Stanford tuition rate.
This is a key reason why tuition at elite colleges has outpaced inflation -- rich families' income has also greatly outpaced inflation. And because they aren't qualified for any financial aid or support, schools want to charge them as much as much as they can (which is a lot but not infinity). Rich people are used to dropping 10s of thousands on club memberships or private daycares and boarding schools, so elite colleges set their tuition at a level rich people grumble about but nevertheless pay. Note that for this segment of the population, paying more than everyone else is actually a flex. Like they will moan about how high the tuition bill is, but they're happy to moan about it because it lets everyone know they're paying full tuition at Stanford.
Note this is only a strategy for the elite schools that get those uber-rich families. But the economic effect downstream is that all college tuitions are inflated. So because we want everyone to have an education, we've tried to ease the economic burden on the middle class by instituting loan programs, grants, scholarships, etc.
Which brings us to how colleges expand - typically it's not going to be through tuition. Again, growing a university depends on exactly what/how (new department? new laboratory? new library? new academic building?) Ultimately it's usually through a combination of state/local/federal/private partnerships depending on the kind of school. For example an existing school might partner with a hospital to create a med school. Or they might get some wealthy individual to donate a bunch of cash and put his name / her on the building (there are several Gates' centers for Computer Science).
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Democrats are cowards and will not stand up against any of this.
Let us all acknowledge that we're watching America's descent into fascism and doing nothing about it.
Watch your Democratic leaders in Congress stand by and do nothing but complain and appease.
There will always be the would-be fascists in society, that's a constant.
Whether or not there are leaders to oppose them varies. Or do we have to wait until the only opposition option is open war?
> Democrats are cowards and will not stand up against any of this.
They're making a lot of money in the stock market due to their position, they won't jeopardize it.
Which tickers? The indexes have been pretty flat since the shutdown. Or is this Pelosi Derangement Syndrome?
The most effective way to "resist" would be to implement popular policies while in power, help the public, and win elections. Losing elections and trying to resist while in the minority is far less effective.
Unfortunately, leaders of both parties are owned by or are identical to the wealthy donor class. The two parties are just different factions of the donor class.
> leaders of both parties are owned by or are identical to the wealthy donor class
To the extent donors have corrupted the Democrats, it’s been on pushing niche leftist issues like the climate and gender activism, on which donors are disconnected from the electorate, and to a minor degree crap like the carried interest deduction.
> The two parties are just different factions of the donor class
This is lazy nihilism.
What would you suggest the minority party do? Democrats control 0 / 3 of the branches of federal government. And a minority of state governments.
All they can do is talk. And filibuster in the Senate. And they did filibuster the budget.... And the Trump administration has updated web pages with statements that explictly blame the Democrats for the current shutdown. And mandated OOO messages from furloughed agencies contain language blaming the Democrats.
Do you want Democrats in Congress to resort to violence? I don't think ends the way you want...
> What would you suggest the minority party do?
Obstruct. Shamelessly.
Governors should be arresting ICE agents illegally detaining their citizens. Democrat states generate federal tax surpluses—gum up those payments. Filibuster everything.
You know, the stuff the GOP does.
GOP does not do anything you mentioned. Democrats are filibustering pretty much all they can do - with no shame (and kudos to them for the lack of shame).
About detaining ICE agents and not sending withheld federal taxes to Washington - this will happen only if the Democrat states would separate from the Union. Which I really wish would happen. Unfortunately the Union will not break because both separating parties would have to split national debt and nuclear arsenal. So we (Democratic states) are stuck with the deplorables....
> GOP does not do anything you mentioned
The GOP shut down the government in the name of repealing the ACA. Texas’s governor took immigration--a federal prerogative--into his own hands [1].
They stopped when the courts told them to. I’m not suggesting Democrats ignore the courts. But push them, like the GOP has.
> detaining ICE agents and not sending withheld federal taxes to Washington - this will happen only if the Democrat states would separate from the Union
Not at all. The point would be to trigger court cases and gum up the works. Not to permanently detain or freeze funds.
[1] https://gov.texas.gov/operationlonestar
The mode of operation of this administration is to do things first and deal with push back from the courts later. Court cases do not "gum up the works" effectively.
The two items you mentioned (detaining ICE agents and not sending federal tax money to Washington DC) are against federal law. States can do these things only if states refuse to obey federal laws. This would work only if states would secede from the Union.
> mode of operation of this administration is to do things first and deal with push back from the courts later
When they take the initiative. That's the point. The current political environment strongly favours taking the initiative over reacting.
> The two items you mentioned (detaining ICE agents and not sending federal tax money to Washington DC) are against federal law
Yes. So are the things Trump has been doing. As you say, one can "do things first and deal with push back from the courts later." That's what the GOP is doing. I'm saying Democrats need to do the same (or concede the game).
We can remake the judiciary to have more teeth later, when everyone is in compromise mode or one side has won.
I finally understand what you mean. So Democrats should not send tax money to Washington and arrest ICE agents for whatever reason. And then deal with the courts later. I think I finally understand your point.
It will be interesting to see if this causes a war between the US Federal forces and whatever local armed forces the states could muster.
> will be interesting to see if this causes a war between the US Federal forces and whatever local armed forces the states could muster
It wouldn't. It would provoke Trump into an overreaction. But war takes two to tango, and Democrats aren't--and shouldn't be--ready for civil war. (If Trump spent the next three years fighting Gavin Newsom for jailing his ICE agents, that's a win. It means he has less time to do something else.)
And how can the states arrest ICE agents without using force? You think ICE agents will just willingly walk into custody?
The minute states use force against any US Federal agents the US Federal Government will use its military force.
BTW - this also works in the following scenario: Trump's federal court finds Gavin Newsom guilty of something and US Federal Marshals to take him into custody. If Gavin tries to use California's forces to protect him against Marshals then US Federal Government will use military force to detain Gavin.
> how can the states arrest ICE agents without using force? You think ICE agents will just willingly walk into custody?
If ICE start shooting at cops, we've won the battle.
> minute states use force against any US Federal agents the US Federal Government will use its military force
Sure, that's the overreaction. Nobody is ordering police to shoot back.
> this also works in the following scenario: Trump's federal court finds Gavin Newsom guilty of something and US Federal Marshals to take him into custody
Sure. I'd guess he wins the Presidency if Trump does this.
Ordering state officers to detain ICE agents for breaking state law isn't criminal. Newsom's trial would become the media sensation of the next few years. Not whatever nonsense Trump conjurs up on a daily basis to earn media.
Thanks for responding to my messages. I really do not think that if "ICE start shooting at cops we have won the battle" I do not think Gavin wins the presidency if Trump puts him in custody.
In both of these situations I think the follow up is civil war. (which makes me wish we could separate from the deplorables peacefully. Unfortunately we cannot)
> really do not think that if "ICE start shooting at cops we have won the battle"
It wouldn't be ICE shooting at cops, it would be an ICE agent (or group of agents) shooting a cop attempting to detain them. (The easiest reason for the arrest would be enforcing California's new mask law.)
The optics--shooting a cop--are bad. The precedent--violently resisting arrest--is bad. The entire situation is so dumb that I'm doubtful even the goons they're hiring at ICE would think it's a good idea.
> do not think Gavin wins the presidency if Trump puts him in custody
The track record of any elected being put in jail by their opponent, internationally and across history, is a massive jump in popularity.
> In both of these situations I think the follow up is civil war
The only real move if this is the path we're going down is a Governor trying to seize nuclear weapons. I don't think we are there. Not even close.
I would not assume most California police would arrest federal law enforcement officers following the president's orders.
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The Trump admin has already demonstrated that court cases don't effectively gum up the works. Courts are eventually effective, but turns out you can ship a lot of people to a lot of places in the time it takes for "eventually".
Court cases did not stop DOGE from destroying significant parts of our government.
How the heck are Democrats supposed to stop us from bombing Venezuela? Trump is the rightfully elected commander in chief
> Trump admin has already demonstrated that court cases don't effectively gum up the works
Okay, then the Democrat governor wins. I’m not seeing the problem.
> How the heck are Democrats supposed to stop us from bombing Venezuela?
They’re not.
Step one is Democrats need to stop overfocusing on foreign policy. Nobody cares about foreign policy except for comfortable wonks.
>Nobody cares about foreign policy except for comfortable wonks.
Except for all the people who insisted that trump wouldn't get us into foreign wars and demonstrably haven't turned on him now that he bombed Iran, helps Israel do pretty awful things with the explicit goal of turning Gaza into a resort, and possibly has turned to helping Ukraine in it's war, which was literally a point that Democrat politicians pushing for that exact same outcome took serious heat for.
The voters want aggression and pain and harm to those they dislike, especially if Trump tells them to dislike someone. The democrats cannot cater to that desire without just abandoning all the things that make them not republican politicians. Even if they literally adopt republican policy wholesale, they still will not be elected.
The problem starts with what American voters want. As long as they want "Not democrat" and "Big strong man", democrats will not have power. I mean sure, they should probably stop putting up black woman for the presidency if they want even a chance of winning something, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Democrats are demonstrably better for the economy, and have been for a very long time, but republicans are still voted in on the back of "Better for the economy"
The exact Americans who claimed they wanted to vote for "Free speech" are pretty happy that Trump will be compelling speech on American college campuses. If the Supreme court strikes this down, they will not turn on Trump, they will turn on the Court.
>Okay, then the Democrat governor wins. I’m not seeing the problem.
Then Trump does it anyway, and the republicans in congress do not impeach him for doing crime, which the Supreme court has said is fine. The democrat governor "wins" on paper, as people continue to be deported and silenced and oppressed. ICE still roams like the SS, with no identification. Next election, Trump says "look how the left tried to stop me" and gets more votes.
Reality doesn't matter. Rhetoric does. Democrats don't have to be "Right" to get into power and fix things, they have to be popular, really really popular because of gerrymandering, and significant portions of the country make "democrat bad" significant parts of their identity.
> Except for all the people who insisted that trump wouldn't get us into foreign wars and demonstrably haven't turned on him now that he bombed Iran, helps Israel do pretty awful things with the explicit goal of turning Gaza into a resort, and possibly has turned to helping Ukraine in it's war
Yes. That's my point. American voters don't care about foreign policy. Pretty much no federal election in peacetime (i.e. absent a draft) is decided based on any foreign policy.
> democrat governor "wins" on paper
You're describing Democrats reacting to Trump. I'm describing them taking initiative. If the Democrat governor is taking initiative and they ignore the court, their initiative stands.
> GOP does not do anything you mentioned.
I must have hallucinated, say, that long period during Mitch McConnell openly stated he was going to prevent votes on any of Biden's judicial nominees (and followed through on that). Or the business with Tommy Tuberville trying to prevent any military officers from getting confirmed (and, after he failed to totally prevent it, to slow it down and waste Senate time) until he got unrelated concessions on abortion. Those are off the top of my head...
> that long period during Mitch McConnell openly stated he was going to prevent votes on any of Biden's judicial nominees (and followed through on that)
Not relevant—they held the Senate.
> the business with Tommy Tuberville trying to prevent any military officers from getting confirmed
Yup! Do this. Do this constantly.
> Not relevant—they held the Senate.
Sort of.
McConnell found it necessary to prevent some of the nominations from coming to a vote, because he didn't have the votes to stop them. So, yeah, they held enough of the Senate to dick around procedurally, but not enough to win an up or down vote. Which is kind of not that different from a filibuster, which is also a procedural move you use when you'd lose an up or down vote.
And it's one thing to vote down a single nomination, and a different thing to categorically state that you're going to torpedo all of a President's nominations. If there's a Constitutional requirement for "advice and consent", then the Senate has a duty to engage with that.
> Sort of
McConnell had a majority in the Senate. That's a huge difference from Democrats today.
The relevant examples should come from when Democrats had a federal trifecta. The GOP still managed to fuck things up. That should be the inspiration. (But not limit.)
> McConnell had a majority in the Senate.
If he'd been confident in his majority, he would have just taken every nomination to the floor and had them voted down. He didn't do that because he didn't think he'd win. I mean, losing a floor vote is kind of the opposite of "having a majority".
And I don't think the Democrats in recent memory have had as strong a whip as the Republicans.
This is unfortunately probably going to be necessary, and should start happening soon while they still have any power. It's been going on like this for decades, since Gingrich IMO.
It feels like the idealism of some on the left is failing to understand the prisoner's dilemma, and so they just keep losing. There's probably as many or more people from centre right to far left who'd be just as interested in sticking it to the right (let's just call it MAGA), as the right has been interested in owning the libs.
I get that the election says otherwise, but I have a hunch that MAGA isn't nearly as popular as they think they are. I suspect a lot of people are just tired of the wet noodle Kumbaya politics from some on the left, upset with the status quo, really upset with the economy, etc.
Do you ever come back from this though? No idea...
Enlightenment era philosophy is dying. Powerful people are rejecting it in favor of more darwinian ideas of society (maybe not directly Darwinian) that will allow them to consolidate their personal power.
The democrats are simply too weak willed and divided to survive in that environment.
> Enlightenment era philosophy is dying. Powerful people are rejecting it in favor of more darwinian ideas of society
What Enlightenment-era philosophy? (Political civility is not an Enlightenment value. If anything, it was the opposite.)
> the idealism of some on the left
I’m generally critical of the left. But this is one game they got right. It’s imbeciles hiding behind the cowardice of aimless moderation who are sinking America. The left is ready to fight.
> Do you ever come back from this
Yes. See: Andrew Jackson. The American Whigs. The British Whigs. The New Deal.
What you don’t get back from is a lack of opposition.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/us/politics/russell-vough...
> The left is ready to fight.
I hope you're right. By idealism, I meant not fighting dirty. There's this moral superiority / higher ground thing with some politicians, that while I admire it, I doubt it's the right attitude for the moment.
For example, the retaliatory gerrymandering proposed by some democratic states is the right response IMO, as horrible as gerrymandering is. In fact, they should probably stop apologizing for it and just take a page from MAGA and sell it as "sticking it to MAGA" instead of calling it a necessary evil.
> For example, the retaliatory gerrymandering proposed by some democratic states is the right response
Is it, this is just a hunch, but I’d imagine Texas or Ohio republicans stand to gain a lot more from redistributing districts than democrats in California do.
> this is just a hunch
There is a lot of informed vote counting on this question. Going off a hunch is unnecessary. Commenting off it a waste of time.
Every informed analysis I saw said Republicans would gain more seats than Democrats probably.
> There's this moral superiority / higher ground thing with some politicians
Honestly, whom? Because I mostly see cowardice being draped in morality.
Maybe I'm being too generous then. I suspect it's a mix of both and I'm even a little cynical that there are plenty on the left who secretly like this new age of grift. /shrug
>It feels like the idealism of some on the left is failing to understand the prisoner's dilemma, and so they just keep losing.
The "idealism" of the left is increasingly just bigotry. There is a small set of people and problems they like and a large set they dislike or are simply disinterested in. This becomes indistinguishable from fascists who seek racial superiority for a particular group. It's not there yet but it's certainly going in a direction.
The left hates the south, hates poor white people, hates rural people, hates men. The left is comfortable with open expression of this hatred. The left has a severe sense of "we know better than you" superiority and confusion as to why folks "vote against their own self interest".
The left forgot that they made most of their societal progress by slowly normalizing things instead of loudly shoving changes in people's faces. The left wants to fight a culture war and when they win something they look for more things to be angry about accelerating divisiveness instead of slowing it down.
The left doesn't want everyone to just be people, they've grown increasingly obsessed with categorizing people and then demanding performative celebration of new categories, you can't just be a person you've got to have a collection of adjectives.
The active left are mostly bored people who want to fight for other people's problems and feel inadequate letting those people do it for themselves.
The bigotry and divisiveness of both active sides of the political spectrum are becoming indistinguishable, the silent majority is leaderless. There is no one standing up rejecting both extremes arguing for sanity, rationality, and fairness.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité should be the goals we're fighting for
In the Weimar Republic there was the Iron Front with this flag with three arrows representing opposition to monarchy, fascism, and communism and what we need is some modern version of this opposed to the divisiveness, authoritarianism, and rejection of reason common across the political spectrum of America. We need the center to unite and reject both poles and return to a sense of individual thought and decision-making in our leaders instead of one thought per party.
Democrat states generate federal tax surpluses—gum up those payments
Uh, almost all federal taxes flow directly from business to the IRS or other federal agencies. Your payroll and income taxes? ADP/Paylocity send the funds straight to the IRS; they don't flow through the state.
The GOP doesn't do those things. They instead just not vote for Democrat things, and because they always have almost 50% of every house all the time, all they need is one Democrat defector to kill anything democrats want to do, which is easy to find when people like Manchin are "Democrats".
When McConnell refused to vote to appoint new supreme court justices, he was exercising the power given to him by the constitution.
You want Democrats to wield power? You have to give it to them first.
Our state's governor is a Democrat, and shes trying to sue the admin and fight it, but a lot of the shit Trump is doing is popular, so that might just result in yet another state going red.
Democrats haven't really held power in the US since Reagan blasted the entire party out of the water by doing exactly what Trump does but cleaner. Jimmy Carter lost the election in a landslide so bad it nearly killed the party.
Americans don't vote for Democrats or empathetic policy. They had to adopt neoliberalist bullshit and "hard on crime" crap to get elected with Clinton, and despite running the country very well and doing good things for 8 years, the public still chose to vote for a literal dynasty who then got us into criminal wars killing brown people for made up things, set trillions of dollars on fire for no gain, and set the worlds energy economy on fire, and america reelected him after that was clear.
>Governors should be arresting ICE agents illegally detaining their citizens.
So you are out there citizens arresting ICE agents right? Oh you aren't? Because you don't want to be shot and die?
Remember, that democrat state senator was murdered by someone with clear political motivations and who dressed like a cop. She didn't even get the flag at half staff for a second, let alone the days that Charlie got.
> When McConnell refused to vote to appoint new supreme court justices, he was exercising the power given to him by the constitution
Yes. I mentioned legal powers. Congressional obstructionism as the minority was turned an art by the GOP. Every step in committee and on the floor can be gummed up.
And in states, Democrats do have power. What they aren’t doing is using it.
> Democrats haven't really held power in the US since Reagan
We’ve had two trifectas!
> you are out there citizens arresting ICE agents right? Oh you aren't?
You just talked about legitimate power…
> that democrat state senator was murdered by someone with clear political motivations and who dressed like a cop
Is the argument might makes right? Or law? Your comment is all over the place.
>We’ve had two trifectas!
When? The 50 days Obama had a "trifecta" that couldn't actually pass democrat policy because 49 + A guy who refuses to push democrat policy isn't an actual "majority"?
When Democrats had actual power under Clinton but again, that was neoliberal bullshit to try and have any power again, and despite doing very well, americans still rejected those politicians for literal political dynasty and reelected a war criminal who lied to their face to start a war.
>https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Combined...
Notice not just the significant change in how we have more split governments now, and how "majorities" are rarely more than a couple politicians. Republicans empirically "fall in line" for votes more than "democrats" which often includes people who are not even registered democrats (not in this graph though).
> Congressional obstructionism as the minority was turned an art by the GOP. Every step in committee and on the floor can be gummed up.
They weren't the minority. They were exercising majority powers.
>Is the argument might makes right? Or law? Your comment is all over the place.
I made no such claim to either. The voters have the power, and they have demonstrably decided that republicans deserve that power more. Democrats are told that they should change their policy, but research shows that voters just don't vote for you as much if you have (D) next to your name, regardless of policy proposal, and hopefully the previous few elections have shown that policy literally doesn't matter because Americans don't care about good policy plans or apparently real life.
There is a double standard. If republicans literally break the law to do things, as Trump keeps doing, they still get re-elected. If a democrat does the same, the entire party suffers.
So sure, lets have the tiny amount of democrats remaining in government do blatantly criminal things so they can all be put in jail and their states outright taken over by the current admin which is popular.
There is no short term solution. There is no solution that Democrat politicians can do on their own.
The long term solution is Americans finally re-learning the Republican governance doesn't work well. History shows that will take decades, and significant suffering. You can ask the current remaining democrat politicians to sacrifice themselves on the altar of "Don't just stand by", but polling shows that doing illegal things to protect brown people or trans people will not win elections. Americans are not that empathetic.
> The 50 days Obama had a "trifecta" that couldn't actually pass democrat policy
The ACA?!
We wasted our trifecta under Biden, but that's the point.
> 49 + A guy who refuses to push democrat policy isn't an actual "majority"?
Anyone who believes this doesn't deserve to govern. You know what we'd have if we had a few more Manchins and Sinemas today? A majority.
> "majorities" are rarely more than a couple politicians
Sure [1].
> Republicans empirically "fall in line" for votes more than "democrats"
Source? Trump 1.0 was Republicans constantly falling over themselves. Even this time, McCarthy versus cocaine Chucky almost blew up the party.
> They weren't the minority
Republicans were in a complete federal minority when we passed the ACA, and in a legislative and executive minority in 2021.
> If republicans literally break the law to do things, as Trump keeps doing, they still get re-elected. If a democrat does the same, the entire party suffers
We don't know this! Obama was, erm, creative with a lot of limits. He won re-election.
> lets have the tiny amount of democrats remaining in government do blatantly criminal things
Totally unnecessary.
> There is no solution that Democrat politicians can do on their own. The long term solution is Americans finally re-learning the Republican governance doesn't work well
If Democrats can't use their state majorities and federal minority productively, they can't govern. The choice, then, isn't between Republicans and Democrats, because the latter gave up the game. (Biding time doesn't work when the other side is strategically repositioning to their advantage.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...
Donate to the lawyers in the courts (You can look at briefings to find plaintiffs and defendants but the ACLU's a good bet). These folk are absolutely securing wins against this administration and pushing back, but it's extremely expensive and this is an all out onslaught.
That's something you can do right now, and encourage others to do with very little impact on your day to day.
Then, go to protests. Protests are best when they're non-violent and massive. These send the message to the people in power because in the end they are nothing but other people. Courage is contagious, get out, bring friends.
Then call your reps, you may not think they are listening, but they are. Call them at the local, state, and federal level and tell them what you think. Encourage your friends to do the same.
Boycott companies that kowtow to this administration. I've been boycotting Amazon for ages so that wasn't tough but social media and corporate media and a lot of these tech companies and a lot of other companies are run my megalomaniac out of touch narcissists who will bend the knee before risking their profits. Simply take the hit and stop using their products. Encourage friends to do the same.
It's not too late. Don't let them make you think it is. We are not 1937 Germany yet. Push back now. Small actions done in concert have real world effects.
Then... take the news off your phone and go outside and get some sun and make sure to take care of yourself.
"Democrats are cowards..."
Who exactly?
The roughly 40 million people registered with the party? Or th 8,000 Democrats holding elected office? Or do you specifically mean the 213 Democrats in the US House and the 45 Democrats in the Senate?
Be specific man.
more or less all of the above
more cowardice points for the people who have more power
>Whether or not there are leaders to oppose them varies. Or do we have to wait until the only opposition option is open war?
No one in this country has the ability to care about anything at all anymore that isn't directly necessary for survival unless you're a millionaire (and we all know which side they're on). The result is that it makes the individually rational choice to keep your head down and just deal with it. We are at the brink, and there is just no other option than to watch in horror and pray you aren't affected.
"Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future. In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much."
- On Tyranny by Timothy D. Snyder
Keeping your head down and just dealing with it as a choice that you can make and it is the choice that they count on you making. But it's not the only choice.
> No one in this country has the ability to care about anything at all anymore that isn't directly necessary for survival
We say as the richest country in the richest age of human existence, where most Americans have no practical constraints on access to food or emergency medicine, luxuries unimaginable to most of our ancestors.
There are options but those options won't end up well for you as an individual. The only way things can change is collective action and people are too glued to their social media bubbles to realize that we're not as different as we think.
I'm not "glued to the social media bubble", I'm paying rent, so I don't end up on the street where a Fox News host says I should be forcibly murdered, and millions of my fellow citizens explicitly agree.
I don't work for FAANG or make a huge salary, I don't own property, I don't have anything.
Most of us aren't privileged enough to be able to walk away from work.
I need medication to live a partially functional life. Am I supposed to just magically acquire that medication while I'm being fired from work, losing my insurance, and being arrested for daring to have a democratic opinion?
Hell, my state is mostly Democrat right now. Am I supposed to go live in another state for a while and get arrested there so the right wing news can cry about how liberals are literally invading other states?
We were screaming and crying about how all this was going to go down for decades. Some of us even back in the red scare days. We were called socialist and unamerican.
But no, "Both sides" You would cry, or "Free market" to prevent us from reigning in corporations that own our lives. "We don't need a software developer union, what if the guy next to me makes more money! I can definitely negotiate better against literal behemoths than a collective group of people!" You cried.
It wasn't meant as a personal attack against you Jesus Christ.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to attack you either. I meant the royal "you"
In both Germany and the USSR, a lot of people died making zero progress (and maybe even negative progress in some ways) liberating their country.
I just think, as long as Trump's rhetoric and claimed policy is popular, there's no "resistance" possible. Americans want this crap. They'll keep voting that way until they get it as hard as possible.
So many people are insisting that people like me have to rise up and take back our country, ignoring that our country wants this and chose this, multiple times.
McCarthyism worked. It suppressed speech and activity, and basically eliminated socialism in the US for a century. History is rhyming.
I don't have a solution.
Me neither and I share your concern. That being said it's my opinion this popularity is propped up by algorithms that tend to push people towards this type of dumb shit. If there was a way to get through to these misguided idiots I think this country may have a shot at not being a complete hellhole. Is it idealistic and naive? Maybe. Just my two cents y'know.
Together we can have a voice. But we need a good leader.
A bit hyperbolic, ain't it? Lots of people who are not millionaires care about much more than survival. Like for example the family I drove by a couple of months ago - they were very concerned about fitting 3 dirt bikes (1 adult size, 2 kid ones) in a pick up trailer. This family was not millionaire.....
who would have thought that both sides are face eating leopards?!
More shocking is the mental block about even considering a third alternative, as if you're talking to against gravity or something.
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Democrats in Congress just helped shut the government down.
Democrats across multiple state legislatures have retaliated against republican state gerrymandering.
> Democrats in Congress just helped shut the government down
Eh, Democrats crapped their pants in Texas. Crapped their pants in March. Haven’t yet excised Biden elements who straight up lied to the electorate from the party. The Constitution is being shredded, yet you wouldn’t know it from the generic ballot [1].
Bring back the Bull Moose Party. Between the death of conservatism in the GOP and the loss of a backbone outside the left among Democrats, there is room-maybe a need—for a Teddy in our politics.
[1] https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/state-of-the-union/ge...
It's all a distraction. Get everyone riled up about free guv bux and not address the high cost of tuition or the loopholes that let us companies skip debt-laden grads for foreign labor.
> or the loopholes that let us companies skip debt-laden grads for foreign labor.
Note that as we speak, AI is replacing junior roles and c-suites are bragging about doing layoffs because of it. There are zero restrictions to it's use in the workplace, and it will only get better at taking your work, year over year, while paying zero taxes.
You're being distracted by anxiety over immigrants, whose entry is limited, and who, well, do pay taxes.
Bring up AI too. Where are the Dems with their new tax? Let's tax AI and use it to pay grads' student loans off. I don't have anxiety about immigrants but my work looks like India, it's not diverse. The company clearly doesn't want Americans working there
> Let's tax AI and use it to pay grads' student loans off
Using non-college grads’ taxes to pay off college graduates’ loans is why we lose elections.
While I certainly have a better idea of where that money should go, I'm not sure payroll-taxing corporations employing AI for the purpose of shrinking their white-collar payroll... is morally equivalent to the myth of Joe the Plumber paying for Frida's degree in underwater basket-weaving.
Moral equivalence is irrelevant. Nobody likes their taxes benefiting people more fortunate than themselves. And the college/non-college divide is politically active at the moment.
Again, I'm not sure how such a tax on AI could possibly be felt by a non-college educated person to be a tax that 'they' are paying. The non-college educated aren't employing LLMs, or people to work with LLMs.
Money is fungible, if you tax x to pay for y, you could have taxed z less or paid for w.
And giving a giant regressive tax break to college loan holders was literally one of the things that lost Biden the election.
You're conveniently ignoring Kamala's plan to raise taxes on corporations (which turned tech and big business fully against the Dems), and Trump's plan to raise taxes (tariffs) on consumers, and give a massive tax gift to the wealthy in the BBB. While cutting benefits.
If you're expecting progressive taxation from MAGA, or blue collar Republicans to vote for their self-interest, you'll be waiting a while.
I’m not waiting for progressive taxes or forgetting anything. I’m addressing your point on how people can “feel” like they are paying a tax unrelated to them.
We are in the grievance era. People view any spending that goes to an “other” as a wealth transfer from them to that other (even while most of maga don’t pay any federal tax!) so if you pick an other to support it shouldn’t be one as unsympathetic as white collar workers.
> use it to pay grads' student loans off
I'm more of a mind to just take that money and funnel it straight into unemployment coffers.
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