One key example of this is leftists' hostility toward capitalism, i.e., the system of private property. On their view, this system "generates inequities," a phrasing that preys upon standard human failings in the area of jealousy or envy, even as the presence of capitalism in a country is typically associated over the last two and a half centuries with rising living standards across the board. One prominent instance of leftist rationalization in the face of this evidence is typically to attribute this rise to scientific progress during that time, which is to ignore or evading the role that business plays in bringing technological benefits to a market at profitable scale; the rationalization also thoroughly ignores/evades the close connections between intellectual, political and economic freedoms. Another instance of leftist rationalization is to shift the goalposts and talk about climate change. One thing you can't and won't get a leftist to do, however, is to address the very strongest arguments for or characterizations of the capitalist system, such as in Rand's essay "What is Capitalism?" which is over half a century old now but has received absolutely zilch in the way of response from leftists, which should be a red flag right there. Heck, over 60 years ago, Atlas Shrugged and the "Galt speech" were published and no leftist has dared to rebut the content of that speech. Go google till you're exhausted looking for a decent, non-strawman, non-glib, non-intellectually-lazy, leftist rebuttal to Rand. Guaranteed result: Zilch! Pathetic.
(One easy way to tell whether the Rand-bashers have a clue what they're talking about is to compare/contrast their characterizations with those from actual Rand experts giving such courses as "A Study of Galt's Speech" and "The Atlas Project." If the basher doesn't demonstrate familiarity with the "role of the mind in man's existence" theme, then the basher is in no way whatsoever a competent interpreter, and instead is likely a hubristic/pretentious snot.)
There is a clear-cut tie-in between the way leftists treat someone like Rand and the point I'm about to make.
Leftist website vox.com has this story: Female scientists are up against a lot of unconscious bias. Here’s how to fight it.
Quick, close your eyes and picture a scientist.
Did you just picture a man?
There’s a pretty good chance you did. Many of us unconsciously associate the concept “science” with the concept “male,” even if we would consciously reject that association. Unfortunately, the “science = male” stereotype is making it harder for female scientists to get promotions they deserve. Yes, even in 2019.
A two-year study published Monday in Nature Human Behavior examined how 40 scientific evaluation committees decided which researchers should get promoted to plum positions. It found that most scientists on the committees — whether they were men or women, and whether they worked in particle physics or political science — unconsciously associated science with men.
That implicit bias affected their promotion decisions, so long as they didn’t consciously believe there were external barriers (like discrimination) holding back women in science. But, interestingly, the implicit bias did not influence their decisions if they acknowledged the existence of such barriers.
Basically, if someone can say, “Yes, gender bias exists — women really do get discriminated against on the basis of gender,” the simple fact of acknowledging that can undercut their unconscious tendency to discriminate against women. Aware that such bias can exist, they’ll seek to counteract it.
Leftists have a very-well-developed sense of there being biases affecting people's chances for success, but this sense itself is also stunted and biased. Consider:
Quick, close your eyes and picture an academic professor in the social sciences or humanities.
Did you just picture a leftist?
There's a pretty good chance you did. Many of us unconsciously associate the concept "academic professor" with the concept "leftist," even if we would consciously reject that association. Unfortunately, the "academic professor = leftist" stereotype is making it harder for rightists/conservatives to get promotions they deserve. Yes, even in 2019.
Isn't it blazingly obvious what goes in in the process of academic hiring, promotion, etc., given the unconscious biases if not conscious hubris involved?
Although there are two "sides" of the political spectrum - call them "left" and "right" - a typical college student taking a political science class cannot rationally expect to be provided a fair and balanced picture of what it is that would account for the left/right divide, what accounts for the appeal of rightist ideas to those holding them, what a meaningful left/right dialogue would thereby entail, etc. The intended or unintended effect of this is to reinforce the leftist biases that formed the ideology of the professors (both current and future, the future ones being the current students). It would be a surprise if this pathological situation didn't contribute to the toxicity of the political environment nowadays. Indeed, much of Trump's appeal comes from the fact that many people are fed up with the sort of toxicity and pathology that passes for intellectualism on the left, manifested in a Political Correctness (sic) run amok. (See the likes of AOC as more or less perfect examples of the pathology at work.) This toxic PC-run-amok situation further fuels the leftist reaction to Trump and his supporters, basically a doubling-down: "basket of deplorables," "racist" this and that, etc. It's not like these leftists want to really understand what's going on here, else their whole MO would change to one which respects the process of dialectic with opposing viewpoints. Jonathan Haidt has rung the alarm bells that this pathology, bias, etc. is basically destroying the intellectual credibility of the left, but it's not evident that the academic left is really interested in seriously listening to the message or in changing its ways.
Yes, even in 2019. This is more than half a century after Rand's prime, and nearly half a century since Nozick's libertarian treatise Anarchy, State, and Utopia hit the academic scene. It's not like there are any obvious much less subtle advantages that Rawls' theory of justice has over Nozick's; they're basically competing sets of moral intuitions about the role of the state in people's lives. Both theories and sets of intuitions have seen lots of challenges and rebuttals over the years - these are difficult subjects where slam-dunk arguments are few and far between - but I haven't seen anything that would compel an unbiased observer to believe that one theory is clearly superior to the other, i.e., I haven't seen a good explanation for why, on the merits, Rawlsians should far outnumber Nozickians.
(We're talking Rawls vs. Nozick here. We're not even bringing in Rand's neo-Aristotelian arguments [for political conclusions essentially like Nozick's] that revolve around the role of the mind in man's existence and how that entails a uncompromising commitment to a combination of virtue and freedom. Indeed, I for one don't see what role there is for the state beyond any necessary peacekeeping functions, in a society where Aristotelian virtue is the norm. And good luck getting leftists of all people to know anything much less speak about Aristotelian virtue; it's all politics with them as a source of meaning and morals. [Also, as a terminological aside, it makes as much sense to speak of Aristotelian ethics as the paradigmatic virtue-ethical theory, as it does to speak of Kantian ethics as the paradigmatic deontological theory; if we're going to name the usual triad of theories and the deontological one is called Kantianism we might as well call the virtue one Aristotelianism. If.])
But I don't think you would ever know about the difficulties and challenges involved in the competing theories (libertarianism vs. Rawls-ish liberalism) by looking at the political makeup of the academy. Nozick's own curiosity was piqued enough by this for him to ask and supply an explanation for why intellectuals (of the "wordsmith," i.e., humanities or social sciences variety) oppose capitalism, and his explanation has enough of a ring of truth to it that it calls for an answer from leftists. (I am unaware of any such answers; if there had been, wouldn't it they be well-known?) If academic leftists had the first clue about what is involved in running a business like (e.g.) Amazon - the specializations/expertise differ here, see - they might not be so hostile to the business world and billionaires. But (of course) it's the very job of academics to identify, uproot, see past, etc. the biases that might affect even their own views of the world. The evidence suggests that they're just not up to doing this job, which (of course) severely undercuts the academics' claim to a superior intellectual or moral perspective on the world. They're specialists/experts on certain subject matters, is all. (The paradigmatic leftist thinker, Marx, could study and write all about capital, for instance, but there is no evidence he himself was capable of running a capitalist or otherwise profit-making enterprise. Shouldn't this be a red flag *ahem* of some kind?) My belief is that for roughly every really smart and informed lefty (most likely Rawls-ish) you could find a really smart and informed libertarian, but it's typical leftist practice to be intellectually lazy and give libertarianism (and especially Rand's moral-individualist version) short shrift. There are two major factors at work that could explain the relatively low number of libertarians in the academy: (1) The conscious or unconscious biases that make the academy a less hospitable and career-advancing place for libertarians and (2) Many libertarian-minded people putting their intellectual skills to work in the business world instead.
For further evidence of my thesis, see the demographic breakdown among those with advanced degrees on pp. 87-88 of Maddox and Lilie's Beyond Liberal and Conservative. Perhaps the most serious hubris-related problem of leftists is their view that there aren't that many smart people on the right, but this applies especially to their attitude toward libertarians (who tend to fall into the political "right" these days due to their views about capitalism and limited government). And so:
"What would Nozick much less Rand do about the poor dying in the gutter, or having poor opportunity sets? Where is their empathy? We should at least respect if not empathize with one another. That requires a sense of fairness. [maybe a couple other main premises or elaboration] Hence we need a welfare state and/or enforced opportunity maximin, conceptual severing of property rights from human rights, etc." Does this sound like basically sound reasoning, a basis for political consensus, a homework-doing representation of putatively marginal viewpoints, or anything respectable as a dialectical counter to the libertarian norm that individuals' lives are their own and not the state/collective/tribe/poor/disadvantaged to forcibly dispose of? Maybe there are good arguments that the state/collective/others do have a right to dispose of individual lives, and/or that private property isn't in any serious way an extension of individual thought/action, and I just missed them? Maybe I just missed where leftists speak of freedom in addition to their nonstop talk of (in)equality? This isn't even to address the various conservative arguments about the role of the state in people's lives which leftists routinely ignore - one should distinguish here between hearing and listening - but to which libertarians have a thoroughly reasonable counter along the lines just stated and which has abundant backing in themes motivating the founding of America (which wasn't a conservative movement per se but arguably has the best elements of conservatism including the recognition of the corrupting influence of power, as well as the notion that a sustainably free republic requires a minimally virtuous citizenry).
In short: You may very well be a leftist if you see and decry sexist bias at work in the science professions but not political bias at work in the other fields or walks of life. This fits quite well with commonsense observations these days about leftist hubris and - what comes to the same thing - the terrible leftist attitude toward real/serious dialogue. (In the non-academic world, have a look at the almost utterly terrible, awful and pathetic MSDNC channel for what passes for opinion commentary there, at pretty much any hour of the day. At least unlike CNN, MSDNC doesn't try to hide its biases....)
[ADDENDUM: I shouldn't let it pass without pointing out that hubris comes with costs, one way or another. Hubris is another word for false pride, as in the age-old saying about pride coming before a fall. Well, in the case of today's leftists there is not just the "fall" of seeing someone like Trump elected president (much less whatever else is coming to them), but the leftists' hubris about the intellectual and moral superiority of their ideas, combined with their addiction to the political as source of meaning and morals, has them in a very unhappy state in regard to the way things are politically. In that sense I kinda feel bad for them. (But it's their own fault....) It's not just the generally political but Trump in particular that has them very unhappy, because it's not even the real Trump that has taken up space rent-free in their heads, but rather an imaginary and scary Racist President Trump. (Or let's just say that their case that he is racist is so, uh, trumped-up as to come off as desperate and definitely biased.) So if the political is all-consumingly important to you, and you're utterly convinced of your rightness and superiority, and yet a political bogeyman is living rent-free in your head, I can see how that would be detrimental to your mental well-being. I offer no solution to this rather pitiful state of affairs other than a philosophical education.]
[ADDENDUM #2: I've finished the Oxford Handbook of Spinoza, so which is the more perfect research move for the next reading, the previously-mentioned Natural Reasons (Hurley) or the Oxford Handbook of Leibniz? I also have The Socialist Manifesto (Sunkara, 2019) checked out, but since the political isn't all-consumingly important to me, I may well skip it for now to focus on the things Hurley and/or Leibniz were focused on. Just think about it for a moment: Which sort of theme/project would, if carried out really well, most likely do a better job of improving the human condition: a socialist manifesto, or a treatise on better living through philosophy? Sunkara has implicitly bet on the former. I'm pursuing the latter. Perhaps as part of the latter I can skim through the socialist manifesto as part of a sprawling research program, more Aristotle-like than otherwise, and treat it as a foil or contrast case. For one thing, socialism has a terrible track record at being implemented as its advocates envision. For another, socialists have historically done a terrible job of engaging in dialectic with their opponents. And for another, socialism is at root morally evil, stupid and un-American. And last but not least, soulcraft is a more all-encompassing project than statecraft, and if you attempt the latter without the former, you might well be an idiot or monster. So skimming the 2019 socialist manifesto would be yet another exercise in seeing just what mountain of good sense got overlooked and just how one-sided the argument is this time around....]
[ADDENDUM: I shouldn't let it pass without pointing out that hubris comes with costs, one way or another. Hubris is another word for false pride, as in the age-old saying about pride coming before a fall. Well, in the case of today's leftists there is not just the "fall" of seeing someone like Trump elected president (much less whatever else is coming to them), but the leftists' hubris about the intellectual and moral superiority of their ideas, combined with their addiction to the political as source of meaning and morals, has them in a very unhappy state in regard to the way things are politically. In that sense I kinda feel bad for them. (But it's their own fault....) It's not just the generally political but Trump in particular that has them very unhappy, because it's not even the real Trump that has taken up space rent-free in their heads, but rather an imaginary and scary Racist President Trump. (Or let's just say that their case that he is racist is so, uh, trumped-up as to come off as desperate and definitely biased.) So if the political is all-consumingly important to you, and you're utterly convinced of your rightness and superiority, and yet a political bogeyman is living rent-free in your head, I can see how that would be detrimental to your mental well-being. I offer no solution to this rather pitiful state of affairs other than a philosophical education.]
[ADDENDUM #2: I've finished the Oxford Handbook of Spinoza, so which is the more perfect research move for the next reading, the previously-mentioned Natural Reasons (Hurley) or the Oxford Handbook of Leibniz? I also have The Socialist Manifesto (Sunkara, 2019) checked out, but since the political isn't all-consumingly important to me, I may well skip it for now to focus on the things Hurley and/or Leibniz were focused on. Just think about it for a moment: Which sort of theme/project would, if carried out really well, most likely do a better job of improving the human condition: a socialist manifesto, or a treatise on better living through philosophy? Sunkara has implicitly bet on the former. I'm pursuing the latter. Perhaps as part of the latter I can skim through the socialist manifesto as part of a sprawling research program, more Aristotle-like than otherwise, and treat it as a foil or contrast case. For one thing, socialism has a terrible track record at being implemented as its advocates envision. For another, socialists have historically done a terrible job of engaging in dialectic with their opponents. And for another, socialism is at root morally evil, stupid and un-American. And last but not least, soulcraft is a more all-encompassing project than statecraft, and if you attempt the latter without the former, you might well be an idiot or monster. So skimming the 2019 socialist manifesto would be yet another exercise in seeing just what mountain of good sense got overlooked and just how one-sided the argument is this time around....]
