Asymmetrical Information

Are you sure it's the commenters who are "confused"?

As a personal friend of Ms. Galt, I can assure you that she's no squishy soft-hearted lefty progressive.

As someone who's been reading her since she first started blogging, I can assure you that she does a fine impression of one when the mood strikes her.

Which actually is why I like AI; it's not ploddingly doctrinaire and predictable.

I believe the coinage is "liberaltarian".

Count me a transient commenter who's read Atlas Shrugged. I'm hardly surprised, though, that Ayn Rand wouldn't be taught in literature classes at places like Liberty U and Texas A&M.

Count me a transient commenter who's read Atlas Shrugged. I'm hardly surprised, though, that Ayn Rand wouldn't be taught in literature classes at places like Liberty U and Texas A&M.

Name five post-universities where Atlas Shrugged is taught in literature classes.

As a personal friend of Ms. Galt, I can assure you that she's no squishy soft-hearted lefty progressive.

By her own admission that was her starting point politically and she regularly slips back into whenever the topic is health care, taxation, education, AGW, or immigration.

I'm a squishy libertarian.

So am I, after eating at IHOP!

That's right, I'm going to leave non-serious non sequitur because it's more fun than doing my job.

That should be "Name five universities where Atlas Shrugged is taught in literature classes."

Progressive, as in being someone who is beating the drum for an approach or thought that has been more traditionally in the Leftist, Socialist, Communistic side of the mean (not an angry six foot Teuton, but in the Bell curvish symbology); that is opposed to me, who is absolutely a Radical Rightie who, at least in thought, is one of the founders of the Right Wing Conspiracy.

Nice to see that you do read your commenters, though.

Digested that IHOP already?

Jane, you think you got it bad? At least you got called a "progressive" for advocating a stance that lots of progressives might agree with. If somebody only read your comments on immigration, and applied a heavy stereotype filter, that would be an understandable (albeit wrong) conclusion.

Some of the commenters at Unqualified Offerings have occasionally accused me of being in favor of the Iraq War because some of my statements were a bit too nuanced, or something. Say what you will about the war, but I've been consistent in my opposition. So I'm baffled by the comments gallery.

It's a strange world.

You blaspheme like a progressive.

I believe that anyone who is for higher taxes, which is the central source of Big Government, cannot be a libertarian.

Failure to fully pay taxes to feed Big Government, no matter how exorbitant, results in long imprisonment and the loss of freedom, one's family and all other benefits of a free society. There is no protest, no courts to appeal to, outside of the IRS's tax courts. It is a rock-solid absolute: taxation is the ultimate source of all governmental power, and its largesse is pointedly distributed to its friends and benefactors, and taken from its enemies.

Personally, I think anyone who agrees with a growing confiscatory taxation is correctly termed as a "Progressive" or whatever the left calls itself these days.

*Very* squishy.

'Personally, I think anyone who agrees with a growing confiscatory taxation is correctly termed as a "Progressive" or whatever the left calls itself these days.'

TJ,
If you don't like it, I suggest you leave whatever country you're living in and come to the USA. It's easy as can be to sneak in illegally, and we have very low taxes. But you better do it quickly if you want to get in on the impending amnesty.

xf

Equating Liberty U and Texas A&M is a complete miscagenation.

The one is founded with the express purpose of educating to a Christian dogma. It doesn't have any academic credentials of merit, AFAIK, other than that one The other is a first rate university, one of the best in the US in some fields (petroleum engineering in particular).

Aggie&Mech is as fine a university as they go, ranking 21st amongst US public universities, and 60th overall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_A&M_University#Rankings

Its former President is now the US Secretary of Defence and former head of the CIA, Robert Gates.

You would be better to pick Baylor, which was founded by Baptists and struggles with that identity, from time to time. Or perhaps Notre Dame.

And no, none of those (probably) would teach Atlas Shrugged.

"You would be better to pick Baylor, which was founded by Baptists and struggles with that identity, from time to time. Or perhaps Notre Dame."

Are you suggesting that it would be better to compare Liberty to Baylor and ND or to compare A&M to them? The ranking of A&M at 60 comes from the US News and World Report which gives the ranks of Baylor and Notre Dame as 81 and 20. Liberty is ranked in the bottom 25%.

J

Without knowing Baylor well, I was trying to think of a university with religious founders, who created the university in part to promulgate a specific moral and religious viewpoint, and who continue to struggle with that mission. There was a recent newsarticle about Baylor and some moral issue (abortion clinic?) which reminded me of this. There wasn't any comment about academic rank implicit.

AFAIK Texas A&M was not created for that purpose but rather for secular public education in the state of Texas. It also happens to be a fine university (as are ND and Baylor). And they all have great football teams, which is of course what really matters ;-).

Jane/ Megan

As someone contributed on another thread on this topic, you are actually a Tory. Although the American version of this was confusingly called a Whig (one of the founding parts of the Republican Party).

Despite the allusions to Ayn Rand, you certainly come across as far less of a knee-jerk libertarian than much of the blogosphere. Real libertarians think global warming is a left-wing conspiracy.

[Liberty University was] founded with the express purpose of educating to a Christian dogma.

You mean, like Harvard?

Rob Lyman

AFAIK Harvard (and Columbia) don't adhere to the religious objectives of their founders. Harvard was founded by Anglicans? Or Puritans? Columbia I think by Episcopalians.

Whereas Notre Dame and (perhaps) Baylor certainly try to.

I believe its fairly clear that a practising Catholic is going to have an admission advantage in applying to Notre Dame? Whereas a practising Anglican (or a Puritan, if there was such a thing here and now) is not going to have same in applying to Harvard.

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