Krieger

"What did he say to make you think he is a Christian fundamentalist and what did he say to make you think he is a moron? And are you not prepared to engage on anything that he said in the article, or do you just prefer to sit in the gallery and call names (even if your statements are true, you still haven't addressed what he has said)?"

Shrug, that is what I thought of him. I'm not going to get into some long debate about it though. Jerry Falwell and Rush Limbaugh can sound "intelligent" too, but they clearly are not, the same goes for this guy.

fromtheright

Toto,

Thanks for the response, I was starting to give up hope on getting anyone to take a serious look at Carter's article. I've got little problem with someone dismissing the piece but to simply do so with a couple of ad hominems was rather below what I've often seen in this board.

I know very little about Carter and very little about postmodernism but I rather doubt that he is a postmodernist, though you're right, the terms he uses give me pause.

As to the first statement you quoted,

if I understand him correctly I think he is simply saying that liberal ideas have become predominant, at least as a paradigm, within the state and its dealings with society, and with the ends often pursued. The debate on public policy often has to made on liberal assumptions.

As to

I think it is arguable that the Founders sought to form a state that would be neutral in its growth, but they certainly did so based on a theory of the state which saw it as tending to grow and expand. You're probably right, it's a no-brainer.

I think you're correct to some, and perhaps a great, extent (and I confess a paucity of knowledge of the subject) but I do believe that many in the civil rights struggle, especially in the South where it was far more deadly serious than simply a "struggle", found strength in their faith.

Again, thank you for your willingness to engage the author's points. Though I have by and large greatly enjoyed my discussions on IIDB, there are all too often many who are quite content to simply poke their heads around a corner, shoot a couple of spitballs, to then simply run off laughing at how they gave "those theists" hell.

Kreiger, did you even read the article or simply look at the title, skim through a couple of paragraphs and reach your "conclusions" about the author?

Gene

[ April 08, 2002: Message edited by: fromtheright ]</p>

Seeker196

"If womens colleges are acceptable and mens are not,"

Why the heck are saying this?

I said that, in my view, single sex colleges are an example of something anti-diversity.

Co-ed colleges are environments of diversity.

Single sex colleges are environments with less diversity.

I did not say women's single sex colleges are acceptable, and mens are not.

Please don't put words in my mouth.

Only part of the authors point is that some kinds of diversity are 'acceptable' and others are not. But believes this is hypocritical, when it is only common sense.

Example: You have three nations. Two are racially and socially diverse. One is a 'racially pure' dictatorship.

Now having the dictatorship certainly makes the group of nations more diverse, but not in a positive way.

Now imagine the three nations are three colleges. 2 are sexually and ethnically diverse, 1 is 90% Straight White Christian Males.

Yes, in a certain sense having the exclusionary college makes the group more 'diverse' but not in any positive sense.

fromtheright

Because you suggested that the diversity of having men's colleges was "the product of a xenophobic, patriarchal society of privelege that wants to isolate groups from each other because of an anti-cosmopolitan agenda." If I mistook what you were stating, please let me know. I don't think I have put the first word in your mouth, though. If you meant "xenophobic" and "patriarchal" as acceptable, then my apologies. If you meant that single sex women's and men's colleges are both evidence of xenophobia and patriarchy, then I disagree with you but have also misunderstood you and apologize for same.

I'm not sure in your analogy of nations and colleges what the two equate to, I'm guessing the one is supposed to be analogous to a men's only college. Correct?

By diversity I, and I think that Carter, meant a diversity of choices which includes the option for both men's and women's single-sex colleges.

[ April 08, 2002: Message edited by: fromtheright ]</p>

Toto

I think we have to treat this article seriously, because the author is a professor at a secular institution (Yale Law School), holding down an endowed chair (by <a href="http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0771876.html" target="_blank">William Nelson Cromwell</a>), with access to the media and business elite. (See his bio <a href="http://www.yale.edu/yale300/democracy/media/apr10.htm" target="_blank">here</a>: "A recent review in the New York Times referred to Professor Carter as one of the nation's leading public intellectuals, and he was selected by Time magazine as one of fifty leaders of the next century." He is an African-American, an affirmative action baby (to quote the title of one of his own books) and he and his family "attend one of the oldest predominantly black Episcopal churches in the country." He is well-educated, wealthy, and influential, and can claim the high moral ground of coming up from discrimination.

He is not someone you can dismiss lightly, but I do not necessarily hold a much higher opinion of his piece than Krieger.

He has learned to play the game of secular rationality extremely well, but he does not accept its premises. He is happy to live in a society that has all of the benefits of the enlightenment - the science and medicine that resulted when scientists were freed from religious orthodoxy, the comfort of a society without thought police - but he wants to use American political freedom to put a straightjacket on his own kids' minds. He does not want them to think rationally about ethics or anything else that challenges his religious beliefs. He wants to use American political freedom to organize with fellow believers and impose his view of reality on the rest of us.

He is like a creationist with a PhD in biology, who is still holding on to the hope that new scientific evidence will confirm the literal truth of the Bible, and who uses post-modern obfuscation to sound civilized.

An article from the Atlantic Monthly in October 2000 discussed the convergence between fundamentalist "scholarship" and the post-modernism and anti-rationality that has polluted the modern university (no longer free but you can buy it
<a href="http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/theatlantic/" target="_blank">here</a> or look up "The Opening of the Evangelical Mind" in The Atlantic Monthly, Oct 2000, by Alan Wolfe, at your local library.) Professor Carter appears to be a prime example.

Seeker196

"xenophobia and patriarchy"

The one, single sex women's colleges, can be xenophobic (and patriarchal if run by, say, nuns), and the other, single sexed men's colleges, can be patriarchal( and xenophobic).

That is what I meant.

I thought my analogy was pretty obvious, I just don't expect you to agree with it.

In my analogy, the men's only christian college adds 'diversity' to the community of colleges the same way a racist dictatorship adds 'diversity' to the community of nations. It indeed adds diversity of type, but not, in my opinion, a positive or beneficial type of diversity.

Liberals are interested in diversity of opinion and belief...that does not mean we are in favour of people acting upon all beliefs and opinions!

Understand it better?

BTW, I want it understood that my position is merely this: Single-sex colleges are anti-diversity, in the popularly accepted meaning of the word diversity as something positive.

I DO NOT believe they are should be illegal, or that the private version of them violates anyones rights, even the private 'Christian' versions.

People have a right to go to single sex'confessional' schools if they wish and if they pay for them out of their own pockets entirely, just don't tell me that such schools are an example of diversity and that liberals are hypocritical for disagreeing with this.

fromtheright

Seeker,

It wasn't as obvious before, but thank you for the clarification. You're right, I don't agree, but I do understand your position better.

Also, I appreciate Toto's mention of the Atlantic Monthly article and I'll try to remember to look it up, it sounds interesting.

Heleilu

BTW, I am attending a women's college, and I'd rather not attend a co-ed school.

fromtheright

Heleilu,

The patriarchal or xenophobic kind?

[ April 11, 2002: Message edited by: fromtheright ]</p>

lpetrich

A separate question, and I hope that you have no objection to it. I wonder where "Takaliapa, KR" is -- the name does not look like a typical Korean place-name.