I am shocked, absolutely shocked, to discover that college faculties are overwhelmingly liberal, according to an overwhelmingly conservative study. How can it be that people who devote their lives to studying and teaching would also conspire to exclude that vast collective of conservative scholars?

To become a college professor, you must be prepared to work for years without profit. Sure, professors earn big bucks in the end (I almost made $20K before my pay was cut 3 times in 2 years), but they spend years studying and living off loans and grants. Here’s a free life-altering tip: if you want to get rich, quick or otherwise, don’t become a teacher.

Hmmm. Could there be a connection? Could it be that liberals don’t drive conservatives away from academia, but that corporations draw conservatives away instead? Could it be that someone who pursues personal profit has less interest in pursuing knowledge for its own sake? Should we conduct a survey of CEOs earning more than $10 million per year? Will we be shocked by the results?

Oh, so many ironies. Soon conservatives will be demanding quotas — 51% of your faculty must be conservative — while denying them for any other disadvantaged classes. Soon conservatives will be making the same argument Chairman Mao made, that intellectuals need to toil in the fields to understand the working class — close the universities, they do us no good!

Oh, those Rightwing Whiners, those Radical Handwringers. While we enjoy a good laugh over this nearly self-mocking “problem,” please note the deadly serious undercurrent. This is the fascist end-game, to root out the evil of liberalism wherever they find it. Having conquered commerce and the government, the Radical Right turns to the last small haven for people who think differently. These are the most dangerous liberals who, just like gays, seek to convert children from the one true way. From the womb to no-end-to-life-support, Our Leaders will decide what’s OK to teach, to think, and to say. Your kind can retreat to Manhattan and San Francisco, but liberals will no longer be allowed to gather in groups where they constitute more than 49% of the mob. Majority Rules! Minority Vanishes!

By the way, that same survey had a couple of other tidbits. First, women are grossly underrepresented. So, I question the true liberalism of campuses that can’t correct such a long-standing problem. Second, while just 15% surveyed called themselves conservative, only 11% called themselves Republican. Nearly one in three well-educated conservatives refuses to vote Republican. mjh

This issue flared up locally last year.