Marxism = Intelligent Design

Bob Maranto, a professor at Villanova University wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post where he decried the supposed left-wing bias on the college campus and called for more balance. Yesterday, he did a discussion board where he answered questions, great questions!, and made some semi-shocking statements.

Over the course of the Q&A Professor Maranto reveals that he is perfectly fine with academics having political view points, he just thinks that they should be very close to his own, or they become "fringe." Maranto says he is a middle-of-the-road type guy. "I'm pretty middle of the road...I've seen liberals get some things right (Clinton's tax increases) and conservatives get some things right (Reagan's foreign policy, welfare reform)..." He does argue, however, that the right has been right a bit more often than the left. He also seem to think that certain middle-of-the-road view points have been so well established that differing with them makes one a dreaded ideologue. To one questioner who dared to assert that there are more liberals in higher ed because liberalism equals intelligence, he fired back:

I think your answer may indicate a certain arrogance, and isolation from the real world. If the left is always right and the right always wrong, then you have to think that planned economies work better (the economic equivalent of intelligent design), that school standards and school choice are bad ideas (even though the data indicate they bring improvements), that NYPD's crime fighting strategy has failed, the Reagan foreign policy had nothing to do with the fall of communism, etc.

I think the real world events of the past three decades show that liberals are right about some things (global warming, Clintononics), but that on the whole the conservatives have done bit better. Notice I'm not mentioning our more recent foreign policy adventures which, though Hillary signed on, have mostly come from GWB and the normally sensible Tony Blair.

Reading Maranto, you always end up back at the conclusion that either you agree with him, conservatives are "better" on foreign policy, crime, and schools, or you are not being reasonable or realistic. Not that he minds Democrats. He has no problem with them, as long as they are certain types of Democrats. "I think reasonable people can read the data to support either John McCain or Hillary Clinton, so it seems odd to find either unacceptable at universities."

Anyone who falls out of the McCain-Hillary spectrum is an ideologue. Maranto has a particular distaste for the Marxists. He fails to grasp how anyone could still be a Marxist.

I must say I myself have students read some Marx in public policy. He did get some things right, and in any event set forth some interesting theories (as do the Intelligent Design types) that seemed logical even though they were later found wanting (again like Intel Design).

But I think overall Marxism has not fared well in the real world. I find it troubling when certain disciplines see Marxism as a guiding light, as if the 80 million or so deaths (See Courtois et al Black Book of Communism, published by Harvard in 2000) and general collapse of planned economies never happened!

While he doesn't say so explicitly, it seems clear from the way he writes that anyone to the left of Clinton (choose your favorite) is a Marxist. And it is the Marxists who are destroying higher education.

In the end, it is clear that Maranto isn't really in favor of "balance" in higher ed so much as he is in favor of everyone being mainstream.