Duke: Let me qualify what I said a little further, as I don’t want to create an incorrect perception. When I was younger, it wasn’t uncommon for Stanford academics to routinely protest against the military (and the ROTC program) and the government. At the same time, Stanford was raking in millions for DoD projects, as well as participating with local companies, including Lockheed and Ford Aerospace, on military and defense research.
I don’t subscribe to the notion that liberals are inherently anti-military or anti-government. As I have opined previously, I don’t find the word “liberal” a pejorative. I do, however, object to the left-wing and far left-wing. As a strongly conservative person (politically speaking), I also object to the Ann Coulters and Rush Limbaughs of the world, as I feel they stifle debate and discourse to the same or greater extent as their left-wing counterparts.
My dad was an aerospace engineer for Ford Aerospace and he worked on the Milsat and Intelsat programs during the ’60s, 70’s and 80’s. Because of the nature of those programs, Ford, Lockheed and the other companies were hush-hush about the work, but also because of the potential for negative press as well. Defense work was perceived in many parts of the Bay Area, and especially the campuses of Cal and Berkeley, as being evil. There were a lot of holdouts from the counterculture movement of the 1960s, and there were very left leaning academics at both institutions who loved demonizing the “military/industrial complex” and the defense industries. I always felt Stanford especially was very hypocritical in their desire to appease both sides.
I don’t think we necessarily need more political parties, I think we need to return to reasoned discourse and dialogue and turn our brains back on. This sound bite universe we now occupy, in conjunction with the witless stupidity of Political Correctness, has effectively hamstrung any attempts to have a meaningful discussion on any topic of worth.
The example of that government employee who was fired for using the term “niggardly” (in it’s proper context, and to describe a miserly program) is a prime example.
