It is now a conventional complaint on the Right that university faculties are dominated by liberals.
It's true.
A Washington Post story reported on a study that said: "72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative ... The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative."
Naturally, Right-wingers claim this is a vast left-wing conspiracy.
There's a more logical conclusion. A university faculty is home to people whose profession is thinking. To survey such a population is a valid way to select for people who think, as opposed to a random sample of the general population.
From that point of view, we see that among people who think, 72% are liberal and 15% conservative. Among elite thinkers, the portion of liberals goes up 87%.
Thinking leads to liberalism. Think about it.
The theory of "The Surge" is that by putting a lot of troops in Baghdad, we can stabilize Baghdad and then everything will become hunky-dory.
NPR reported this morning on a military operation in Iraq's Diyala Province.
US troops were removed from Diyala to be part of "The Surge" in Baghdad. The insurgents then moved out of Baghdad and went to Diyala, which is immediately to the northeast.
Now the troops have been taken from "The Surge" to go to Diyala.
Who could ever have predicted that?
The Commander in Chief (who doesn't want other people to micro-manage the war he's already lost)? The Joint Chiefs of Staff? General Petraeus, the new commander? After all, he has two oxymorons in his resume, he's the Army's counter-insurgency expert, and, (according to Washington Post) he "gained fame for his early success in training Iraqi troops."
Apparently not. But Billy Joel could've. "We held the day in the palm of our hand. They ruled the night ... We held the coastline, they held the highlands ... and we would all go down together."
That's from Goodnight, Saigon.
Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian, and Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin. All available at nationbooks.org