Tag: Hoover Institution

The story itself, although ugly, isn’t that important. But it offers a window into a reality few people, certainly in the news media, are willing to acknowledge: the bad faith that pervades conservative discourse. And yes, I do mean “conservative.” There are dishonest individuals of every political persuasion, but if you’re looking for systematic gaslighting, insistence that up is down and black is white, you’ll find it disproportionately on one side of the political spectrum. And the same kind of bad faith can be seen in other arenas — very much including college campuses. Which brings me back to the Stanford story. Not surprisingly, the invitation provoked student protests. It’s true that self-proclaimed conservatives are pretty scarce among U.S. historians. (There aren’t a lot of liberals in police departments — or, contra Trump, the F.B.I.) Alternatively, scientists may be reluctant to call themselves conservatives because in modern America being a conservative means aligning yourself with a faction that by and large rejects climate science and the theory of evolution. The people making these demands claim to want fairness.