Good clarifier

Nate Silver, the meta-pollster, writes a great clarifier on the current positions, and the current trends, of political labels. He does an especially good job describing the Woke category.

Here he gets close to a major fact about universities but doesn’t see it or doesn’t say it:

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Social Justice Liberalism, with its academic roots, often makes appeals to authority and expertise as opposed to entrusting individuals to make their own decisions and take their own risks. This is a complicated axis of conflict because there are certainly technocratic strains of liberalism, whereas like Hayek I tend to see experts and central planners as error-prone and instead prefer more decentralized mechanisms (e.g. markets, votes, revealed preferences) for making decisions.

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The notion that universities are havens of free speech is a bizarre delusion with NO historical backing. Universities have ALWAYS been havens of PERSONAL authority and PERSONAL power.

They started from two roots: skill training for guilds and culture training for young aristocrats.

For many years American colleges pretended to continue the skill training, but they never did a good job in that area. Apprenticeships and trade schools perform that function admirably. Now the aristocratic cultivation side is fully exposed, and we should treat it as such.

Real debate only happens in situations where it will contribute to solving a problem, like a farm or a family or a factory.

OCKHAM! The current super-contradictory battle over free speech proves that free speech is a NULL QUESTION. Universities don’t solve problems, so there’s no reason for real debate. Universities only certify nobility.