Hating Education, Conservatively

FIFTY EIGHT PERCENT OF REPUBLICANS say on surveys that they believe colleges and universities have a negative impact on American society. This is a verifiable fact. The other forty two percent either don't care, do not understand the question, or were not aware of the existence of colleges and universities. Seventy two percent of democrats say that universities have a positive impact. The other twenty eight percent are possibly referring to the immense burden of student loan debt accrued by many graduates. According to most republicans, education is bad for us. Their complaint, of course, is that they see institutions of higher education as bastions of liberalism, where such things as evolution by natural selection are taught instead of creationism, where Karl Marx is mentioned, and where professors of economics regularly offer proof that neo liberal supply side economics has a negative impact on society, and proof that the United States has a violent and sordid history. It is an observable fact that university campuses, particularly elite institutions like Harvard, Berkeley, Princeton, and M.I.T., are predominately inhabited by left leaning scholars, both professors and students. This has long been true. This raises the question: why? Why are universities not primarily the home of evangelical conservatives, or just plain political conservatives? One theory is that universities are places where highly intelligent well educated people tend to gather together, and such people tend to be progressive, tend to be the sort who recognize the need for change in human society, rather than defending the status quo, tradition, or cherishing the culture of bygones days, the sort of people who want to "make America great again", by turning back the clock. Conservatives have long been opposed to the public school system, because it fails to reflect conservative values such as unmitigated competition, blind patriotism and christian dogma, and tend to inculcate an attitude of cooperative endeavor among children. Heaven forbid that we should assign the title of "winner" to all who participate and compete, even those who do not dominate and win first place. Using every trick in the book, including reducing property taxes, promoting private school vouchers, and so forth, American conservative are seeking to undermine public education, and are openly contemptuous of higher education, with the exception of bible colleges where the bible is taught as the inviolate word of god and the American constitution is taught as a sacred document, and American history is taught exclusively as the manifestation of a shining city on a hill. Evangelical Christianity, belief in the perfection of the bible, and right wing nationalistic pandering patriotism, which ignores America's many and blatantly tragic evils, go hand in hand, and since good universities, and good junior colleges prefer telling the truth about human origins and the limited value of supposedly sacred books, and the truth about America's tragic past and present, they quite naturally have no place in the value system of evangelical conservatives, who are congregated in the republican party, the party which has only contempt for education, truth, and compassion.