Conservative Intellectuals

i love a good oxymoron in the morning(ish).

the AP is reporting that a stanford professor is suing conservative scare-monger david horowitz for calling him a terrorist.

you know what's funny about this? it perfectly encapsulates the fact that conservatives still can't get over how they seem to be shut out of the academy. they still can't get over how main stream publishing labels are skeptical about printing their unresearched, fantastical screeds, wailings that are based on nothing more than a schematic of homophobia, xenophobia, and misogyny. so what do they do? they gather together to form a peer network, to form publishing houses that don't care about truth, accuracy, and balance. then they edit, review, and publish eachother's works in this vacuum of out and out mediocrity, so that they only talk back and forth to eachother and reinforce what the other is saying.

this of course does not generate new ideas. knowledge is not being created here. that's not the point. this discourse creates a discipline, a body of dialogue that is much more about community than about seeking truth. the point is to say the same thing, over and over, because it's comforting and self-affirming.

it's also pathetic.

a good disciplinary field is one where the dialogue and critique found in a peer network pushes people to create knowledge, to formulate new ideas, and continually renew a search for truth.

man these bitches are annoying.