Marc – I was expecting/hoping someone would ask that question.
But first, I think it’s obvious why younger people subscribe to liberal / progressive / socialist ideology: it represents a continuation of the only reality they’ve ever known, which is for someone else to be responsible for them and their wants / needs / desires. Ultimately, cradle-to-grave support is the (false) promise of socialism and “social justice” programs ostensibly aimed at ‘victim’ groups. Since that’s what almost all young people already enjoy – especially while in college – it’s no wonder that the ideology appeals to them.
I believe that it’s for precisely this reason we see ‘progressive’ efforts to lower the voting age or get out the young vote: they are predisposed – through worldly ignorance, lack of experience and nonexistent reasoning skills – to blindly support an ideology that represents a continuation of the only thing they understand. This is reinforced, of course, by things like handing out condoms instead of emphasizing personal responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions, eliminating grades, not holding teachers accountable for classroom outcomes, making most school activities a “group-grope” where everyone in the group takes credit for the work done by the few willing to do it, as the teacher lays off as a “guide on the side” watching students wander aimlessly, etc., etc.
Same deal with Academics – adult adolescents whose positions and futures are guaranteed through tenure, making them wholly unaccountable for their actions and/or their performance as teachers. We see the result of that in cases like this one.
What to do? Call ‘em on it whenever one sees it, I guess. This is of course going to be mostly limited to people either actively pursuing an education (or whose children are doing so), those working in academia and those associated with same. My wife is pursuing a doctorate and all three schools she’s attended to date have been riddled with this kind of problem. Education takes a back seat to ideological indoctrination, “sustainability” programs, so-called “diversity”, Bush-bashing, feminaziism, and other popular progressive pastimes.
Perhaps we need an online clearing house (somewhat similar to F.I.R.E.) where even the most seemingly innocent examples of this silliness are exposed. I don’t know.
