Quote Originally Posted by Husar View Post
That is at best tangential to what I said.
Let me repeat in my words:

Legs: Said that people fell for false promises and that is why they voted leave. It is implied that if they thought for themselves instead of following false promises, they would have voted remain.

IA: Said Legs only has contempt for the people he was talking about and that people on the left like Legs don't want these people to be educated.

Husar: Said that IA's post made no sense since Legs obviously implied that he would prefer them to be educated and think for themselves instead of following political propaganda.

PVC: Said that right-wing types are discouraged from academics.

Now let me explain why that is not a good point to make.

First of all, education does not necessarily require one to have an academic degree. My highschool put a lot of effort into teaching us critical thinking skills. And while this continues at the university, a lot of what I do there is memorize things. There is some critical thinking and analysis left, but a lot of exams are about taking two or three weeks to memorize models and the language of the trade and so on.

The second problem is, why does someone arrive at academics as a right-wing type? That somehow implies immovable object and a closed mind, not a good starting point to acquire knowledge, or is it? And the same would be true if someone arrived there as an antifa or similarly closed-minded leftists. In academia, at least in my experience, it is more a requirement to be open to new ideas than to come there and expect to find more evidence for one's existing views. If a right-winger comes there with these expectations, it is their own fault that they don't fit in, again, I would tell a left-winger the same.
One cannot go to a place of learning with all of one's views already nicely laid out and fixed in place and then expect there to be no friction.
Perhaps the most relevant political education that I've received was at sub-university level, namely distinguishing between different levels of evidence, weighing their usefulness, and plumping for the closest possible sources to the subject being considered. Anyone who has had to consider evidence in a substantial way will see this as just a basic requirement, common sense for anyone with half a brain. Yet in the Labour thread, I saw Corbyn supporters dismiss contrary opinions of his (in)competence as unacceptably biased, because they came from sources close to the subject. That's the circle of wrongness in post-truth politics that I talk about. Part of the scientific method requires that a concrete assertion must be made, that can be tested and verified independently, and that therefore there can be something to be tested against, and the possibly that it can be proved wrong. Post-truth politics closes the circle in on itself, so that all contrary evidence is by its nature to be dismissed. Nothing from the outside is admissible.