http://mcnaughtonart.com/artwork/view_zoom?artpiece_id=353
Earlier tonight I was shown this piece of art by ScruffyLizard, as she goes by in Xanga. This is an instance where I find myself highly respecting the artistic skills of the creator of this piece, even though I largely disagree with the messages he is communicating via such skill. In particular, one component of this painting illustrates a strong affiliation towards American conservative-brand anti-intellectualism the complete misunderstanding of how science and academia function. You may notice a window to the side of the main picture that will zoom in on a particular area and provide a detailed explanation of what the character there represents according to the artist's creation. On the middle-right side there is a person in glasses sitting on the top step holding a copy of Darwin's "The Origin of Species" denoted "The Professor." Here is the artist's intention in his own words:
He tightly holds his "Origin of Species" book by Charles Darwin. This represents the liberal lefts control of our educational system. His smug expression describes the attitude of many of the educational elite. There is no room for God in education. There is contempt for any other viewpoints. Humanism dominates the educational system of America and I believe that is wrong. Notice that he is the only one sitting on the top step. He tries to place himself on an equal footing with God, but he is nothing next to the intelligence of the Creator.
There is a genuine misunderstanding among the majority of the population of how academia actually functions and as someone who lives and works in the particular part that studies physics, please let me explain it from the inside. The purpose is very simple: to find truth of some part of nature, society, humanity, etc. Now, the word "truth" is thrown around way too much by people who have no intention of adhering to its meaning, but would rather espouse their own unfounded ideas and label them as "truth" because it serves some agenda. Contrarily, in academia truth itself is the agenda and the only agenda. This, of course, leads directly to the question "How do we distinguish a truth from a falsehood?" If our job is to determine whether or not an idea is true, then we certainly want to have some way of telling whether someone is making a valid point, if they made some mistake, or if they are proposing an idea that is simply incorrect. I am not going to turn this into a formal philosophy (epsitemology, to be precise) class--doing so is not necessary--but the basics are that the proposer of an idea must provide positive evidence supporting the claim, the reasoning of the idea must be logically sound ("logic" here is used in the formal sense of logic being a rigorous field of study, closely related to mathematics, not your personal "common sense" or some other such vague thing), and internally consistent (does not contain self-contradictions). Everything proposed in academia is assumed to be false by default, and only accepted after painstaking scrutiny shows the claim to have some veracity. The work is long and difficult because we do not accept delusion, we do not accept or tolerate the prospect of labeling a falsehood as true; that would be the antithesis of our mission. If you propose an idea and can adequately justify it, your idea will be accepted. That is how our system works.
The problem is that this system is anethema to those who would dogmatically adhere to an unjustfied--or unjustifiable--idea and still wish their idea to be accepted as seriously as any that is fully accepted according to our norms. In American society, more often than not the social conservatives have a very difficult time accepting the possibility that some of their long-held idea are antiquated, obsolete, or blatently false. All of us working in academia must adhere to the framework I outlined above. There is no bias against conserative ideas; there is a bias only against false ideas. If, for whatever reason, you think that your idea is correct without any need for the usual justification process that we all have to go through, then you will not have credibility within academia. This is not directed toward conservative specifically, but rather they are the portion of our culture who happen to have the most problem accepting this and instead of trying to obtain proper justification for their ideas (or abandoning ideas that cannot be justified) they tend to whine loudly over their exclusion. I am here inform you--if you happen to be someone in this camp--that your idea was not rejected because of it's "conservative" label, it was rejected because you have not provided any convincing justification supporting it. 'More loud' does not make you any 'more right.' Every single one of us working in academia have to encounter the circumstance of being wrong sometimes and accepting it. In graduate school, this is often a daily occurance.
IN SHORT:
Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, and this is certainly true in academia. However, everybody having the equal right to have their opinions considered does not mean that all opinions are of equal value and there is an associated responsibility to putting forth a point of view. You must justify your assertions. Ideas are not true just because you say they are; they are not true just because you want them to be. You must show positive evidence, sound reasoning, and internal consistency. If you put forth an idea with no supporting evidence then you must expect that your idea will be rejected, especially if there exists other evidence contradicting it. This has absolutely nothing to do with conservative vs. liberal--unjustified liberal propositions are just as quickly rejected--this is a problem of not retaining the emotional capacity and ego awareness to simply accept that a personally held idea is wrong when shown to be wrong.
If you define yourself as conservative and hold to ideas that are devoid of reality, don't be surprised if reality itself seems to take on a liberal bent by comparison, because the sole objective of academia to determine the truth of some piece of reality.