PS
T #10
"I don't think it's liberals being attracted to academia so much as its academia shaping people into liberals." T #10
This is a statistical analysis.
It's not a single monolith.
It's a population of individual decisions.
Therefore you are almost certainly correct
to some degree.
BUT !!
Among populations the question is not which of the two, but rather which of them prevails, which of them dominates.
If the mechanism you describe prevails, but in only 2% of cases, it barely rises to the level of a rounding error.
The issue is not what happens, but the prevailing trend.
"I think it's done through intimidation and indoctrination." T #10
I extremely doubt it.
That's the mode in the Soviet Union, Castro's Cuba, and North Korea.
And those each are places people risk their own lives to flee.
If it was intimidation the ostensible victims could simply flee; and report the conspiracy to great acclaim as the heroes of righteousness, the whistle-blowers of a vast conspiracy.
NOPE !!
Persuasion is the Ockham's Razor explanation.
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PLEASE do not infer more than I imply. I am absolutely NOT advocating communism / socialism here.
BUT !!
Do you deny the superficial appeal of the communist principle: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
COMMUNISM WORKS !! AND WORKS WELL !! in family sized groups, and small church groups.
It may even work in the U.S. military, a little.
But due to the tragedy of the commons, communism has never been demonstrated a viable model for nation-sized units.