Strangely enough, I have the ninth edition of American Pageant on my shelf, one I rather like. I never noticed the bits about Carter and Reagan, mainly because my classes in American history never made it much past WWII, which I suppose is a good thing, considering.

Actually, such resources are valuable, just because you can tell a lot about the biases of a person by the adjectives. A historian who cannot tell an engrossing story without major resort to adjectives has failed— and it's not an easy task, either. As an exercise, strip every one of the adjectives out of a piece of writing and see what happens. Heck, play Mad Libs to put new ones in. It tells you a lot... much like my American History teacher's description of Custer's Last Stand from different viewpoints. (i.e. the heroic Custer vs. the idiot Custer.)

I'm all for letting some air and light into the intellectual closed shops of our institutions of public education.

Funny thing, though, I don't remember conservatives making a fuss about the leftist takeover of the schools back in the '80s and early '90s when it was happening. They were too busy making money and consuming to be bothered. And it's no use claiming that the turning of the educational system into indoctrination centers wasn't visible at the time, because I was aware of it, and I was not employed in academia.

Those who decry the intellectual decadence of the system now are right, but let this be a lesson for the future. Prevention is a hell of a lot easier than cure.

"Funny thing, though, I don't remember conservatives making a fuss about the leftist takeover of the schools back in the '80s and early '90s when it was happening. They were too busy making money and consuming to be bothered."

Etc. Well. I don't know what world you were living in, but in my world the conservatives have been complaining about the leftists and liberals taking over the schools -- and the arts and every other damn thing -- ever since the 60s. The thing is, all they got is the same sneers thrown back at them that you just threw: "all you care about is money," as well as being accused of what they are still accused of today -- of wanting to turn the US into a Christian Theocracy where women will be forced to slave barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen (remember The Handmaid's Tale?) and gays will be burned at the stake. In the meantime, women and gays and leftists and liberals were making money hand over fist just like everyone else supposedly was.

How do I know all this is true? I was slinging insults and sneering at conservatives with all the rest of the trendies. "Preppies," "Sloan Rangers," "Right-to-Lifers," "Reaganites," "Tammy Faye Baker fans" -- none of these of these were allowed in my selfish, alternative-rock little world. So please, try some other cliché.

Peace, Andrea. We're on the same team.

Yes, I don't doubt that there were individual conservatives who saw what was happening in the education establishment back in the day and were upset by it. I don't remember any organized resistance, but it could be I have forgotten or wasn't aware of it at the time.

Nevertheless, I can remember being appalled as I learned of the campuses becoming ever more dominated by collectivists, America-bashers, postmodernists, and specialists in various pseudo-academic disciplines like gender studies and black studies. And I was equally appalled by the lack of interest in the situation shown by country club Republicans and economic conservatives who couldn't have cared less about the schools becoming indoctrination centers, as long as the stock market was going up and free trade looked to be in good shape.

So I'm sorry, but I do think that too many conservatives dropped the ball on this one. My point was that it's dangerous to get too focused on individual pet issues. The bell tolls for thee.

Strange, but I've been a liberal all my life...I've also served in the military for 20 yrs, because I love my country and saw honor in protecting and serving...And I was far from the only one! Indeed, the first half of my time in the service (early 70s-early 80s), most of those I served with would have fallen into a "liberal" definition by political and social views (in fact, we had several gay servicemen in one of my units for several years; no one thought it was any big deal).
By comparison, you can have a real hard time finding people amongst today's conservative leadership who spent time in the military.

Let me ask you - are you racist? Are you a Nazi supporter? I mean, if ALL liberals are unAmerican, we all hate America...Well, does that mean ALL conservatives are racists or Nazi-supporters? I mean, racists, white-supremecists, neoNazi types, all associate themselves to conservatism, so aren't I justified to associate the values of any one group to all of you? After all, its what you seem to do a lot here when you talk about "liberals"!