Comment by arkey

4 days ago

I agree with this and that's why I think social media, mass media and so on exist.

However I'm curious as to why you attribute or limit this to 'conservatives' only. Is this really something exclusive or characteristic of the conservative side? At least where I am from it's the left that's more interventionist in regards to education rather than the right, that interventionism being used to make education more rigid and controlled by a biased government.

And the media is definitely not consolidated, you've got clearly two sides competing at a pretty equal level.

Establishing standards for education and defunding public schools to siphon the funds to churches are not the same thing. Conservatives have been attacking and defunding educational standards and attacking the educated and the concept of education - hence the repeated claims of "liberal bias", the artificial cultural war against university, etc.

And two sides at equal levels? Are you living in 1979? Local media is nearly all Sinclair. All the cable networks are owned by conservatives. Even traditionally liberal newspapers like the Washington Post are owned by rich assholes taking over the editorial board. And social media in the US is now dominated by two literal fascists.

  • My apologies for not being from (or exclusively referring to) the US of A.

    From where I'm from I'd say yes, both sides at equal levels more or less, fairly favoured toward the left, but now changing a wee bit because the left went waaaaay too left.

    Europe would now seem to be shifting towards the right at some levels, but from historically (recently at least) being fairly leftist.

    Anyway, aren't CNN, MSNBC, The Guardian... overtly left-leaning?

    • >Anyway, aren't CNN, MSNBC, The Guardian... overtly left-leaning

      For CNN and MSNBC, no. Neither was every truly liberal in the global sense (like the Democratic Party, closer to centrist than anything else) and both have started drifting rightward in the last 4 years such that they're now roughly "American Centrist" with a slight left lean i.e. conservative in most of the rest of the world.

At least where I’m from, the majority of homeschooled children are in conservative Christian (or Mormon) families, with a minority (but still notable) in super-left-wing hippy families. Very, very few in non-extreme families.

  • And that actually makes sense from a strictly logical point of view. The extremes are the ones who precisely don't want to conform to the status quo imposed by the alleged controlling higher powers.

    As purely anecdotical data, where I'm from it's actually the opposite, majority hippies, vegan, alternative/free education advocates, etc, and a minority of mostly morally-concerned non-left-leaning (mainly religious) people, as well as specific cases of children with special needs that simply can't adapt to public education because of external reasons (bullies).

    As a matter of fact, the hardcore religious right in my country have their own private education institutions, which are quite powerful themselves.

    So even the (non-catholic) Christians who homeschool because of religious and moral convictions end up being moderate/center people trying to move away from both extremes.