A new university president?

Just stop

The whole reason you’re so upset about this is the guy the BOG rejected was an off-the-charts woke leftist. Claiming that politics should not be a factor in a hiring decision of this magnitude is somewhere between virtue signaling and sticking your head in a hole in the ground.

Let it go

 

I appreciated very much the way President Sasse handled the gross behaviors on campus protesting the conflict in Gaza. He asserted the pre-existing, widely-accepted and agreed-upon rules and reminded everyone who attended or worked for UF that these rules would be enforced to the betterment of all on campus. He was public and candid in explaining his reasons for doing so.

I think his underlying point was what you said you want in a university president; keep the main thing about a university the main thing.

Anyone even mildly to the right of dead center in the US is accustomed to being made to feel like a barbarian by the voices of opposition. The reason the root word of “progressive” is so difficult to argue against is because “only a moron would be against progress” so anyone wishing to “conserve” a flawed condition must be a moron. Sasse didn’t accept that the way things had been or were was inherently and fundamentally flawed and in fact had features of merit and beauty. IMO he sought to increase the good that the present structure was able to produce.

I think his support of the Hamilton Institute and UFLI showed a commitment to fundamentals of education as crucial to success in more complex fields. I think that shows his ‘liberality’ in spite of the grousing of the entrenched faculty, many of whom never were able to overcome their inherent bias because of the simple letter after his name when he stood in politics. Talk about “close-minded.”

There: I’ve said my peace. I’d like a UF President that seeks to create a place where a man like me could say just that and not feel the opprobrium of the faculty or fellow students merely for doing so. I’d demand the same for the person who speaks against me in fair discourse, not hectoring, shouting or threats of direct action.

Is that so hard?

 

Bravo Ranger!

And nice use of the word opprobrium. You sent me to the dictionary again

 

I doubt I’ll change any minds but maybe prompt some consideration. I know there is another point of view in opposition, fairly held. Let’s talk about it. I bet there’s more on which most of us agree than disagree.

 

It would be nice for sure - but I’ve never seen this country more polarized in my lifetime. The hate, hostility, destruction, and vengeance being unleashed from the peace, love, and tolerance side is just mind-boggling. I laugh out loud at those “coexist” bumper stickers

 

That is because the rest of the slogan made it too long to fit on a bumper sticker: "coexist" with me the way I want things to be.

 

You need to study your nations history deeper. We have been a consistently divided peoples since the very beginning. We perceive majority opinions as presented by our history texts that are belied by the contemporaneous sources. Many, many things we believe to have been a consensus were not. Don’t let divisions you see discourage you. Get motivation to learn how we have overcome them time after time and gradually made “more perfect” this union of ours.

We’ll be OK. Believe that then make it so.

 

You’re obviously a great student of history and I respect what you say Ranger. To my point though, I’ve never seen us this divided in my 72-year life span

 

I cannot deny how it seems to you. I’d only ask you to look at our nation in 1968. That was as bad as I can ever remember it being in my 65 year span. And the divisions about whether we should be involved in the war in Europe in 1940-41 were very very deep. Japan did us the service of uniting an otherwise deeply conflicted nation.

 

I certainly can’t argue with that perspective

 

Your point about 1968 is well stated. That in my opinion was the giant irreversible turning point in our country. The Japanese may have united us back in 1941, but the Vietnam War forever destroyed the spirit of patriotism that had been fueling this country ever since WWII. For the first time, our own citizens hating and protesting against our government became fashionable. We’ve never been the same since.

 

I guess we can always take this discussion back to 1861 right?

 

Exactly. Or 1776. I often think to myself that, were my proclivities and biases the same in 1775 I would probably have been a Loyalist. I tend to prefer preservation of a thing and modifying it for betterment over its overthrow.

 

9/11 united us briefly, but to paraphrase MLK, we seem to have a very short attention span.

Unfortunately it’s looking more and more like the Chinese may be positioning themselves to unite us again in the near future. And not in a good way

 

I’m reading an excellent book that notes that a democracy such as ours historically must be prepared to receive the first blow from another aggressor. It’s been that way since 1783. A fair point. We have lost that sense of things since 1945, to our woe.

 

Im a longhair tie-dye wearing hippi that gets ostracized by all the hate coming from..... the peace living liberals that now choose violence and destruction if confronted with any ideology that doesnt lockstep agree with them. I guess i use to be more of a liberal forty years ago but this new generation lost what it meant.

 

I was a “yellow dog Democrat” until 2016. I actually voted for OBummer twice. But after his second term I spoke to all my family members who had departed and told them to please not roll over in their graves, but our Democratic Party has left us. like Skink, in my years, 80, BTW, I’ve never seen such division as we are experiencing now.

 

I doubt us nor the chinese want anything. Its just posturing to influence us.

 

Well, we figured out that our government isnt looking out for the common man. If you believe they are and it doesnt matter which side of the isle youre on, theres a good bit of delusion involved.

 

Recent events suggest China is doing a lot more than posturing