Whiny Crybabies

I know that James Lindgren disagrees with the study which suggests that conservatives were whiny crybabies as children, even if perhaps asserting statistical arguments which are no less dubious, but his blogging colleagues are doing him no favor with their endless whiny posts about how hard it is to be a conservative.

Oh, crikey.... Just when I was thinking Ilya Somin's posts were somewhat reasonable....

Some of those who claim that campus intolerance of conservatives and libertarians is not a significant problem argue that right of center students are themselves obnoxious, intolerant, and so forth. If there really is an overrepresentation of such people among outspoken campus right-wingers, this fact may itself be the result of PC intolerance. If speaking out in favor of un-PC viewpoints can lead to social ostracism, an obnoxious jerk is less likely to be deterred by this danger than a conservative who is generally nice and popular. After all, the jerk is probably already widely disliked, while his more popular counterpart has much more to lose from any PC backlash to his remarks.

A recent post on what to me seems like a childish grudge match leads to this:

Just wanted to drop you a line to tell you how much I enjoy your blog and also commend you for standing up to Brian Leiter. Without articulate spokesmen like yourself, upcoming conservatives wouldn't have a chance of survival in today's leftist-dominated universities. Good work.

You know, I just can't bring myself to feel sorry for tenured professors, most of whom were privileged enough to go to schools like Harvard and Yale, when they whine for decades afterward about how horribly oppressed they were in their college years. If they have a valid complaint, judging from the typical post on the subject, it seemingly should be that they managed to spend that much money on their bachelor's and graduate degrees at top colleges yet didn't develop better critical thinking skills.