Post by Dean Ray Johnson ⚪ / Redsky

Dean Ray Johnson ⚪ • Feed

The answer: liberals don't mentor new talent because they assume that the universities are all liberal and do all of the work for them! Hello @vox.com do you guys like EGGS because I'm going to make sure that you GET SOME

There is no parallel culture in American liberalism — a function, in part, of liberalism’s longtime intellectual dominance. There wasn’t much of a need for liberal donors to create programs to cultivate liberal thought, as people interested could simply go get a PhD or an entry-level reporting job. However, these institutions were not avowedly liberal in character. They styled themselves as politically neutral, focused more on quality research and reporting, than as contributing to a particular ideological cause. This means that while liberals in such fields were in left-leaning environments, many were trained to see themselves primarily as professionals working a craft. So while there are plenty of internships available to young liberals, they’re mostly focused on professional training (or coffee-fetching) rather than staying up late swapping ideas with big names.

aug 21, 2025, 8:17 pm • 3 0

Replies

@michaelhobbes.bsky.social This is all your fault. Why haven't you been bridging the gap between principle and policy to train impressionable young liberals into an ideological cadre???

Liberalism has plenty of brilliant theorists who work at a largely abstract level, and policy wonks who work on the most applied issues. But in the middle area of ideology, one bridging the gap between principle and policy, they’ve basically ceded the field to conservatism. The pipeline problem for young people is a symptom of the movement’s blind spot: liberals, as a collective, don’t care to cultivate a youth ideological cadre.

aug 21, 2025, 8:20 pm • 0 0 • view