I Respond, Uninvited, To A Letter in the New York Times

From yesterday's Letters:

To the Editor:

Paul Krugman ("An Academic Question," column, April 5) is correct that the lack of conservative faculty members in college is caused not through bias but by deficiencies in conservative ideology.

From the laissez-faire, anti-unionism of late-19th-century Republicans to the melding of those trends in today's neoconservative movement, the result of conservative ideology has almost always been deleterious for the majority of Americans.

Academics look at evidence and come to conclusions. Today's conservatives start with a conclusion and then try to find anything to support that conclusion to the exclusion of all contrary evidence. Their arguments tend to fall apart under the lightest scrutiny.

It is no wonder that the vast majority of well-educated academics are "liberal."

Brandon Bittner
Royersford, Pa., April 6, 2005

My response:

Dear Brandon:

After carefully weighing all the available evidence, I have reached the following conclusion:

Go suck an egg...

Mark Coffey

I'm confident my argument won't fall apart under even the closest scrutiny (hat tip to Donald Luskin)...