I am politically very liberal/progressive, but I agree with most of what David Smith has to say about the liberal bias on campus. One minor quibble: Michael Moore did cite some political poll statistics to support his claims of a liberal majority in America.

Reading the list of conservative positions in David's letter got me to thinking: there should be organized debate on these general issues as well as specific ones like Iraq or the Patriot Act.

Some questions the Pomona Student Union could open up for debate: What are the similarities and differences between corporations and governments? How democratic are corporations? How democratic should they be? What are the track records of capitalist methods of "serving the poor" (e.g. job creation) versus socialist methods (e.g. welfare)? Can there really be enough jobs for everyone? Should corporations be regulated to prevent them from over-exploiting workers and the environment? What would the world be like if corporations were unambiguously more powerful than governments?

I think students from opposing sides of these issues generally find it difficult to discuss them, perhaps because they don't want to get into heated arguments, or because they see the other side as irrationally bound to a flawed worldview. I think that until we can tackle these basic issues, liberal students won't be able to claim open-mindedness about an alternate viewpoint many of us don't even understand.

Sincerely,

Ben Sibelman ’06