[Superman]

Touche', Bryan. To some degree. I'll leave it at that. Touche'.

rrpjr, same. I agree that students should leave college with expanded minds. But I'm not sure this is what you'd get by indoctrinating them into your system of morality and patriotism (I'm taking this from your last paragraph). Instead, they leave college with such expanded minds that they have probably more questions than when they started, and they find certain answers disburbing. I don't think this indicates a closed mind. And I certainly don't think that inculcating them with a sense of security and contentment is either honest, or "free."

I am a liberal (you may have sensed this already), and an optimist. And a Christian. Go figure. I am deeply disturbed by much of what I see going on in my country, but to meet me you'd think I just heard a dozen funny jokes. I giggle all day. So, I don't think it's particularly honest to demonize liberals as being pessimists. Nor is it appropriate to throw stones at an education system because it fails to indoctrinate students into your way of thinking (blind patriotism, acceptance of a specific set of "morals").

Quite frankly, I think the indoctrination you are wishing for is indeed necessary to pertetuate some of the evils that our American society treats as holy grail. So, call me a pessimistic liberal if you must. I think many of the holy grail ideas in this society simply do not stand up to the intense scrutiny they are going to get in college campuses. Which explains why those places are liberal. It also explains why news organizations are liberal. It also explains why the rest of the developed countries of the world are liberal. It also explains why conservatives place such a premium on ignorance. Now, somebody'd going to call me a name for that, but look at what you guys are saying. You are saying that Bubba with his pickup truck and hunting dog understand the world better than Dr. Nelson, anthropology professor at XYZ University for the past thirty years. Your beliefs require a certain amount of ostrich behavior. Square-on competition between liberal thought and conservative thought does not go well for the person defending the conservative position. This can be repeated and is repeated daily on college campuses around the world. If Bubba hung out on university campuses for long enough, he'd pick up on this stuff too. Your party just has to hope this does not happen on a grand scale. Which is why education takes a back seat to both military, and commercial goals.