What has conservatism given America?

[Bomb#20]

... If you meant Americans then you were talking about his "tribe" every bit as much as about mine.

Trust me. You have a tribe and it is not geographical.

... If you have something to say about my "tribe" that isn't about Tom's "tribe", which tribe is that? Something tells me you don't mean "Americans".

Pretty much.

Whom are you talking about? If you mean me, you need to go to a taxidermist.

I'm sorry that this confuses you. By the way;
<snip>

So let me get this straight. You trumped up a vicious groundless insinuation about me in post #161. When called on it you dissembled, in post #163. In post #174 you libeled me again three times -- you repeated your earlier insinuation, you as much as called me a liar, and you baselessly accused me of only criticizing one ideological side, in spite of the fact that you have been a participant in threads where I criticized the right. And when called on it again you admitted you dissembled, and you doubled down, insinuating yet again that a guy who called Trump an idiot is one of the "people who love red baseball caps". And you tell me "Trust me.". Does that about sum it up?

Sure, dude, I totally trust you. I trust you to go right on thinking exactly like every medieval Christian who couldn't expand his blinkered mind beyond his ingrained presumption that everybody who wasn't a member of his own little bigoted theocratic cult was automatically a Satan worshipper. You and the magaheads deserve each other. A plague on both your houses.

 

[Bomb#20]

You say that as though zero-sum-ness follows analytically from pure math. It doesn't work that way. Whether any given variety of discrimination is zero sum is an empirical question. Consider the obvious counterexample -- a lot of universities discriminate heavily in favor of the children of rich parents who make massive donations to the university in exchange for letting in their undeserving kids who couldn't make the grades to get in without a boost. The big donations enlarge their endowments, which makes it possible for the universities to hire more professors, build more classrooms, and admit more students. So nobody is losing out on an education because of that sort of discrimination; quite the reverse.

That is at least the theory. I would like to see some real world data, though. It's not zero-sum because it brings in extra money. Race doesn't.

That race doesn't bring in extra money is not obvious. Universities are no longer funded only by endowment dividends and tuition -- these days the federal government pays a substantial fraction of their revenue. If a perception that university education hardly ever benefits anyone but whites and Asians becomes widespread in society, then government willingness to go on subsidizing it may evaporate. Like I said, it's an empirical question.