Dishonesty in the University Funding Debate

So the debate over higher education funding rumbles on. Plenty of people are very unhappy about the idea that universities might charge higher fees to actually cover the cost of the tuition. Instead, these people argue, the government should increase its funding of universities leaving fees unchanged.

The whole debate is founded on something that those complaining will not tell you.

Consider. We live in a democracy meaning that, in theory, the government should only do what the majority want done. So those people arguing that the government should pay more to universities think that the majority of the country want to contribute towards the degrees of other people.

Now, supposing tuition fees go up. What stops those opposed to such an increase setting up a charity to collect the voluntary contributions from the majority of the country and paying the fees for the students? That's right, absolutely nothing.

I can only assume that they know what we all know which is that if the citizens of the country had a choice, not enough would willingly want to contribute enough money to subsidise the tuition fees. So they argue that the government should force those same citizens to hand over the cash. Nice people aren't they.

Evil and Retarded

Just one day after agreeing that:

"The right is convinced that the left is evil. The left is convinced that the right is retarded."

Michael Tomasky blogs about a right winger  under the headline:

"Lou Dobbs, evil idiot".

Evil or Retarded

Michael Tomasky agrees with an assessment by Shankar Vedantam that:

"The right is convinced that the left is evil. The left is convinced that the right is retarded."

I'm not sure what evidence this was based on. From the article it seems to be based on watching Glenn Beck, Fox News, Comedy Central and Bill Maher. But here are some results from Google Fight (highly recommended if you're bored):

Britain
"conservative party" evil	34,400
"labour party" evil	35,600
"conservative party" retarded	3,110
"labour party" evil	5,800
USA
Obama evil	3,790,000
Bush evil	3,130,000
Obama retarded	91,100
Bush retarded	87,900

Make of that what you will.

UPDATE: See here how Mr Tomasky manages to disprove himself the next day.