January 14, 2004 by s.z.

Defeating the Forces of Liberalism Through Whining You remember that piece from last year that claimed that young conservatives were both a force to be reckoned with, and also really cool, because they watched "South Park"? Well, it seems that the author, one Brian C. Anderson, has expanded that thesis into a book by adding a colon and "The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias" to the old title.  Regnery is publishing it, and it will be out February 1, per Amazon (or in March, per the Wall Street Journal). To drum up interest in the tome, the WSJ has published this article by Mr. Anderson.  While it seems to be merely the article from last year about hip "South Park" watching young Righties, mixed together with some stuff about conservative students defeating the hippie administration (much like that piece by John T. Plecnik that we pointed you to a couple of days ago), if the WSJ thinks it's worthy of our consideration, then it must be.  So, let's take a look at it. Right on Campus Conservatives begin to infiltrate the left's last redoubt. BY BRIAN C. ANDERSON  Throughout 2003 and into 2004, a surge of protests roiled American campuses. You probably think the kids were agitating against war in Iraq, right? Nope.  I think the kids were protesting the new season of "The O.C.", Janet Jackson's breast, or something equally stupid -- because otherwise this piece wouldn't be appearing on the WSJ's opinion page.  Well, no. No?  Color me totally shocked! Students at UCLA, Michigan and many other schools were sponsoring bake sales to protest . . . affirmative action. For white students and faculty, a cookie cost (depending on the school) $1; blacks and Hispanics could buy one for a lot less. And legacies could buy one for a dime!  Oh, and Richard Mellon Scaife bought a whole crate of them in order to get the cookies on the best seller list, and then gave them to conservative students for free.  so, all in all, it was a great learning experience. Parents, critics note, spend fortunes to send their kids to top colleges, and then watch helplessly as the schools cram them with a diet of politically correct leftism often wholly opposed to mom and dad's own values. Because if parents are paying good money for their kids to be educated, then the kids damn well better come out of college not just with a diploma, but also with their parents'  values held firmly in their hearts.  That's what the free market is all about. But the left's long dominion over the university--the last place on earth that lefty power would break up, conservatives believed--is showing its first signs of weakening. The change isn't coming from the schools' faculty lounges and administrative offices, of course. It's coming from self-organizing right-of-center students and several innovative outside groups working to bypass the academy's elite gatekeepers. "Self-organizing" meaning "organized by conservative-funded groups," as we've seen previously.  College Republicans are thriving even on elite campuses. "We've doubled in size over the last few years, to more than 400 students," reports Evan Baehr, the square-jawed future pol heading the Princeton chapter. Let's consider square-jawed young Evan for a moment.  As we learn from a WSJ "College Journal" piece, he got internships at both The American Enterprise Institute and the Ethics and Public Policy Center -- you know, those big conservative think tanks -- and seems sure to have a career in his target field, public-policy consulting, handed to by some conservative group immediately following graduation.  But he thinks he's being oppressed (at least, per this profile in his local Nassau paper): Evan Baehr feels oppressed. This alleged marginalization has nothing to do with race; he’s white. Nor is it social; he is a member of Cottage Club and a KA brother. His parents are still married. He drives a white Cadillac SUV. He has blue eyes and dimples. A senior Wilson School major, he can’t even claim the dishonorable distinction of being a Woody Woo reject. So where does Evan Baehr get off saying he’s the object of discrimination? Well, as you might have heard, Baehr is a conservative. He believes in limited government, natural law, and the importance of traditional institutions such as the family and the church. He is against affirmative action and gay marriage; he is pro-life and in favor of defense spending. When he complains about prejudice, then, Baehr is referring to ideological discrimination. He thinks that his political views make him a minority in the liberal environment of academia. “As a conservative at Princeton, if all the professors speak the same language and the majority of students are nodding, even if you grew up with conservative beliefs, you start to think, ‘These people are smart, so they must be right,’” Baehr explained in a recent interview at Chancellor Green Café. Evan is being discriminated against and victimized because people have different opinons than he does, and that tends to make him think that the other people, being smart, may be right.  Oh, the humanity! Anyway, Evan is an example of the kind of young conservative who is fighting the liberals to a standstill, per Brian.  Let's meet some more of them: Jordana Starr, a right-of-center political science and philosophy major at Tufts, tartly adds that you can spot a student leftist pretty fast: "They're the ones who appear not to have seen a shower in some time, nor a laundromat." Take a bath, dirty hippy! Anyway, Here's the first part of one of Jordana's articles for the Tuft school paper: Stop the Presses! by Jordana Starr I am not gay. I do not have a special house or faculty member to go to when I face “acts of bias” against what I perceive to be discrimination based on my sexual identity. LGBT students, however, do. Any LGBT student, upon seeing the word “gay” written on her whiteboard, can go to the LGBT Center and cry on Dona Yarbrough’s shoulder about the injustices of humanity. Then, she can check her email and “hang out” on the second floor of the cheery Bolles House. Straight students do not have this luxury of a University-sanctioned support staff at their disposal. It seems that Jordana is a victim too.  I wonder if that's how these self-organizing young people are taking over the Left's last domain: by whining. But back to Brian's article about these indomitable conservative hipsters: The new-millennium campus conservative is comfortably at home in popular culture, as I've found interviewing 50 or so from across the country. A favorite TV show, for instance, is Comedy Central's breathtakingly vulgar cartoon "South Park." "Not only is it hilariously uncouth, but it also criticizes the hypocrisy of liberals," explains Washington University economics major Matt Arnold. "The funniest part is that most liberals watch the show but are so stupid that they're unaware they're being made fun of," he adds, uncharitably. The young conservatives, again like typical college kids, also play their iPods night and day, listening less to Bach and Beethoven than to alt-rock, country-and-western and hip-hop. Matt, of course, would be totally aware of it if "South Park" ever made fun of conservatives -- but it never does, which is why he enjoys it so much. But speaking of these young conservatives and their iPods, here's part of a piece about the illegal file sharing going on at Washington U, thanks to an illicit network ran on the university's computers by a network administrator nicknamed "Hal": "I have no idea who's running it this year," says Matt Arnold, a sophomore economics major and an active file sharer, adding that Hal's identity changes frequently. "They try to keep it quiet because they don't like it when people IM or e-mail them and ask them questions." Just because Hal doesn't reveal himself doesn't mean he's quiet. Last semester, users recall, he announced on the program's "welcome" message that the most commonly swapped files are porn. And sometimes Hal gets testy. One rule for swapping is that everyone has to offer a certain number of files to share with others. Sometimes students don't have enough music or movies to meet the quota. So they'll offer up what is, in Hal's estimation, junk. "A lot of people put their logged IM files on, and one time the administrator posted a couple's conversation about photographing themselves having sex," Arnold reports. So, when not enjoying the antics of "South Park," Matt is busy illegally sharing pirated copies of copyrighted movies, music, and (presumably) porn.  But at least he's not a whiner, just a wanker.  And a fine example of conservative values in action. But Brian presents many more fine, young conservatives, to include: Cornell classics major Sharon Ruth Stewart.  "We have to use any and all means to defend ourselves from the terrorists, who hate the American way of life even more than the French and Germans do," she says. Jordan Rodriguez, "a rugged-looking Evangelical Princeton undergrad, Deke pledge president and hyperachiever."  Jordan believes that abortion is "ethically abominable," and says that it should be regarded as "a form of homicide and prosecuted as such." Chapel Hill journalism major Debra McCown  She has it particularly bad, because at her school the liberal profs tend to "ram their political views down students' throats."  She tells about one incident that really got her goat: "I watched as a classmate, required to attend class in his military uniform, sat there silently as the professor ranted about how every member of the U.S. military is a 'baby killer' who enjoys violence--because what could he possibly say to a teacher who pronounced such things, with him sitting there in uniform?" Wow, a professor at UNC/Chapel Hill said that every single member of the U.S. military is a baby killer, even with a uniformed member of the military sitting in the class!  I'd find this hard to believe if I didn't know that Debra was paid by the conservative Collegiate Network (alumni include Rich Lowry, Dinesh D'Souza, and Ann Coulter) to intern at the Moonie Times -- and so has professional ethics that would prevent her from lying. Anyway, Brian covers a lot of other things too, like if conservatives are disadvantaged socially (that is, by the liberal establishment, not by nature or nurture).  Students I interviewed who attended Southern schools said that right-of-center kids were in the majority and set the tone. Harris Martin, a University of Georgia history major who estimates that over 60% of students there tilt right, says, "The culture is a distinctly Southern conservative one--hunting, football, big trucks and SUVs, camouflage, old baseball caps, fishing, country music and Southern rock." At Clemson in South Carolina, says poli-sci junior Andrew Davis, "the typical student is Republican," though most don't care much about politics. The more politically correct culture prevailing at other schools, especially the Ivies, can be a problem for conservative students. Several Princeton freshmen believed that being seen as a conservative would make it harder for them to get into one of the school's prestigious "bicker" eating clubs--key sources of social standing on a status-conscious campus, and the places to party. So, it sounds like conservative students can go to Southern schools, where they will be in the majority, or go to "elite" schools, where they might not get into the most prestigious drinking groups if their views are known.  Wow, I can see why they feel so downtrodden. Brian also gives us the obligatory Charlotte Simmons paragraph: Conservative students must also deal with the coed dorms and hookup sex, drink-till-you're-blitzed parties, and general civilizational chaos of life at many schools--vividly described by author Tom Wolfe in his new novel "I Am Charlotte Simmons"--that liberal educators abetted and encouraged when they rejected any in loco parentis duties decades ago and began to celebrate the idea of college being a time of "experimentation" and "growth." Yes, people, conservatives students are being forced (by liberal administrators) to attend parties where everyone gets wasted, and are required (by liberal professors) to engage in hookup sex.  I guess they really are being oppressed. Brian concludes: Conservatives still have a long, long way to go before they can proclaim the left's control over the campus broken. The professorate remains a solidly left-wing body, more likely to assign Barbara Ehrenreich than Milton Friedman, Michel Foucault than Michael Oakeshott, and nothing, not even David Horowitz's indefatigable activism, is going to change that soon. Nevertheless, thanks both to enterprising students and groups like [Intercollegiate Studies Institute] ISI and [Students for Academic Freedom] SAF, the left's iron hold on academe is beginning to loosen. Anyone who cares about the education of our children--and the future political discourse of our country--can only cheer. Yes, thanks to conservative groups, run by adults and funded by The Lynne And Harry Bradley Foundation, Richard Scaife, the Olin Foundation, and the Carthage Foundation, self-organizing conservative students are defeating liberalism on campus. 5:53:11 AM

Who Said It? Our gun-stockpiling, newslist-lurking Mystery Guest was indeed Dr. Professor Mike Adams, as Bill S. said.  While Dr. Mike sounds increasingly nutty with each of these "letters" he shares with us, I imagine that the guns have to suffer through a whole lot worse. (Mike: "Colt, that snotty lunchroom cashier looked at me funny today, undoubtedly because I'm a conservative.  But someday we'll make them all pay, won't we, Colt?  It's just you and me against the world!"  The Gun: "Mike, I think we should see other people.") Our bonus Mystery Guest (the one who hates the word "neocon," is the self-proclaimed leader of "the new media, and who thinks Iran-Contra was "fabulous" was Rush Limbaugh.  (Hey, the "fabulous" should have given it away).  Jpe was the first to call it. Now, who said this? President Bush has an impressive record of appointing "strict constructionists" to the courts, and he has pledged to continue that policy. We will hold him to his word, but I am convinced he will keep it. If not, or if Democrats in the Senate try again to usurp the President’s constitutional authority by filibustering and preventing up or down votes on his nominees, there will be a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea. The streets will run red with the blood of the infidels if they try to oppose us! Oh, and he also said this, about those who want to bring the Republican Party a little farther away from the lunatic fringe and more towards the center: "Center" is a code word for "pro-abortion." Bonus Mystery Guest: For a person, a party and a nation, the element essential to success is character, a word that grew out of the Greek for "to mark, to engrave." [...] We also see the mark of character, or lack of it, in political parties. The Republican Party today is characterized by a mission to defeat terror while exporting freedom abroad, and a policy to restrain taxes while increasing social spending at home. Yes, lowering taxes while also "exporting freedom" (AKA "engaging in a discretionary war") and increasing spending at home, thus placing the burden for paying for all this on our children, indeed shows a lot of character. The Republican personality will split in a couple of years, as all huge majorities do in America. Idealistic neocons will be challenged by plodding, pragmatic paleocons, who, by fuzzing the party's present character, will someday lead it down the road to defeat. Apparently this pundit didn't get the news from Rush that the word "neocon" just means "Republican Jew," so we should quit using it -- and this from a guy who prides himself on his lexicographical knowledge! 2:42:02 AM