Kids In America - I

Kids In America - I wouldn't say that my college was "conservative". Far from it - most of the faculty was as solidly left-wing as anyone at MacAlester. But most of the students - the children of farm kids and small-town businessmen and teachers, with a smattering of kids from the Twin Cities and Chicago who were there because they couldn't get a scholarship at a Division I school - were apolitical. Neither the College Republicans nor their Democrat counterparts ever really drew a crowd; most students were working too hard to bother. My major adviser - who'd gone to Rutgers, NYU and Marquette - expressed amazement at the school and its students; "12 credits here is as hard as 16 credits anywhere I've ever taught", he said.

He was also one of very few conservative English professors you'll ever meet ("I consider myself a monarchist", he joked). He lent me a copy of "Modern Times" by Paul Johnson, and had me dig hard into the political critiques woven into "Crime and Punishment", and he started me on my path away from the liberalism I inherited from my parents to the conservatism I got from Reagan.

"Whatever", said my dorm mates, who were cramming for a chemistry exam.

I knew, of course, that there were other colleges out there. I was the editor of the college paper, and I got a weekly package of canned copy from the Collegiate Press Service - stuff that was skewed far enough to the left to make the BBC blanche. And when I finally moved to the Twin Cities, I met college kids that not only had time and energy to focus on things like politics - it was their major. It was why they'd gone to school in the first place. Places like the U, Mac, Hamline and St. Kates were breeding grounds for young DFLers (or Greens).

Fast forward twenty years.

The SCSU Scholars have an interesting piece on the rightward drift on campus today.

They link to a fascinating piece on Economist.com, which notes the statistics:

Bob Dole lost the 18-29-year-old vote by 19 percentage points; Mr Bush lost by two points. Students have been sceptical about bossy governments for years. Now they are increasingly sceptical about the “Ab Fab” values of the 1960s generation—particularly in regard to casual sex and abortion—and increasingly enthusiastic about America's use of military might. A poll by Harvard University's Institute of Politics in April found that three-quarters of students trusted the armed forces “to do the right thing” either all or most of the time. In 1975 the figure was about 20%. Another poll, by the University of California at Los Angeles, found that 45% of freshmen supported an increase in military spending, more than double the figure in 1992.

The article also delves into the why - students' natural sense of rebellion, of course (and what is the campus left but the status quo?) - but something more; a desire to have a nation worth going on to lead:

Another reason is September 11th, which not only produced a surge of patriotism but also widened the gap between students (who tended to see the attacks as examples of evil) and Vietnam-era professors (who agonised about what America must have done wrong). The Harvard Institute of Politics found two-thirds of students supporting the war in Iraq. Pro-war groups sprouted in such liberal campuses as Brandeis, Yale and Columbia. At Amherst College many students were noisily furious when 40 teachers paraded into the dining hall with anti-war slogans.

The Economist also struck on a parallel that I find fascinating, one I've been flailing about to try to find for months. It makes sense:

They needed troops on the ground. In 2002 College Republicans (together with gun activists) played the same sort of role in the party that trade unionists and blacks have long played in the Democratic Party.

King Banian of the Scholars notes:

Combine this with 9/11 and the fact that Republicans right now are doing a good job of recruiting youth to their programs like College Republicans or YAF, add an enthusiastic leadership from people like the CRs' Scott Stewart, and the groundswell, argues The Economist, turns into a youthquake.

Of course, like all youthquakes, it can change with the turn of a generation and its influences. That's what got us here in the first place.

But consider the possibilities: We have a generation that is edging to the right, coming up through the system. In 20 years, when they move into positions of leadership in academia, business, the media, we could be in position for a major change in the outlooks of American institutions.

Posted by Mitch at August 20, 2003 08:09 AM