College Stupidheads
the first part of my ass-kicking of college republicans:At colleges across the country, it is the golden age of campus conservatism. Whether described by the painfully awkward nomenclature of “South Park Conservative” or the somehow worse “Hipublican,” conservative college students have significant voices in important debates at a wide swath of college campuses – but not, of course, at Columbia.
The conservative movement here is, simply put, a joke. And not a good joke, like the one about the Rabbi and the parrot; more like a bad joke about John Kerry’s flip-flopping that involves actual flip-flops. They have gimmicky “affirmative action” bake sales that generate far more rhetorical heat than light, while antagonizing every non-upper-middle-class white male within shouting distance. Many students see the College Republicans as obsessed with Israel to the detriment of, well, everything that’s not Israel. The president of the Columbia College Conservative Club is an avowed fascist. The only way for conservatives to make themselves more marginal at Columbia would be to… I can’t actually think of a way conservatives could make themselves more marginal at Columbia.
Making fun of these poor souls may seem tantamount to laughing at that kid who ate worms in third grade, except for the prominence of conservatives at all those other schools. Numerous polls demonstrate that overall student opinion on a variety of issues, including abortion, sex before marriage, taxation, and gun control, has shifted to the right in the past ten years, as students with sepia toned images of Reagan from their youth replaced those with jaded memories of the ineptitude of Ford and Carter. The terrorist attacks of September 11 pushed many students further to the right, or at least against radical anti-war groups. Although the ongoing collapse of the Bush administration’s project in Iraq may reverse this trend, for now the national political terrain still provides campus conservatives with a strong platform from which to make their case.
Various right-wing groups have also made special efforts to, in the proud tradition of McDonalds and Phillip-Morris, hook potential consumers while they’re young. Money from institutions like the Intercollegiate Studies Institute flows to conservative college organizations, creating the appearance of grassroots support among students. Some distribute handbooks with useful advice about how to relate to the kids of today. This advice can often run perilously close to “Dressing like a douchebag with an ascot and affecting a British accent will make everyone hate you. Don’t do that.” Seeking to capitalize on the stereotype of youthful rebelliousness, many have portrayed campuses as domains of liberal hegemony, making conservatism a logical alternative for students looking for a way to quixotically rebel against The (College) Man.
posted by Tim @ 10:07 PM
2 Comments:
You should check you facts.
The Mr. Woodley, the fascist, is no longer president of CCCC.
Chris Kulawik, a fusionist consverative and Republican, is the new president.
I wanted to clarify the comment.
Mr. Woodley was not a "fascist", certainly not in the casual use of the term. He was a corporatist, who respected democracy and tradition. While that amount of economic planning is somewhat foreign to the US, except for certain Democrats who believe in a nationalist industrial and trade policy. Corporatism is actually the norm in much of Europe and Asia. Mr. Woodley, like many college students loved controversy, making intemperate remarks, which they later regretted. I certainly have been guilty of this. Frankly, I know of no adult who does not have regrets from university.
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