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How to Recognize Latent Conservative Tendencies And Dare To Come Out Of The Closet
Okay…this is going to be really tough. I’ve come to be aware that some of you who have been reading my column have suspected that I occasionally reveal subtle conservative tendencies… maybe just a careless word slip, like referring to global warming as a “hoax”, to green energy as a “scam”, or to carbon dioxide as “plant food”. Occasionally when I catch sight of fellow faculty members whispering when they don’t think I’m looking, I worry that they may have noticed this as well. As you might imagine, living with all of this anxiety has been a quite an emotional burden.
Which raises an important question that some of us, and perhaps even you, have struggled very hard to answer about ourselves. Was I born this way?
Like, for example, did you become aware of an early euphoric carbon dioxide emission rush while sitting next to a cozy bonfire or home fireplace on a cool evening? Was it during a time in childhood when you outran an opponent, tagged them “out” of the game, and guiltlessly realized you enjoyed beating them in competition? Maybe it occurred much later in life when you began worry more about the next Ice Age than global warming, and more about drowning in rising debt than about polar bears drowning in rising oceans.
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<span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span><![endif]-->1<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:
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In my case there was no lingering doubt when I sometimes surrendered to an uncontrollable urge to reference Rush Limbaugh or Fox News as information sources at faculty meetings just for fun… even when they weren’t. Yup, those inner-conservative tendencies lurking deep inside my genome yearning to breathe free have finally been outed!
But again, back to the basic “nature vs. nurture” question. Based upon certain interest and aptitude proclivities evidenced in academic ranks, I suspect that both play important roles in determining dominant political party propensities.
Take journalism for example…that discipline so important to shaping and directing the intellect of that Fourth Estate, the media, which is so important to keep government honest and the public informed. According to a 1980 poll reported in the Investor’s Business Daily, 40% of Columbia University journalism students believed in government ownership of large corporations! Only one-third believed the free enterprise system was fair to workers,
Writing in “The Chronicle Review” published by the The Chronicle of Education (February 2010), Jere Surber found it difficult to understand why some people find it hard to explain an obvious “liberal bias of the academy.” He observed that “…for most of us, at least in the liberal arts, the answers are obvious and part of our everyday lives.” And why is this? Surber believes that “…academe leans left because it takes a proportionally significant number of liberal arts professors to hone the basic intellectual skills we expect of college graduates: things like interpretative reading, cogent writing, critical thinking, and a sense of a shared historical tradition and the major issues currently confronting our society and the world.”
Gosh. It’s certainly a shame that conservatives have so obviously missed the boat on all that good stuff.
But then, even Surber recognizes that there are some areas, albeit not those which depend upon interpretative reading, cogent writing, critical thinking, and historically-guided world outlooks, where conservatives can offer at least limited value. He points here to business schools, followed by natural and social sciences as fields where conservatism is more broadly accepted.
A February 2011 New York Times article quoted social psychologist Jonathan Haidt referring to conservatives as a “new out-group” whose experiences reminded him of closeted gay students in the 1980s who hid their feelings when “colleagues made political small talk and jokes predicated on the assumption that everyone was a liberal.” Haidt also observed a clear lack of professoriate diversity associated with liberal bias on college campuses throughout the nation. “At elite universities, Democrats outnumber Republicans by six to one in the general faculty; a study of both elite and non-elite institutions found that Democratic psychology professors outnumber Republicans 12 to 1.”
A 2005 tenure-track faculty party registration study involving 11 California universities by researchers at San Jose State University (California) and George Mason University (Virginia) found abundant evidence of liberal bias as well. Those surveyed ranged from small, private, religiously affiliated institutions to large, public, elite schools. At one end of the scale, UC Berkeley had a Democrat:Republican ratio of nearly 9:1, while Pepperdine University, which is generally considered to be “very conservative”, had a nearly equal 1:1 ratio. Across all departments and institutions the D:R ratio was 5:1, while in the “soft” liberal arts fields it was higher than 8:1.
Then consider the number of liberals vs. conservatives who are invited to give university keynote commencement addresses. According to a 2012 survey of 100 top-ranked schools conducted by the Young America’s Foundation, a conservative youth organization, the ratio was seven-to-one. Narrowing the tally down to the top 35 universities where political affiliation determinations were possible, 29 liberals were invited to speak, compared with only one conservative. Such determinations were made on the basis of publicly-supported ideological causes through speaking, writing, serving in public office, or financial contributions.
Kevin Hassett, an op-ed writer for the Los Angeles Times, conducted a separate commencement speaker invitation survey of top 100 universities and top 50 liberal arts colleges according to U.S. News & World Report rankings for 2012 and 2013. Within both categories, he determined that in 2012, the political leanings of 84 speakers were identifiable, while in 2013, 69 were. Of those top universities, only three Republican office holders were invited, compared with 16 Obama administration officials. There were no conservative speakers at Ivy League commencements, and no conservative elected officials who spoke outside the South. Only three of the top colleges invited identifiably conservative speakers.
The results for 2013 were similar. When Hassett last counted, no Republican public officials had been invited to speak at the top colleges, and only four were invited to address top universities. As for other talks at universities, student protests disrupted a presentation by Karl Rove at the University of Massachusetts last April, one by Rand Paul at Howard University, a commencement talk invitation for former Bush administration official Robert Zoellick at Swarthmore College, and another commencement invitation to Obama critic Ben Carson at John Hopkins.
So okay, maybe the world ain’t fair, particularly for most of us in academic liberaland. Hey, no one promised any of us a renewable rose garden. And now that we conservatives are officially a minority out-group, why not assert our rights to receive the same diversity considerations that all other downtrodden groups have come to expect?
After all, where is it written that conservatives necessarily have to want dirty land, air and water…or that responsible stewardship requires believing that the sky is falling, oceans are rising, polar bear populations are endangered, or that carbon dioxide is a pollutant? Can’t authentic conservation-minded individuals dispute the notion that our nation can empower its pathway to energy security with anemic, intermittent and uncompetitive wind and solar “alternatives”, rather than develop our abundant fossil resources? Isn’t it responsible for well- informed people to challenge provably flawed, even corrupt, alarmist climate science claims used to support economically-disastrous government regulatory policies and taxpayer handouts?
Doesn’t every sane person (conservatives included) want energy solutions and personal practices be ecologically-safe and efficient to conserve resources? Libertarians, Republicans, Independents and Democrats should all agree that it makes ethical and practical sense to do more with less. But wanting this does not mean that we should agree to depend upon government bureaucrats to choose and subsidize or mandate politically-preferred solutions. True students of world history will realize that this approach has never worked.
If you have now come to realize this, then seriously consider coming out of the closet. Go ahead. You really no longer need to hide copies of the New Republic inside the cover of the New York Times or Washington Post to avoid embarrassment at Starbucks. If you found yourself getting aroused reading Ronald Reagan’s speeches extolling benefits of smaller government and larger individual liberties… if you felt a big chill running up your spine rather than a thrill running up your leg when Obama was re-elected… then don’t be ashamed. These are probably healthy signs of delayed political puberty.
And if you’re a student in a liberal conservative-bashing group or university class, try to work up the courage to speak out. Just blurt out that “I may have never told you, but I think I’m one of THEM…In fact, I know I am!” Who knows, you might even start a popular new trend.
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