This is a response to Neil Munshi’s Friday guest column, “Why the young conservative insurgence?”
I, too, would like to consider myself well-versed in popular culture.
Haven’t Coldplay or the Dixie Chicks made a new compact disc or Martin Sheen or George Clooney spoken out on a television program? They have? Well why aren’t the youth listening to their intellectual betters and becoming liberal? What happened to the days when the youth of the United States were ignorantly liberal?
Maybe Fox News has gotten to them. But what then has happened to the leftist papers of the Star Tribune and The New York Times or MSNBC and broadcast network news? Have they lost their force? Maybe the youth just learned from events that occurred in the last decade. They saw Saddam Hussein invade Kuwait and be pushed back, and, now, finally removed from power. They saw a president’s lies under oath and reception of sexual favors in the Oval Office disgrace the presidential office. They watched terrorists brutally murder 3,000 people Sept.11, 2001. But why aren’t they listening to Michael Moore?
Now one could argue that the youth have found values and ideas in which they believe, but come on, that would be ridiculous – only liberals have such values. Besides, if you support one conservative idea you automatically must support every other idea that is conservative.
Only a liberal can hold moderate views. I mean, who honestly believes conservatives have values or brains?
Since conservatives can’t have values, maybe these youth are helping out their rich mommies and daddies.
We all know the equation: conservative equals rich and rich equals conservative. Thus it easily follows that if one is wealthy and one has an idea or takes action, wealth must be the causation for that idea or action. Has anyone seen a poor, conservative college student? They must be as rare as a dodo.
Maybe, God forbid, the problem is with the Democrats. I apologize for the heretics. I know that the Democrats and the left are infallible and that I should not even think and join their party. Their bipartisan, let’s-get-things-done strategy should bring the people to the party en masse. Their valiant obstructionism in the U.S. Senate should be a beacon of hope. All nine candidates for president have articulated clear visions and plans for the future and have not just criticized President George W. Bush. We all know that there is no such thing as a radical left and that such people have not hijacked the Democratic Party, so that can’t be a problem. I apologize for opening this blasphemous can of worms. It has just created more questions.
Why haven’t the youth latched onto the self-righteous, irrational snobbery of the left? Don’t they enjoy the raucous, undignified tone of Howard Dean and the Democrats? Don’t they support the Democrats’ vision for the future and their message, whatever those might be? Didn’t they see “Bowling for Columbine”? Didn’t they listen to the Dixie Chicks?
What happened to the youth? They never used to think.
Ryan Johnson is a political science senior.
Send comments to [email protected]
