The Left Loses College Kids

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-anderson28jan28.story
COMMENTARY
The Left Loses College Kids
By Brian C. Anderson
Brian C. Anderson is the author of "South Park Conservatives," to be published by Regnery in March, and senior editor of City Journal, where a longer version of this article appeared.

January 28, 2005

<snip>The change isn't coming from the faculty lounges and administrative offices but from self- organizing right-of-center students themselves. Never has the right flourished among college kids as it does today. The number of College Republicans, for instance, has almost tripled, from 400 or so campus chapters six years ago to 1,148 today, with 120,000-plus members (compared with the College Democrats' 900 or so chapters and 100,000 members).

Other conservative organizations, ranging from gun clubs (Harvard's has more than 100 students blasting away) to impudent anti-PC newspapers and magazines, are budding at schools everywhere — even at Berkeley, crucible of the '60s student left.

The bustle reflects a general rightward shift in college students' views. In 1995, reports UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute, 66% of freshmen wanted the wealthy to pay higher taxes. Today, only 50% do. Support for abortion stood at two-thirds of students in the early '90s; now it's just over half. A late-2003 Harvard Institute of Politics study found that college students had moved to the right of the overall population, with 31% identifying themselves as Republicans, 27% as Democrats and the rest independent or unaffiliated.

One reason that conservative ideas are taking on greater allure for students is that the authorities say they're verboten. Currently, faculty Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least 7 to 1 (in humanities and the social sciences), according to Daniel Klein of Santa Clara University and Charlotta Stern, a Swedish sociologist.

"There's a natural and healthy tendency among students to question the piety of their teachers," notes Alan Kors, a University of Pennsylvania history professor.<snip>

[KissMeKate]

1. conservative money machine on campus

conservative foundations are throwing money at colleges trying to counter liberalism- its astroturf, fertilised by Mellon Scaife, DeVos, Coors, the rest of the Seven Sisters of conservative funding.

We have to counter it- or they will be just as successful as the think tanks.

[pocket]

2. south park anything sucks

fucking neocon toadies.

[TexasLawyer]

3. Regnery Press

Home of the "Swift Boat" book and similar garbage. I'd take the info that they publish with a BIG grain of salt.

[papau]

5. good point - I did not catch that :-)

:-)

[tsuki]

44. The Traitor's Son works there. So we'll hear a lot about it on Crossfire.

[Fla Dem]

49. Always check the source. Conservative pundit with AEI ties.

Brian C. Anderson is senior editor of City Journal, the cultural and political quarterly published by the Manhattan Institute. Formerly, he was a research associate in social and political studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and the literary editor of Crisis.

more.....

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/anderson.htm


http://www.aei.org/default.asp?filter=all

This is what he is senior editor of:

http://www.city-journal.org/

[Toots]

52. They may be scum of the earth but not always wrong

This is indeed something we should be concerned about. It won't be much longer through their bully tactics that some faculty will soon be leaving to spend time with family and replaced by neoconservative professors to further the spread of their ungodliness. Their strategy is plain for all to see.

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

4. Ya, until they get drafted for the new wars in Iran and Syria. nt

[Patiod]

6. self-organizing my ass

Scaife and company have been funding right wing student orgs since I was in college, and that's a long time ago

[tk2kewl]

7. Nazi youth /nt

[dandrhesse]

8. I don't know where this guy is looking but I have yet to meet a college

kid that was a Bushie. All the college kids I know are Kerry supporters. I live in WI and the UW Madison campus is Kerry central. I would say that article is just another attempt to brain-wash the public into believing another Bush line.

[FromTheLeft]

26. Not so fast...

I just graduated from U of Albany and trust me you can't spit and not hit a Bush voter on campus. I recently found out that some of my closest friend pulled that lever when the voted(we don't have touch screens yet thank god).

I've been trying to figure out why and it actually is very simple, my generation believes whatever they hear on TV.

[dandrhesse]

28. I grew up in Los Angeles and now live in WI and never thought I

would live to see the day that kids from NY (ok upstate, but NY never the less) are more naive than kids from the Midwest? Madison Campus rocks, the whole city is the liberal center of our state.

But I know what you mean. That is how it is in the town where I live, 3 hours north of Madison. All the folks here have to listen to is right wing drivel on the radio and its more of the same on tv and our paper is owned by Gannett news. When I campaigned for Kerry, people were shocked to learn that a handful of companies control our media. But here is something to give you hope:

My dad had a stroke about 6 years ago. He looks fine but his cognitive reasoning ability was damaged. He reasonss about like a 7-10 year old kid as far as logical arguments go. He was a die hard Bushie. All during the campaign he watched tv and also listened to what we were saying and he voted for Kerry. He really wasn't happy with either. But now he is saying that what Bush is doing is bad, "just not right". In fact when that helicopter went down a few days ago he said to my mom, "Did you notice that the helicopter went down on the same day Bush asked for more money?"

I kid you not. So take heart, even the people with limited access to any real information and limited ability to process the information they do get are starting to come around to the fact that things are not too cool.

[kiki]

9. Remember the good old days

when right-wing students in the US stuck to what they knew - alcoholism, nepotism, sports, and avoiding doing any academic work? George certainly does.

Still, I imagine that's what they're still doing on the side. Activism doesn't really suit them.

[Felix Mala]

10. Once they get their uniforms and one-way tickets to icy

craggy posts in North Korea, they'll begin to change their minds.

[LiberalEsto]

11. They obviously didn't talk to MY kids

who are both in college and progressive Dems.

[kiki]

12. "There's a natural and healthy tendency among students

to question the piety of their teachers"...

...by blindly believing in the piety of their leaders...

[spooky3]

13. Another fair and balanced report...

ignoring all data to the contrary of the point the journalist wants to make.

[kiki]

15. Well...

...with the title "South Park Conservatives" he's obviously trying to imply that today's radical, eXXXtreme to the maXXX students are kickin' a GOP flava up in this piece, yo, and while he may be distorting things, anyone who talks to strangers on the internet can tell you that right- or centre-right-wing young Americans are definitely becoming more active and vocal about their conservatism, however misguided that may be.

On the other hand, perhaps some rich colleges are pushing the figures up... perhaps I'm getting my stereotypes wrong, but don't you guys have a number of colleges entirely full of Reaganite assholes called "Chet" and "Skippy"?

[JI7]

18. i think they are getting louder because of money from right wing groups

such as heritage foundation. and probably from religious people also.

[KissMeKate]

22. lol kiki

great parody of manufactured cool.

[kiki]

25. To be honest,

I probably stole some of that parody from South Park...:)

[FromTheLeft]

27. Thats messed up...

My nickname is Skippy and I am not only a democratic supporter, but i consider my self a missionary.

[Johnyawl]

14. Well, it makes sense ...

...that there would be a rightward drift among college students. After all, who can afford to go to college anymore? The fucking rich, that's who. More and more the policies of the republicans are shutting off college as a path for the poor, and even the middle class. Minority enrollment is down, even in a "liberal" state like Washington, tuition is going through the roof at the same time that financial resources for the poor and middle class kids are being shut off. My son carries a full class load, and works 40 hours a week to keep himself in school, and prevent his parents from having to sell the house to pay the bills. He doesn't have time for extracurricular activities, like a social life, or politics.

So just because we can discern a more conservative trend among college students, does not mean that trend is reflective of youth in general.

[JI7]

16. so why did Bush lose among younger voters ?

Kerry got over 60 percent of voters under 30.

in 2000 Bush and Gore split the vote.

another thing is that liberal students don't always register with a party even though they will mostly support Democrats, especially at national and state levels. this is because many work in local areas where the competition is between different liberals who can be socialist,green,democrat, indie etc.

and many liberals work on specific issues or causes rather than overall party. for example gay rights, environment, anti war or some other thing.

[ThorsHammer]

31. Exactly (nt)

[liberalpragmatist]

35. I don't think it was +60

But it was a significant victory - something like 10 points or more.

[JI7]

40. depends on the poll, but they were consistent that it was 10+

percentage points over Bush as you say.

which is a change from 2000 when it was pretty much split between bush and gore. which makes this article even more worthless.

[erpowers]

43. Something This Piece May not Point Out

This portion of the piece never questioned whether the supposed shift was due to the Democratic Party moving further and further to the right. This piece also seems to not look into the idea that maybe the Republicans have been better organized than Democrats at getting their groups on college campuses. In addition, I think we may want to find out what students were surveyed. If the majority of the students who were surveyed were Republicans than the polls would show a shift. Remember, some groups conducted polls where the number of Republicans polled was larger than the number of Democrats polled. So this poll could be misleading

[wicket]

38. EXCELLENT point

n/t

[soleft]

17. I'm picturing that scene from Sound of Music

where young Rolfe blows his whistle when he discovers the Von Trapp's escaping.

[BootinUp]

20. hehheh.

good one.

Interesting point about questioning the teachers viewpoint. At first I was going to chalk it up to the damned librul media.

[seaglass]

19. I go to a community college and I'm surprised by the number

of conservative kids.

Just one ex. In my Forensic Science class, everyone except myself and one other student said they think it's a good idea for the government to have a DNA profile of every citizen on file and they would willingly give a DNA sample. How fucked up is that?

One kid got so angry when I argued against it that he told me I should move to Iraq:eyes:

OK, I know it's only a community college, but still, these kids are scaring me.

The only saving grace is that all editorials in the student newspaper were pro-Kerry so it seems the conservative students are all talk no action.

[GRLMGC]

21. There are conservative assholes at my school

but they're outnumbered by liberals. Then again, I do go to a public school. I have to say though, the rich people in my school tend to be conservative assholes. Like that dumbass in my English class, grrrrr.

[Endangered Specie]

23. Funny, my college turned out pretty damn good for Kerry and

Democrats. Landslide almost.

[American Tragedy]

24. Well, my university is definitely not conservative

People here don't necessarily identify themselves as Democrats, but ideological leanings around campus are decidedly liberal, with a strong libertarian presence, but even they generally went for Kerry. It's an urban public school; I don't know if smaller, more expensive colleges trend differently.

There were a couple of outspoken denizens of FR in my American Presidency class last semester. That was a delight. :mad:

[Cats Against Frist]

29. PROPAGANDA ALERT

This is the third separate instance in the last six months, where I've read a right-wing shill's insistence that the Youth are turning to Mammon & The Fake Jesus.

There is no outside evidence for an en masse, rightward shift of youth, and the ONLY people who ever say this are the propaganda arms of the GOP. Just like trying to make black people think that the Dems are racist, this is another calculated, lame attempt to use something OTHER than good information to make clueless people join the corpo-fascist tent.

With the blacks, though, like "security moms," it was fear or appeal to emotion.

This is more of a "desire to belong" maniuplation. They're banking on the fact that a few impressionable college kids will identify South Park with some sort of libertarian movement, bringing them into the GOP fold, where they will ACTUALLY be aligning with big government, statist corpo-fascists, theocrats and neoconservatives.

They've been trying this FOREVER. AEI tells me kids are more conservative than their parent. Town Hall tells me that Gen Y is going to vote Republican.

And then we all go home and play "Blood & Entrails 16," on the Playstation and giggle over "Desparate Housewives."

The only thing that I see are people are getting more CLUELESS. Which is synonomous with "Bush Supporter," so maybe this propaganda will work for them.

[depakid]

34. You are absolutely right

this is nothing but a propaganda piece.

[cindyw]

30. Keep in mind that on UC campuses Affirmative action was cancelled.

So the student population is more white than it was in 1995. So it may not be that college students are changing, it may be that by lowering the non-white population on campus the students seem more conservative. Or if this makes more sense, by lowering the cultural diversity of the student population on UC campuses, the politics of the student body, in the cited report, reflects the range of mostly white opinions rather than whole of 18-24 year olds of college students.

[GRLMGC]

33. I go to a UC

and it is overwhelmingly white but my school went about 80% for Kerry in 2004. In fact, I go to the "whitest" UC.

[tishaLA]

39. and I go to UCLA

as a grad student, which means I get to teach these precious undergrads. Believe me, those kids are QUITE liberal. Sure we have a couple conservatives in our classes, often Christian conservatives (most often Asian Christian conservatives), but my students are astonishingly liberal.

[depakid]

32. What a pile of crap

It never ceases to amaze me what news editors let pass these days.

College students are not becoming "more conservative," although the far right is certainly trying to make that happen.

You have to be downright stupid and/or dishonest to be conservative these days- and last I saw, there weren't a whole lot of blatantly stupid students on campus....

[liberalpragmatist]

36. The why did college kids vote 55-41 Kerry?

http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/archives/000935.php

Also, check out these numbers:

http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/Release_college_students.pdf

[ArtVandaley]

37. 18-30 year olds voted for Kerry overwhelmingly

Only age group he won

This is off base, trying to make something out of nothing.

[JI7]

41. this is why i say we need to do high school campaigning

because younger voters ARE likely to vote more democratic. Kerry was campaigning in a bunch of high schools and even lower grade schools. i think it's because the democratic agenda does appeal to younger voters more. the kids go home and get their parents and others to vote.

if we start a high school campaign reachout starting now, imagine the support we would have from those who turn 18 by 2008 (and 2006). not just them but their parents also. kids have more free time and can influence older people in their family through regular conversations such as when they eat or just hanging around the home. they can talk to parents about how this candidate or this issue will help them with college or other future and they want their parents to go vote on it.

[dandrhesse]

46. right you are, high schoolers are closest to draft age and they are

into politics big time. My daughter was an intern at the Dem Office and she had a group of kids that she recruited volunteers. Unfortunately the Bushie kids were just like most of their parents. If you wanted to talk about policy forget it.

Both my daughters,a high school sophomores an 8th grader had kids say "Kerry is a baby-killer". Nice huh? When they answer back that over 100,000 people,including many women and children have been killed in Iraq due to Bush, they don't get it, mostly because they are uninformed.

BUT,kids who weren't into politics or had parents on the fence, were highly persuadable.

Bush should have a meeting with kids between the ages of 12-18 if we want to know what is really going on, they would ask him questions like...

Why are we killing people for oil?
What good have we done for the people of Iraq?

These are the legitimate questions that our press won't ask, and kids wouldn't fall for the line...well, what you have to understand is...

[Robin Hood]

42. This makes sense. Do you remember when Chris Matthews did his college tour

This was in the buil up towards the war in Iraq. He would ask the auditorium of kids if we shoul go to war with Iraq, and the whole hall would errupt with thunderous cheer. Matthews would the ask, "which one of you is willing to volunteer to go?" And the whole hall woul go completely quiet. So quiet that you could hear a pin drop. So this latest phase in the dumbing down of America has now entered higher education. The end is truly near.

[MadHound]

45. Well that isn't suprising at all

After all, this is the generation that was born during Reagan/Bush, came of age when the MSM was villifying all things liberal, listened to Rush, and had parents who were becoming more conservative the older they got. Its no wonder that many of this college generation are conservative. Being raised in an era where "Greed is Good", violence is celebrated nightly, and lack of tolerance is celebrated as a virtue will manipulate many a young mind.

What will wake them up quick though is the draft. Nothing like a good whiff of mortality to erase those conservative notions.

[fujiyama]

47. Liberals definetely outnumber conservatives

on my campus but they are a vocal bunch.

We have small exhibits in each of the buildings and the anti abortion people had an elaborate one calling themselves "students for life".

I think it's the money from RW groups - think tanks, Scaife, Moon, etc.

[freestyle]

48. Funny how this coincides with tuition increased and aid cuts

Even if students are moving to the right, which is doubtful, economics could have everything to do with it. College is becoming increasingly unaffordable, so I wouldn't doubt that the rich kids who can still afford to go are more conservative.

[lonestarnot]

50. I believe this to be crap! Haven't visited all universities so don't

proclaim expertise or to be omnipotent, but not what I see at one of the largest public universities in U.S.

[AP]

51. College students had traditionally been more conservative until late '90s.

I think their numbers from 2003 don't tell the whole story.

In 2001 I read that for the first time more students identified themselves as liberal than conservative, and the the theory was that that number correlated with the number of students going to college. Ten years earlier only about 25% of college-age Americans were in college. In 2000 it was closer to 50%. Since most rich kids already were in college, the increase was coming from middle and working class kids going to college, and those are people who are more likely to be Democrats.

So, 58% of college students might be identifying themselves with party affiliations of Democrat or Republican, but I suspect, based on the 2001 numbers I remember reading, a lot of the remaining 42% (who apparently identify as Independents) have liberal views (that go beyond the taxes and abortion rights views in the UCLA study).

[Cheswick2.0]

53. Only the dumb ones

who wants them anyway?