Strangechord

I am really weirded out after skimming this NY Times article today on the up and coming generation’s conservatives: The Young Hipublicans (member ID: strangechord; password: readnyt). The article investigates the burgeoning right-wing movement across America’s college campuses. How the hypocrisy of much of these students’ ideology is hidden from their own view is beyond me. Take this excerpt:

But a movement based on patriotism and Reagan-worship alone could not have spread so rapidly nationwide. Here’s where the left has unwittingly helped to energize the conservative movement. Visit any college campus today, and you’re struck by the forces of what the conservatives call overweening political correctness that have seeped into every corner of life. Same-sex hand-holding days, ‘’Vagina Monologues'’ performances, diversity training seminars, minority support groups, ‘’no means no'’ dating rules, textbooks purified of gender, racial or class stereotypes — for all their good intentions, these manifestations of enforced tolerance can create a stultifying air of conformity in college life. Hence the cries for ‘’individual responsibility'’ and ‘’freedom of speech'’ that are the leading slogans of today’s campus conservative movement…

‘’No means no'’ dating rules? Minority support groups? Since when are these things overweening? (overweening: presumptuously arrogant; overbearing.) I don’t understand how these “young hipublicans” can be so supportive of individualism and freedom and still be so against individual sexual expression, freedom from oppression and racism, freedom from class stereotyping, etc. How can they be so supportive of freedom of speech and yet sneer at “Vagina Monologues” and shout at anti-war demonstrators to shut up and go home?

On page 5 of the article, a 19 year old conservative named Allison Kasic is quoted, “‘Conservatives are inclusive in a way that liberals are not,’ she says, voicing a central theme of the Independent Women’s Forum ethos. ‘We say that women can be executives or stay-at-home mothers.’” Um, excuse me? Since when do liberal women say a women cannot stay at home if she chooses? In fact, the entire feminist movement centers around a woman’s right to choose whichever path she feels is best for her over what society dictates she should do. This kind of skewing is really maddening.