Yet Another 3:30AM Post From The Office
Steven Den Beste has an interesting read regarding youthful rebellion. I think he’s pretty dead-on here. All young folks have some sort of need to piss off their parents, hell, just ask my roomate what I was like in high school if you need evidence of that, and I agree that a lot of the youthful new-left movement is part of that. However, I also think a lot of real hard-line young conservatives are very much in the same vein. Take our favorite example of a reactionary douchebag, Scott Austin: he’s against everything liberals are for because…wait for it…liberals are for them! And I think a lot of the real hard-core young conservatives react in the same way…just go to a CN conference for evidence of that. Extremism is never the parent of rigorous thought.
I think many young people on both sides of the political spectrum have parents who share similar political views. Conservative Christian parents will probably raise a conservative Christian kid, and hippie parents will raise a hippie kid.
Some conservatives and libertarians that we see on campus, at CN conferences, and possibly on staff are the products of rebellion against the University’s liberal environment, not rebellion against their parents. They dislike OSPIRG, they dislike the anti-war movement, they dislike the ASUO, they dislike the Emerald’s editorial stances, and they dislike the liberal atmosphere in general. That is where I think we can see many young people who probably considered themselves “liberal” in high school converting to conservatism and libertarianism.
I “rebelled” against my parents my freshman and sophomore years when I embraced many libertarian ideals, but I think through choices for myself, I will actually end my college years with a mix of both my conservative dad and my liberal mom’s views. I what I was mostly rebelling against a few year ago was the default liberalism of many of the students on campus and the liberal dogma that most faculty teach.