If youd've been keeping up with the news lately (or since 2000, really), you know that conservatism as a respectable political ideology has fallen by the wayside. And with the advent of some less-than-stellar Republican presidential candidates, it doesn't look like it can be saved at the national level any time soon.
That doesn't mean, however, that this once-hallowed political legacy (whose name many would bestow upon such presidential luminaries as Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson) cannot be restored to its classical roots. However unlikely it seems, with George W. Bush still in office and men like Mitt Romney on his heels, conservatism can be saved not within the national Republican Party, but on the college campus instead.
Campus conservatism can be different, especially in states like Maryland where it is safe from the insidious tentacles of the religious right. In order to thrive, conservatives on college campuses must appeal to the delicate political sensibilities of their fellow students a feat that can be accomplished only if they stake out their own distinct niche under the conservative tent.
And conservatives on college campuses across the country are uniquely poised to do this. College students tend generally to spurn partisan activism, especially at schools like Hopkins. The few who do involve themselves in activist political movements tend instead to latch onto specific causes with visceral and unabated passion (see: Hopkins Energy Action Team). These are the people with whom conservatives can connect.
To do that, however, they must distance themselves considerably from the current incarnation of conservatism or rather, the imposters who have hijacked its name and not in the way that so-called traditional conservatives, like Tom DeLay, have recently tried to do. DeLay and others (like the resurgent Newt Gingrich) have tried to redirect the focus of the coming Republican primary fight to the principles of the 1994 Republican Revolution, all the while backhandedly courting the favor of the religious right.
Campus conservatives must avoid this mistake, because it won't help them revive their cause. Instead, they should very publicly flush out the hypocrites who have tarnished their image and distorted their views, with all the sensational fanfare of campus political theater. They could even start with Gingrich and DeLay, both of whom recently admitted to episodes of martial infidelity during crusades against immorality and liberalism (see: Clinton impeachment trial). If The Carrollton Record could dedicate as much time and energy to that as they did to outing the members of DSAGA, they would certainly pick up some support, and reinvigorate conservatism along the way.
But it's not just for popularity's sake that I recommend this change in tactics. College campuses are, in many cases, incubators for intellectual purity and philosophical rigor, absent the hypocrisies of political maneuvering. As such, they are good places to get conservatism back on its bearings. Campus conservatives have access to this intellectual energy and, with the right fusion of college-aged idealism, are capable of translating it into a new and more vibrant form of conservatism one that draws more faithfully on the ideals of its forefathers.
Conservatives (or the sane ones, at least) have never been averse to change in and of itself only change for its own sake. And they're supposed to be wary of government activism, including that propelled by religion or war. The average college student can relate much more easily to these ideals than, say, a propensity for war making or disdain for environmental conservation.
Neither of these has to be a conservative position. Conservatives can reach out to activists on campus like HEAT at Hopkins or the American Civil Liberties Union anywhere and emphasize legitimately conservative ways to achieve the same political goals. Instead of mocking or even refuting the evidence behind anthropogenic climate change, conservatives can offer ways to tackle it that emphasize market-based solutions and private technological entrepreneurship.
They can join the ACLU in rejecting the excesses of the PATRIOT Act, support the Maryland state legislature in its scrutiny of the death penalty, and reach out to DSAGA to show that true conservatives don't care what people do with their lives.
And to grossly unjust wars, well, conservatives can just say no.
All of these things require foresight and intellect, which I'm sure some conservatives still have. If only they can put them to proper use, conservatism can be saved and its ideals restored if not by its leading figures, then by the students who bear its torch.
Sal Gentile is a junior Writing Seminars and philosophy major from Holmdel, N.J. He is a managing editor of the News-Letter.
