Conservative radicals

Anti-establishment used to mean "liberal" but as many establishments today are decidedly left leaning--especially those that invlove the youth (such as universities)--the "radicals" of our day are increasingly... conservative. The most radical person I know, David Horowitz, now speaks from the right. When I was in college, a little over a decade ago, there was little social stigma and certainly no official sanctions imposed, for being radically liberal. But speak of conservative ideas and you were really taking on the system--retribution from the administration and faculty, let alone countless campus groups, could be swift. These trends are only growing and the result is that radicals from the left must now be radical to the point of absurdity, and a new class of radicals, fighting a conservative revolution, is emerging. See this piece in the NYT about the "Young Hipublicans."

Coda: this piece calls Dartmouth a conservative hotbed. Well the college I refer to above was Dartmouth and the idea that Dartmouth was conservative in any way in the past two decades is simply false. If it was in any sense a "conservative hotbed" it was in the sense this this is where the first conservative college newspaper, the Dartmouth Review, was founded. But the Review was far from mainstream, and was perhaps one of the most radical and controversial things at Dartmouth since the newspaper was founded in the 1980s. Review staffers were ostrasized and punished, in a real sense, by other students, faculty, and the administration. The Review's crime? In an evironment dedicated to tolerance of diverse view points, the Review was too "insensitive"--read politically incorrect.