Tag / liberal
-
![]()
The Evolution Of A Campus Conservative Revisited
I arrived at Wash U in 2015 a doe-eyed Republican, having spent my first eighteen years in perennially red South Dakota. I grew up among climate change deniers, gay marriage opposers, and gun enthusiasts. I was practically weaned on Fox News. Though I managed to emerge from this environment with some socially liberal views (primarily…
-
![]()
Is There A Free Speech Crisis At Colleges?
Over the last few years, certain right-leaning public figures—including Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and Carl Benjamin—have elevated the issue of free speech on college campuses to one of their top concerns. Searching any one of the four names listed above followed by “free speech” on YouTube, one will find an incredible number of…
-
![]()
Splitting the Ticket: The Gap Between Statewide Races and Ballot Initiatives
Looking past the top line numbers in the House and Senate, one of the most interesting results of the midterm elections is the gap between ballot initiatives and statewide races in red and purple states. The results of the statewide races clearly show the strength of partisan polarization. Incumbent Democratic senators lost in Missouri and…
-
![]()
The Supreme Value: Why Free Speech Is Paramount On College Campuses
“Knowledge is power,” is a ubiquitous aphorism in modern society. As George Washington–our university’s namesake–once said, “Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.” The exalted status of knowledge in society is remarkably recent. Not until the Enlightenment–or as it’s also known–the Age of Reason (17th-18th centuries) did knowledge become such a…
-
![]()
Inland Conservative Elites
Since the 2016 election, the prevailing consensus about America’s cultural divide is that there are the educated, wealthy, coastal liberal elites who look down on the poor, rural, conservative Americans who live in flyover states. Many Trump supporters cited this as the reason for their vote in the 2016 election. They were supposedly tired of…
-
![]()
That Should Be Funny
The doctors are frantically operating, and I sit nervously in the waiting room. Hours pass until eventually the doctor comes to meet me, “I’m sorry, but he didn’t make it.” I begin to weep, and you should too. He was a dear friend to all of us once. But he is gone now. Humor is…
-
![]()
United We Oppose, Divided We Govern
Anyone can tell you that Republicans are on the right and Democrats are on the left. But the left and right of what, exactly? The ubiquitous left-right dichotomy assumes that political parties can be placed along a one-dimensional ideological spectrum. This political fiction underlies most partisan political rhetoric; at the same time, it is becoming…
