When I want my friends to understand social conservatives beliefs I suggest that they read Brothers Judd for two weeks. I know it was a real eye-opener to me (and as a result I've become more liberal).

Great site though! I have, and will continue, to enjoy it thoroughly.

See here, David, you'd need more than special dispensation. You would first have to find a campus that would even allow it.

They'd allow it, just to show they're tolerant. Then they'd look the other way while the lecturer was shouted down by the angrier strains of the campus left (and don't even think about getting tenure...).

Looking for a guest professorship at Smith, huh? Now whatever could the motivation for that be...

David:

Unfortunately, the operation to remove the source of your testosterone poisioning without anesthetic (a job requirement) is quite painful and takes months to heal.

Brian:

The wymyn at Smith are quite happy with the company of other members of the LGBT community.

"I'd be glad to teach a course in Introductory Conservatism, though I'd probably need special dispensation from the campus speech code."

You'd also need ear plugs, a gas mask and a hockey stick.

And a platoon of Marines or Delta Force troops.

From Tom Wolfe's latest novel about campus life:

"Collegiate was collegiate, but this was indecent -- 'immoral' was the term that crossed his mind, but the very word had become obsolete. It had vanished from sophisticated conversation."

Actually, the Smith campus is beautiful and my wife and I try to walk through it regularly. Next time, I'll have to wear my "W" hat.

Bret: I was amused to see your comment over at Assymetrical Information:

Social conservatives are drooling over Bush being re-elected. To a social conservative, Bush is not just a good president, he's a dream president. I believe that Bush, Rove, and Company intend to utilize the second term to further consolidate power in order to push the social conservative agenda and to make its progression as unstoppable as possible. In order to get a better feel for what such an agenda is, I would suggest reading a blog such as brothersjudd.com/blog and its comments for a few days. They are fully hoping to undo Roe vs. Wade, institute even more draconian drug laws, hugely restrict gay rights, increase the power of religious organizations, etc. and they intend to do this from the federal government (as opposed to allowing the states to individually decide such issues).

A vote for Bush will help entrench social conservatism more quickly.

Other than OJ's hostility to therapeutic drugs, though, I haven't noticed that we've been lobbying for even more draconian drug laws and conservatives don't see being anti-gay marriage as restricting gay rights.

Bret: Also, though you say we've only made you more liberal, your wording of this comment, "A vote for Bush will help entrench social conservatism more quickly" confirms that resistence is futile; you will be assimilated.

Contrary to O.J. I think that Bush was
elected in spite of his hostility toward immigration control.

The popularity of his stances on a number of
other key moral questions was enough to tip
the balance, but this could have been a much
bigger win if he would triangulate toward the nativist position.

Many students and faculty at elite liberal colleges and universities have never ever met or spoken to a Republican, never mind a Conservative. Today's students are very brave to openly embrace conservative ideas. It couldn't have happened even five or ten years ago.
In the past, those students who deviated from liberal dogma were punished with poor grades and shunned by other students. My son was denied honors at graduation because his senior thesis on NATO didn't reflect the positions of the history department.

Forget tenure. Even if you have tenure, you still have to live in a community that is often incestuous. Social life revolves around campus activities. Everyone knows everyone else, all the kids go to school together, etc.

You walk the fine line between not actually lying and trying to keep your integrity intact. There may have been others like us, but in 35 years at institutions deep in the bluest area of the northeast, I never heard an opinion other than the received wisdom of the party line.

Our society has become no different from the closed societies behind the old Iron Curtain. If dissenters aren't banished to a literal Siberia, they are nevertheless put out in the figurative cold where they are unable to pursue their work in a collegial atmosphere.

It's nice being retired and free to speak out on issues. I'm glad the blogosphere was born just in time for us to join in.

erp,

It all depends on how you define 'elite.' Most people at the better engineering schools are pretty conservative and come from backgrounds which are extremely conservative. And the military academies certainly don't lack political and social conservatives.

If you mean the essentially useless overpriced, overrated liberal arts colleges then you have a point. Anyone who wastes his life and his parents' money studyng philosophy or literature obviously has either no drive or no respect for anyone. You can read all that stuff on your own, join the relevant websites and be far ahead of where you'd be spending 4 years in college wasting your time with Derrida and Heidegger.

As for Smith, I have never met a Smith graduate for whom I had even the merest scintilla of respect. They are obnoxious, poorly groomed, close-minded, and extremely self-important. Think Michael Moore in a dress. And like all girls' colleges today, it is a carpet-muncher factory.

I have a daughter at Wellesley. She finds the received wisdom endlessly amusing. And also that there is at least one quietly conservative student for each loudly liberal student/prof/administrator.

Bart:

In my experience there is a coorelation between field and politics. Liberal arts tends to the left, chemists and engineers are conservative, physicists are apolitical or entertaining cranks, computer scientists are libertarian. Perhaps the different disciplines encourage different patterns of thought?

I know a mature Smith graduate who I admire for her intelligence, style and intellect. She's also a Republican with the courage to say so.

mike,

I think the difference is what you come up with at the end. In other words, liberal arts people by and large parrot what others tell them in order to get the good grade. Since the professoriat is leftist, the students are as well.

In the sciences and engineering, where at the end of the day you have to come up with something new and of use to someone, people have to think very differently. Results matter. Hence, they are more conservative.

In math, the people doing more theoretical stuff tend to be more left wing than the applied math types like yours truly but there is a cranky libertarian streak that runs through all mathematicians. It's an outgrowth of the arrogance of being comfortable in an abstract world that frightens most people. Although I appreciate the elegance of a good proof as much as anyone, I got into math because I wanted to win at the craps table, the poker table, and the stock market.

David,

Um, Er, well I, uhh, yeah did write that, but, er, you might excuse the hyperbole, because, well, it was, er, um, pre-election, and, well, there was plenty of hyperbole about, and, er, I didn't really mean "drooling", at least not, er, in any sort of derogatory way, but, er, y'all are quite happy with the election results, no?

Perhaps I was off in a couple of the details in that comment, in which case I apologize for misrepresenting the thinking of those that run this blog. I was apparently confused on the drug issue because of a comment thread here where OJ stated that putting marijuana users in jail was a good investment and that drugs laws were a security issue (I can't find the post and the Brothers Judd search engine apparently doesn't search the comments so I can't point to the thread). Here in California, marijuana possession is a low grade misdemeanor (a small fine) so putting someone in jail is more "draconian", no? It also seems to me that if marijuana possession is a security issue, then every moral can be argued to be a security issue, since the case could be made that laws enforcing the "correct" behaviors would make us more productive and therefore better able to afford to wage war and therefore more secure.

On gay rights, am I really mistaken that you all don't support anti-sodomy laws? If gays don't have that particular right, the rest of their rights are rather meaningless, don't you think?

I suggest that people come to this site because I think they'll find that social conservatives (or at least those on this blog) are:
1. Extremely intelligent, rational, and coherent within your belief system;
2. Almost inhumanly patient;
3. Absolutely certain of your convictions; and
4. Ready to wield power to enforce those convictions as soon as possible.

Those first two points are news to anyone on the Left and even most people in the center. Indeed, for the most part they assume conservatives are backwards, deluded, morons, and are to be more despised and pitied than feared. If I ever personally despised and pitied conservatives, which twenty years ago maybe I did, after reading this blog, any trace of that has vanished and has been replaced by fear. The fear is due to point 4 above.

I can see now that liberals have jammed their agenda down the throats of conservatives for 70 years and I can imagine that conservatives such as yourselves can hardly wait to get even. Indeed, it only seems fair.

However, you might keep in mind that in 50 or 100 years the pendulum might well swing back the other way. For the sake of Orrin Judd the 14th (or what ever number the great-great-grandson of the current Brother Judd will be), it might be better to institutionalize the concept of local rule, or the liberals will be only too happy to use the levers of the federal government to reassert their agenda.

My last point is that I know that I "will be assimilated" (sort of), but resistance is not futile in that I may be able to delay power transfer for a few years. I certainly lost big this election though.

Bret: No stammering is required. I thought your comment was great. Send all your liberal friends here: at best they'll learn something and, at worst, we'll have some fun comment threads. Whatever else is true about the blog, we're not looking to fly under the radar.

Without speaking for anyone else, my position on sodomy laws is Justice Thomas' (which is a good rule of thumb, actually). State sodomy laws are kind of silly, but clearly constitutional. By finding a federal constitutional right to sodomy, the courts are killing federalism. Interestingly, they are also killing the Democratic Party. OJ posted an article from Gary Wills, lamenting that conservatives were motivated to vote by school prayer, abortion, flag burning and gay marriage. All of those are instances in which the law-making power was stolen from the people by judges.

I don't know who 'runs' this blog. Seems like a large proportion of the posters are libertarians, unlike our host.

I think the no-profanity rule keeps out the riffraff, so elevates the tone.

On the issue of liberals speaking only to each other, therefore not hearing the rest; I can only say from personal experience that an equal proportion of conservatives are exactly the same.

As for erp's experience, not in the elite technical schools. Especially the ones where a lot of Pentagon research money goes.

Mike Earl -

Your positioning of the various physical/technical disciplines across the political spectrum exactly matches my experience, both inside and outside the university.

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