To the Editor:
I feel obligated to respond to Christopher McAuliffe's '05 accusation that "conservative ideas are still alien" to most Brown students ("Conservative voices underrepresented at Brown," Nov. 14). On the contrary, I believe Brown students on the whole have an excellent conception of contemporary American conservatism. I would argue that it is their intimate knowledge of this ideological force that most influences their liberalness, and not the biases of the professors and the "political hacks" on the reading lists. You needn't look further than the youngest Brown students to find corroboration for this theory. The overwhelming majority of my fellows in the class of 2011 are liberal, and I can assure you that our two months here have had little effect on our ideological spectrum.
No, the cause of conservatism's under-representation at Brown is not institutional bias, but rather the abject failure of the conservative movement to capture the hearts and minds of young Americans. To us, it represents a failed policy of preemptive war and curtailed freedoms. It represents the cruel hypocrisy of austerity in the pursuit of social justice and profligacy in the capitulation to the insatiable military-industrial complex. It represents insidious schemes to undermine a cherished, secular Republic through religiously motivated attempts to legislate morality, including the perennial crusades against abortion, homosexuality and science.
It is this assessment of modern conservatism that turns so many American students off. Until the movement ditches its stifling social regressivity and violent militarism, you'll excuse me for shedding few tears for the plight of the conservative minority.
Tyler Rosenbaum '11Nov. 14
