I was just thinking about the article in the Chicago Reader either this week or last about the young conservative proto-pundit from Northwestern. The article details how the young republicans (the name of my friends' band) club meets to practice rhetoric to use against the so-called 'liberal majority' that prevails at universities. I was just thinking, if we examine first of all why there are so many liberals at institutes of higher learning? Why could that be?

Often the conservative pundits use a line of attack like this: 'Why shouldn't we teach abstinence education over birth control? Studies show that 59% of Americans agree with this type of education. It's just the liberal elites that want us to believe that their sodomite ways are the majority, and they're forcing their indulgent and permissive lifestyles upon us!' (excuse my rhetorical excess) First of all a lot of cultural conservatism is based on the presupposition that we can go into some kind of golden past where everything is perfect, in America's case this is the 50's. (Sidenote to remind people what the 50's was: segregation, start of the cold war, the red scare, execution of the Rosenburgs, the Ford Edsel)

We cannot legislate ourselves back into some kind of golden era. There was no golden era! Conservative pundits love to say they and that is their problem. They don't live in the real world like you and I, they try to weave their own narrow view of morality into our laws and rules. They try to force us to live like them.

Also: the majority thinks blah blah blah is a scary scary argument that should never be used. A narrow margin of majority does not make a coalition! Ignoring the minority opinion causes problems!

Sorry bout the rant, I'll try to condense that into something sensible at some point.