Did everyone see the big article in the NYTimes about college conservatives? (And it's not me, nor the Times writer, John Colapinto, who has conflated conservatism and Republicanism -- it's the campus activists themselves. Go read it.) I've come to the conclusion that I'm hopelessly naive: there's really no place in society where intelligent discussions take place (except Corpse Divine, of course). I'm just fooling myself when I assume that people exists who want to soberly exchange political ideas and come to rational conclusions -- and perhaps learn something in the process. Political thought doesn't work that way. It's not about intelligence. It's about power grabbing and policy shoving and ideology cramming. I suppose that by desiring intelligent discourse, I'm really just exposing myself as a contemptible ivory-tower liberal who's never worked a day in his life. But maybe there's hope for me yet. Maybe I could have a radicalizing experience like one of the conservative activists in the Times article:

Mitchell arrived in Lewisburg from a suburban enclave in Delaware County, Pa., and became intent on being a campus activist. He traces his passion for right-wing politics to his father, who runs a trolley repair shop for Septa, the public transit company in Philadelphia. A member of the N.R.A., Mitchell's father took his son shooting every Friday. "That was really the beginning for me," Mitchell says. "It seemed to me that the policy of less government in conjunction with gun control made sense. And everything else just kind of followed from that."

Say what you will about Michael Moore's tactics, but the thesis of Bowling for Columbine stands: what the fuck is the obsession with guns? For instance, check out this love story:

...until she met Mitchell, [conservative activist Chaykun] viewed firearms as "evil." But in her senior year of high school, he gave her a copy of John Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime," which argues that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns is an effective deterrent to violent crime. Chaykun was convinced. Last Christmas, she was thrilled when Mitchell gave her a semiautomatic .22 rifle with telescopic sight. Chaykun keeps it in a black nylon bag decorated with Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Care Bears and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles patches.

Cartoon patches on a gun bag! How droll! But here we see a major flaw in thinking: she used to view guns as "evil". So, naturally, before anyone had a chance to teach her critical thinking skills, somebody was able to convince her that, indeed, the opposite was true: as Lott's book argues, guns are not just none of the government's business, they're good. They're benevolent. They actually stop crime. This sort of thinking is much better than actually studying a subject in depth and reaching personal, admittedly limited conclusions that, because of their limited nature, are subject to revision and refinement. The latter is no good because it's difficult to fit into a ten-second soundbite on O'Reilly. Professors have noticed this in class, too:

Geoff Schneider, an economics professor at Bucknell, says that the conservative group's constant charge in The Counterweight, that the university is infected by political correctness and that professors seek to indoctrinate students with a liberal agenda, has had an effect in the classroom. "As the conservatives have become more prominent, other students are more prone to believe that they are being indoctrinated," Schneider says. "So the openness of a number of students to new ideas and new ways of looking at things has actually moved in a disturbing direction. Students are much more willing to write off something as 'liberal talk' -- oh, I don't need to think about that, that's just ideology -- as opposed to thinking, in a complex way, about all of the different ideas and evaluating them."

This is what entertainment masquerading as politics has done to discourse in this country. This is why most people equate Republicanism with conservatism, and vice versa, even though it might not be an exact fit. Most people couldn't explain the difference between the views of a moderate Republican, a Buckley conservative, and an Ayn Rand Libertarian if you held a blowtorch to their testicles, much less discuss why all these viewpoints are related. But they all know that "liberal" is a swear word. Maybe I'm just an elitist prick. Maybe I don't think people are capable of intelligent thought. Maybe I'm just as much of an elitist as some of the readers of this weblog. Or maybe, just maybe, all I really want to do is slug Dinesh D'Souza in the throat. Not because of his political views. Because of his choice of mouthwash. Fuck Listerine, man.