Amused Cynic

Neo-neocon posts on an LA Times piece about the extreme lack of ideological diversity on college campuses.

I’ve noticed this myself, although I’m not in academia. Time and again I flummox people who meet me by seeming to be articulate, intelligent, pleasant, well-informed, and also (by their definition) conservative. I can almost hear the wheels of cognitive dissonance grinding in their minds as they try to parse these seemingly contradictory characteristics of the person in front of them, causing them to wonder (and sometimes to voice aloud) “How can it be?”

I’ve done my share of such flummoxing….I know exactly what she means. I make it a point to never bring up politics in social situations in the first instance, but if someone else does, and it becomes apparent that the speakers are just assuming that everyone else in the group just agrees with them as a matter of course, I never fail to disabuse them of that notion. And you can always see just how shellshocked they are to learn that the “articulate, intelligent, pleasant, well-informed” person they had been having such a nice time with all evening is in fact a “conservative” Neanderthal ogre.