An excerpt from an article in the fantastic Heterodox Academy:
Imagine that you are an 18-year-old student. Perhaps you were raised in a liberal household; or perhaps, in a conservative one. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you have arrived at a top American university. Like the other freshmen in your class: you’re intelligent, insecure and largely ignorant.
As classes begin, you start to absorb the signals; the mantras; the soundbites and principles of relativism and progressivism. In categorical and absolute terms, you learn of the stupidity and malice of the ‘other side’.
In this climate, would you, young and looking to make friends as you are, dare to voice a different view? Would you, on your own time, question such assumptions? Maybe you would. But the likelihood is that you would not. Or at least, you would rather not. Because it would make your student life difficult.
These are not hypotheticals, but real people. An Oxford undergraduate, who identifies as liberal and a feminist, tells me she is a ‘secret heretic’; fearful to voice her doubts on gender fluidity and intersectionality. While a liberal professor at New York University tells me she’s exhausted trying to qualify every lesson with progressive frames.
And if this is how many liberals feel, can you imagine what it’s like to be a conservative?
I'm not a conservative, but I feel the need to preface every challenge to overt liberalism with, "I'm not a conservative but..."
