The late, great paleoconservative columnist Sam Francis called conservatism “the movement that doesn’t move.” He was wrong. The Establishment conservative movement moves backwards—shamelessly, unrepentantly, and proclaiming each new defeat a glorious victory.
And, perhaps uniquely in the history of political movements, this Conservatism Inc. has created a youth movement that less militant, less dedicated, and less idealistic than its elderly apparatchiks. Rather than wanting to change the world, these young “rightists” are more interested in clambering to the top of already existing movement that has utterly failed in any of its stated intentions, careful to dissent from the zeitgeist only with the leave of their masters.
The house-training of American youth in general, and of its self-described “conservative” element in particular, was reflected in the latest report on “The American Freshman” from the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI). [National Norms 2011, PDF]
This report led to predictable MSM headlines gloating about the increasing liberalism of American college students. But it did also show that students see college primarily as a means to achieving better jobs. Despite a slight increase in activism, reflecting the rise of the Occupy Movement, there is no return to 1960s Leftist student radicalism.
The most dramatic change: college students’ ever increasing march towards what the campus Left calls “tolerance”:
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