Do you know a former college liberal?

The Arrakis Street Journal | March 9, 2001 | Paul Atreides

[Paul Atreides]

I am currently working on a degree in college and was thinking: has anyone here personally known a flaming liberal college student who went on to become a conservative? I really have to wonder if some of the drivel that liberal students espouse is either part of a fad or part of their own insecurity (trying to make people think they are smart). I know there are kooks who actually believe that mess, but I was wondering how many go out into the real world still believing it.

[JenB]

Oh, I hope the liberals I go to school with will grow out of it... just this week I had a conversation with a girl who says that if Hillary runs for President, she'll vote for the woman just because she's a woman, with a history professor who tries to blame conservatism for every evil the world has ever seen, and a girl from Japan who first said I was being intolerant for saying China is a communist country, and then accused Bush of putting America's interests first! (I mean, what do you even say to things like that?)

I do know people who grew out of their liberalism, like my own mother, but sometimes it seems there's no hope left....

[f.Christian]

me---big time!

[Chi-townChief]

David Horowitz at FrontPage Magazine is the best guy to start with. Check out his bio.

[Paul Atreides]

I meant someone you know personally.

[Free_at_last_-2001]

I believe this is a quote from Winston Churchill “ if a man isn’t liberal when he is 17 he has no heart – if a man isn’t Conservative when he is 30 he has no brain”

[tbg681]

Oh sure: There are lots of flaming college leftists who become conservatives. Happens all the time.

Usually occurs the moment they take a peek at their first paystub in the real world and see how they've been raped by the welfare state.

Nothing works like actually PAYING for utopia to knock all that socialist agitprop out of your head!

[irishjuggler]

I don't think most people change that much.
The most left-wing person I encountered in college was a history graduate student. She was the teaching assistant in a European history course I was taking. According to her, all the evil in the world was the fault of the European, Christian males. I used to argue with her all the time and she hated me.
I haven't seen her in 12 years, but I "Googled" her name a few months ago. Now she's a professor at a well-known university. And guess what? She's every bit as left-wing as she was when I knew her. Her web site mentions hate crimes, feminism, stopping the war in Afghanistan, etc.

[Dumb_Ox]

Well in a moment of youthful indiscretion, I spent the first semester of my Freshman year in the company of the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Then I realized how biliously atheistic and murderous they were, and became a reactionary. I wouldn't say that I've changed all that much, only I've realized that political movements are no replacement for sound philosophical and theological principles.

[Bitwhacker]

Yep. This guy.

[supercat]

I am currently working on a degree in college and was thinking: has anyone here personally known a flaming liberal college student who went on to become a conservative?

Many here on FR, myself included.

[tbg681]

As for knowing a former college leftist idiot personally, yes I do. And of all people, my boss!

He graduated college in 1971: Hair down to his ass, peace signs, worked for McGovern in '72 -- the whole smash.

Then......he went into business, got married, bought a house. Suffered like the rest of us through the dreary Carterized late '70's: Gas lines, 14% inflation, 20% interest rates, Soviets on the move, etc.

Voted for Reagan in '80 (heresay to his family and friends). Never looked back. In fact, he and I became the resident Clinton haters at the firm!

Have faith. There IS hope for the morons you deal with at school. Really.

[xsmommy]

KNOW one?? i was one! in fact i was a flaming liberal in law school too. it takes growing up and having responsibilities, a job and owning property to really know which end is up. No one who is liberal in college is condemned to life as an ignorant lib. But i do wish i had been conservative from birth. I was raised by a union Democrat, though, who remained Dem til the day he died.

[supercat]

Interesting piece. Has it been posted in a thread of its own?

Many of the higher-tier liberals are well aware that they're lying. When they oppose things like concealed-carry reform, their fear isn't that it will increase crime, but that it will decrease crime. Likewise, they oppose school vouchers because they would work.

Liberals love the little people. They want to keep them little.

[M. Thatcher]

Me.

[supercat]

...who remained Dem til the day he died.

You mean he hasn't continued to vote his party affiliation?

[Dr. Frank fan]

In some sense, I am such a person. At least, I seem to recall a (very) brief time in college when I was buying into a few "liberal" (left-wing) idiocies. Didn't last though.

Your "insecurity" explanation is as good as any other. (I think maybe I wanted some girl to like me or something :)

In general, have faith, it does happen that some people grow out of their immature flirtation with leftism. Just look at someone like David Horowitz, for example. Or: Ronald Reagan. Best,

[andrew]

i was one too. i still pretty much have my same small 'L' libertarian ideals, but in college the left tapped into that and basically implored me to be paranoid that the religious right was working overtime to take away my rights. all the while campus speeh codes and political correctness were being instituted around me in the name of diversity and multiculturalism. when i graduated in 1991, i had an epiphany, a conversion of sorts, as i watched in horror the clarence thomas hearings. 'those guys are on my side?' i thought as i watched the dems attempt to assassinate a good man. since then my libertarian instincts have been buffered by an attraction to the moral clarity of the conservative movement. happily just voted for bill simon last tuesday here in california.

[Mr. Lucky]

The beautiful Mrs. Lucky fits your description. Her liberalism evaporated one night in a dimly lit parking garage. She can now score expert with her government model Colt.

[xsmommy]

i will say this, though, i think those who have BEEN liberal are even more effective in arguing with/combating liberal logic, having been there and thought that themselves, don't you agree?