When I first got to Dartmouth, it became clear that I stuck out for one giant reason: I was raised a conservative. Upon being introduced to a few people here by those who knew me best, my friends were kind enough to label me as such. They would point out I was Republican the way one would point out a monkey at a zoo. The responses I would get were pretty standard: "You're a Republican? I'm sorry." Like I was a leper. My favorite was "Where I come from, 'conservative' is a dirty word!"
When I grew up I was conservative and proud. Then I started having internal struggles.
I am a white male. I grew up comfortably, and there was never anything like a struggle to put food on the table. As such, I bear the brunt of reactionary liberalism, the type that concerns itself with social justice and works from the bottom of the economic ladder up.
Consistently I am told, explicitly or implicitly, that I am a standard bearer for the sins of the white males of this country's history.
This is the source of my internal struggle. I am indeed a white man. White men in fact did horrible things to nonwhites and nonmen in this country's admittedly relatively recent past.
But I am also the great-grandson of Catholic-Polish immigrants, who settled in New Hampshire, who never owned slaves, nor were even around anywhere close to that period of American history. My grandparents never made it past the sixth grade. They, like a generation of Americans, struggled to survive. But through some hard work, I have been honored to be a second-generation college student. I hardly fit into the WASP stereotype any better than a lot of the minorities who have been defamed throughout our nation's life (in fact, I do not fit in at all if a traditional definition of "white" is used). Moreover, I personally have never done anything so much as be impolite to anyone on the basis of race or sex.
I have not decided where I come down on these issues. I honestly do not know whether social programs can do their job and help raise the poorest of the poor up to a respectable standard of living. For now, though, I know who I am voting for -- because my proclivities lead me to believe with both a gut and intellect that my upbringing, at least in terms of socialism, is correct.
And yet, it is very important that I keep my mind open for debate. It is entirely possible that the "system" or the "man" keeps the little man pegged down. It might be the case that today's poor just do not have the opportunities my ancestors did and therefore deserve a helping hand from every one of my paychecks. It is something to be debated.
By the same token, however, it is equally important for you, the average Dartmouth student who takes quasi-socialism for granted as a necessary part of our government, to keep my side of the argument open for debate. It is easy to blanket our complicated society and say that our government can atone for its past (and present) by throwing money at the problem, but doing so ignores the nuances of the situation -- like in my own personal experience. Making rash judgements that every citizen of today's America has a responsibility to help the poor through taxes is indicative of a similar reasoning that a bigot uses when he assumes all members of a race are inferior, simply due to a common characteristic. Well intentioned and entirely different, yes, but indicative still.
It is of ultimate importance that members of this campus step beyond the scope of their political beliefs and examine the total range of philosophies. Contrary to what the Dartmouth Free Press says, conservatism is not based on irrational bigotry. It offers strong counterarguments to liberalism and the intellectual health of every member of this community would benefit from a candid reassessment of his views.
