This might surprise some outsiders who think of Dartmouth as a conservative school. But the triumph of liberal sentiment in this election season isn’t just anecdotal–there is mathematical evidence, too. The Dartmouth, the college’s student newspaper, paired a story headlined ADMISSIONS OFFICE CONFRONTS CONSERVATIVE STEREOTYPE with a student-conducted poll reporting that only 22 percent of the Dartmouth community approves of the job being done by President George W. Bush–this while Bush’s national approval rating stood solidly near 60 percent. And Dean’s popularity isn’t merely youthful idealism: Just 3 percent of Dartmouth professors back Bush.
Why shouldn’t they? Dean’s campaign resembles a page from the average Dartmouth classroom syllabus. For example, a history profes sor compared the Patriot Act to Draconian practices used in the Roman empire. Dean’s recent statement that “dealing with race is about educating white folks” so closely resembled Dartmouth President James Wright’s 2002 convocation speech on purported “white privilege” that the words could have been penned by the same author.
Some of us, however, are still standing up for conservatism at this newly left-leaning school. Despite being outnumbered by resident Deaniacs, most campus conservatives remain fervent in their support of the president and find the rhetoric of many Democratic campaigns unconvincing. On no issue is this division more clearly manifested than the global war on terror.
Campus conservatives have been in the hawk’s nest since the beginning, with no intention of spreading their wings and flying elsewhere. But, contrary to the claims of the antiwar crowd, conservative support of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq has little to do with the imperial soul-cleansing of blood and steel. Conservative student support is best outlined in the demands of Bush’s Sept. 12, 2002, United Nations speech: an end to Saddam Hussein’s state-sponsored terrorism–such as funding the Palestinian Arab Liberation Front and Mujahedin-e Khalq; an end to WMD programs–whether stockpiles exist, the programs did; and an end to illegal trade outside the oil-for-food program. Most importantly, as Bush said, “If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shia, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans and others, again as required by Security Council resolutions.” Talk of human shredding machines and mass graves should have softened the hardened hearts of any antiwar protester. But it did not.
Why are liberals so reluctant to speak out against terror? Dartmouth senior and campus conservative Stefan Beck explains it this way. “Liberals have always believed they have a monopoly on compassion,” he said, “but when it came time to make a decision on Iraq, they were more concerned about hypothetical business deals or the wounded ego of the ‘international community’ than they were about real suffering people. Most war supporters at Dartmouth were swayed by horror stories about Iraq. Whether or not Halliburton might turn a big profit was a small matter when we had the will and means to save 24 million people from a mass murderer. The justification really couldn’t have been any simpler.”
Words like these don’t win many hearts here. When Beck aired his views at an open discussion of the war, the microphone was wrested from his hands by the “impartial” moderator, a Dartmouth government professor.
Dean has carried campus antiwar sentiment to the national scene. While Coalition forces have been playing 52-card pickup with the Iraqi-most-wanted deck, Dean has been bluffing the table: unilateralism, WMDs and the occasional conspiracy theory about Saudi 9/11 warnings. But for all the discussion of the lack of WMD stockpiles and the oxymoronic idea of a supposed unilateral multinational war effort, Dean has not provided any coherent solution. Sometimes he says we need more troops; sometimes he says troops should come home; sometimes he says we should finish the job; sometimes he says we should stop spending money on the war effort.
Such wavering is fine for many students here. But those are the students who’ve never been concerned with the war’s success. With Saddam’s capture, many Iraqis began slapping Baathist statues with their shoes and firing off celebratory gunshots. Campus reaction was more cynical: one contributor to the Dartmouth Free Press’s Weblog posted the headline TERRIBLE NEWS: SADDAM IS CAPTURED. THE CHICKEN HAWKS WILL GAIN IN POWER NOW. A few tender-hearted students discussed the “dignity” of Paul Bremer’s “We got him” speech.
We campus conservatives try to ignore such talk. Another Dartmouth senior, Rollo Begley, said, “National security and the war are the most important campaign issues right now, and among the candidates, Bush has it best. I doubt anyone thought that the terrorist attacks would stop after 9/11, but two years later, the best they’ve mustered is a shootout in LAX. And look what America has accomplished: Afghanistan nearly has a constitution, Iraqis are free from torture, and Kaddafi’s quaking with fear.”
That’s enough to make any college conservative celebrate.
