The 'liberal' education

Before I go any further, I need to clarify: I don’t like using the terms “liberal” and “conservative” in contexts other than “a liberal dose of vinegar” or “a conservative investment strategy.” I would support a ban on both these words for the next quarter-century until they are washed of their various — often contradictory — meanings and can once more be applied with precision and utility. If both George W. Bush and Barry Goldwater are conservatives, then the word seems to have been stretched beyond its breaking point. Similarly, I can imagine John Stuart Mill rolling over in his grave at some policies being advanced under “liberalism.” And when conservatives start calling themselves “classical liberals,” or when some Democrats qualify themselves as “economically conservative” (and hence in line with classical liberalism), it is clear that most of the useful meaning is derived from the qualifying adverb, not the lame-duck adjective lingering at the end of the phrase.

The use of “liberal” in “liberal education” — what most of us are receiving at Princeton — is even more confusing, because a liberal education is that education worthy of a free person, but liberal politics — an unrelated subject — were originally about constraining government: a favorite theme of Ronald Reagan.

So I don’t like using these words, but I will briefly break my usual rule and describe as conservatives those who self-identify as conservatives; mutatis mutandis with liberals. Conservatism in America is undergoing a major crisis and is increasingly dominated by social conservatism, which could be characterized by several significant factors: opposition to same-sex marriage, support for “the war on terror,” and a vaguely socialist but energetic defence of “Main Street America” against educated elites (like everyone at Princeton), most effectively led by Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor.

Given this recent trend, one would expect conservatism in the Ivy League to be small and libertarian. Princeton is much more accommodating to the Barry Goldwater variety of conservative, bent on getting government out of both bedroom and boardroom alike. Strangely enough, to judge by the Princeton Tory, the hyperactive Anscombe Society and their related organizations, conservatism at Princeton seems to be decidedly in the social camp.

At this point, I think it would be useful to further parse social conservatism into two separate but related groups: the Sarah Palin category of small towns and blue-collar workers, and the Bill Buckley category of over-educated, upper-class enfants terribles. The Sarah Palin category is necessarily much, much larger in America; but it is the Bill Buckley category that dominates within Princetonian conservatism.

The Bill Buckley conservatives are a generally cheerful, genial crowd, interested in cigars, liquor and Anglophilia; they are predominantly Roman Catholics — at Princeton there is even a subset of Catholic converts — and they believe just as passionately as the Sarah Palin crowd in defending the status quo on marriage, rolling back abortion and venerating Ronald Reagan. Where they differ from most social conservatives is in their overtly intellectual air, cosmopolitanism and general ambience of idyllic luxury.

While it is to be expected that the social conservatives at Princeton would be of this more genteel variety, we could not have expected that most conservatives at Princeton would lay such emphasis on social issues at all. The (very few) conservatives at most Ivy League universities have usually been of the libertarian, Barry Goldwater mold, more intent on studying Austrian economics than natural law arguments against homosexual intercourse.

The background, of course, is a university — and a general socioeconomic stratum — in which a mild liberalism is the default setting. The average Princetonian will vote to legalize gay marriage but only after someone else puts the issue on the ballot, will shy away from social issues generally out of a wish not to offend, support expanded welfare programs on compassionate grounds, and consistently encourage Democrats out of a sense of class loyalty (but often fail to show up at the ballot box altogether).

Given the wide pool of lukewarm liberals on campus, the tight core of conservatives stands out more strongly. Similarly, their generally defensive attitude has led most of them to read more widely in their own literature and practice argumentation more frequently than most of their (generally inactive) liberal peers. That’s one of the advantages of being the underdog.

What strikes me as unusual about Princeton conservatism is this strange and unpredictable social emphasis — which was supposed to have gone out with George W. Bush — when the more obviously successful route would be to follow the lead of the British Tories and promote fiscal prudence in a time of economic uncertainty.

Conservatives at Princeton are a small set in the University, which is what we would expect, but given the extreme dearth of leadership in the Republican Party, it is reasonable to suppose that future conservative candidates for state and national office might come from Princeton — so everyone would do well to consider this striking state of affairs.

Brendan Carroll is a philosophy major from New York. He can be reached at btcaroll@princeton.edu.