I Am (Going to Be) Legend

I’m waiting for the doors to open at a KNUS News/Talk rally in Denver. I’m thankful for my wisdom to show up three hours early because the line is already long and predictions say the 1,300 seat room will fill up in a snap. While I’m thrilled to be in a convention center that’s busting at the seams with Republicans after my own heart, I can’t help but notice the common demographic in this audience: middle-aged white folks. Some are elderly, some are minorities, but at first glance all you see is a cross-section of Dick-and-Jane vanilla couples. They don’t look anything like the crowds I’ve seen at Obama rallies. Those crowds are full of teenagers and college kids and urban trendsetters. They’re hip and current. And I’m starting to fear: Is my party dying out?

Well, yes.

We are a dying breed. The ratio of conservatives to liberals in my generation is a frighteningly steep depletion compared to our parents’ generation, and if this trend continues we’ll be a one-party country in no time. This cannot happen.

While I sometimes joke about seceding from the Union or shipping all the Democrats I hate to a quarantined Long Island, I do, deep down, acknowledge our need for Leftists. Both parties work a sensitive teeter-totter of keeping the other in check, making sure we don’t move too far to either extreme. As much as we might loathe one another from time to time, we’ve been doing a decent job of working in tandem thus far.

Right now, we’re on the brink of a four year stint of pure liberalism. If Obama is elected, all three branches of our government will be controlled by the same party, allowing one mindset to run rampant until 2012. And there are certain things they’re planning to do that could never be undone.

The biggest question as to the decrease in young Republicans is not in any way quantitative, but rather a resounding, “Why?” As my sister asked me once, “why is our generation so blind?”
I have developed one major theory and, ergo, have pinpointed the underlying thesis of a book I plan to write in the next year or so. Our generation has been tainted against conservatism in several ways, from enduring eight years of Bush, a poor representation of our party’s values and yet still far too severely crucified, journalistic bias from Katie Couric to SNL to Jon Stewart, and an adoption of the idea that celebrities are qualified to give endorsements worthy of mimicking.

But the foremost reason liberalism is running rampant among youth? It’s got a head start.

I am a member of the first generation to be directly affected by purposeful liberal indoctrination. I didn’t know it was happening back then, but in retrospect, I can see instances as early as Kindergarten that required me to use fundamental principles of the Democrat party, and had I not had parents who actively showed me the other side, I’d be voting for Obama this election just like the majority of my peers.

I’m not saying you’re all brainwashed. But if you’ve never been exposed to my side, or dissected the inner workings of your side, maybe you are. I have done my damnedest to observe both parties objectively and I have come to my own conclusions, many of which I’ve made very clear to all of you over the past months. Even though my past thirteen years of public school have taught me that humans are evil, that evolution is truth, that we need to help those who won’t help themselves, that English alone isn’t sufficient, that we have to love everyone, that no opinion but the common one is wrong, that God is dead, that free speech is reserved only for some, that violence is never, ever an answer, and that superior intellect should be ignored and quashed so that we may focus all of our energy on dragging up the slow, I have clawed my way across the aisle into conservatism. I have had to fight so hard for my right to be a Republican, and you better believe that I struggle every day to maintain the pride I have in my party. Even I, the one you all think is the strongest conservative on campus, have trouble standing up to the constant pelting of liberal ideas, and I can’t imagine anyone who’s starting their search for political identity on the fence to have any opportunity to get to the Right side.

I already know that my beliefs are worth fighting for. That’s why I do it so hard. But if the Left keeps making it this impossible for the Right to live and breathe and speak, I will end up being the last one standing when our generation comes of age and into power.

Look for my book. It’ll be called Through the Cracks: A Memoir of One Student Liberal Education Missed.