Both the right and left fail politically at Yale

Consider Students Against Sweatshops (SAS). On Sat., Feb. 5, the group gathered to protest The Gap's use of sweatshop labor by marching in front of the chain's Chapel Street store. Walking along Chapel on my way to lunch, I encountered several pedestrians who had passed The Gap, so I decided to stand a while and listen to their reactions. Nobody seemed swayed by SAS's posters and chants. Many passers-by had no idea why they were demonstrating in the first place, and others found the spectacle ridiculous. Unless these people were an utterly unrepresentative sample, the protest's only accomplishment was providing SAS a chance to glory in its self-righteousness.

The public persona of Yale conservatism, on the other hand, combines the holier-than-thou outlook of its liberal counterpart with an attitude of feigned superiority. Two columns published last week provide a summary of this philosophy. Brooks Eubank's atrocity [Yale Daily News, 2/2/00] needs no introduction or explanation. A less noticed but equally disturbing piece of condescension was Ned Andrews' column "Don't Care? Don't Vote" [Herald, 2/4/00]. The idea that the majority of the electorate are "a grumbling horde halfheartedly flipping switches like caged monkeys at typewriters" contradicts the very assumptions that serve as the foundation of democracy. The only recent examples of government by "a small number of dedicated people," are communist dictatorships. Like everyone seduced by the idea of government in the mode of Plato's Republic, Andrews would do well to recall that Athens' darkest hour occurred during the rule of a brutal oligarchy.

More disturbing than this condescension are conservatives' constant complaints about being marginalized at Yale. If you express sympathy with the sentiments of a man who implied that homosexuals deserve to be shot, or suggested that most of this country is too stupid to choose its leaders, you should not be surprised that people will dislike you and your views. Yet many conservatives here assume the posture of an oppressed minority. When Light and Truth isn't spewing narrow-minded ideology, it's wallowing in myopic self-pity. Granted, the Ezra Stiles freshman counselors did wrongly remove the magazine's first issue from student mailboxes. Nonetheless, conservatism is alive and well at Yale. If the majority of the college community calls itself liberal, this is not because Yale brainwashes us or because we're a bunch of amoral hedonists; it's because most intelligent people dislike biblical literalism, condescension, and pretention.

Then again, Yale isn't exactly a bastion of enlightened liberalism. I know many professed liberals whose attitudes toward women, homosexuals, and minorities betray latent prejudice. And my experience with the Liberal Party gives some credit to conservative accusations of complacent self-satisfaction. Their debates often disintegrate into an extended back-patting session punctuated by remarks along the lines of "the one just war will be when the working people of the world rise up against capitalism." Such statements of trite idealism are simply pointless.

The root of Yale's political malaise is a lack of perception. Publicly, neither liberals nor conservatives admit that an intelligent person might disagree with them, and SAS adheres to a form of confrontational activism that has been obsolete since Vietnam. The political community must realize that ideologizing alienates more people than it wins over. Most of the conservatives I know are neither elitists nor bigots, just as most of the liberals I know are neither naïfs nor angry young firebrands. If political and activist organizations want to move out of the margins, they must realize that attracting the interest of the average person requires abandoning outdated philosophies and publicly countering the extremism of a few of their members. Otherwise, to most of Yale they remain Eubankses and slogan shouters lost in their own self-righteousness. Nathan Littlefield is a freshman in Ezra Stiles.

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