Will the Real Conservatives Please Stand Up?

It's not easy being a real conservative at Columbia, just as Kermit the Frog would remind us that "It's not easy being green." Yet while Kermit's struggle with his own identity does not at all diminish the hues of his outward color or inward character, I fear that the struggle of outspoken conservatives on this campus to defend their own conservative identity at times alters their ultimate portrayal of conservatism. In doing so, they do a disservice to themselves and Columbia as a whole. Perhaps most damning of all, the part of their identity they most readily abandon is the one I most admire-their face as advocates of human rights-despite its importance to modern American conservatism as a whole.

For those of you shocked by my reference to "conservatives" as "advocates of human rights," I don't blame you. As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof would argue, however, that connection is hardly off the mark. As he wrote last December, "Members of the Christian right ... are the new internationalists, increasingly engaged in humanitarian causes abroad. ... Take sex trafficking. Paul Wellstone, the liberal from Minnesota, led an effort with Mr. Brownback and others to pass landmark legislation in 2000 to battle sex slavery around the world. But since Mr. Wellstone's death in 2002, the leadership on the issue has passed to the Christian righ...Or Darfur. Conservative Christians have been jumping up and down about Sudan for years...So when Sudan's government launched its genocide in the Darfur region, Democrats were slow to speak out, perhaps perceiving it as a conservative issue. Then there's North Korea. Democrats have properly lambasted Mr. Bush for his disastrous approach toward North Korea ...[b]ut it has been Mr. Brownback and other conservative Christians who have turned the heat on North Korea's human rights record." Clearly, there's something to the notion that conservatives today, and particularly those on the Christian right, have emerged as leading advocates of human rights.

On the other hand, for those of you not surprised by this, one simple question remains: why not? Have you ever seen a demonstration by the Columbia College Conservative Club, or any conservative group, for that matter, concerned with sex trafficking, repression in North Korea, or genocide in the Sudan? I certainly have not. While conservatives may be championing those causes off campus, on-campus conservatives have effectively ceded those issues to the left. It makes perfect sense, then, for liberals here to view social conservatism only in terms of its controversial domestic social positions.

Of course, part of the blame for this phenomenon can be put on campus liberals and the standard litmus test they apply to all right-wingers. I know this test too well. After all, once I am "outed" as a Republican to new people on campus, two questions invariably follow: are you pro-choice? Are you in favor of gay marriage?

For Columbia students, these help weed out the "moderate," "progressive," and perhaps "salvageable" Republicans from the stalwart, "incorrigible," conservative elements. Those who can safely answer yes to both questions, including myself, can move beyond to more interesting, albeit still contentious, issues. For those who choose to answer no, however, the conversation invariably either stays there and heats up or ends altogether. It is hard to blame conservatives, then, for constantly defending their positions on those issues to the exclusion of much else. Certainly, defending a pro-life position could turn into a full-time job at Columbia.

At the same time, part of the blame can be placed on the moderate Republicans who have sought to counter such previously existing stereotypes of conservatives as heartless and uncompassionate. Through such efforts, the notion of the "Compassionate Conservative" was born. Yet in that effort to counter liberal stereotypes, the terminology only reinforces them. After all, the assertion that some conservatives need a "compassionate" brand just implies that conservatism alone is without compassion.

The largest share of the blame, however, belongs to conservatives on campus themselves. Those who have let liberals define their issues for them and ceded human rights issues to those on the left have no one to blame for seeming uncompassionate but themselves. They are the ones who have been sidetracked from other conservative issues and who, through lack of activism and advocacy of human rights, have allowed the image of the uncompassionate conservative to define the reality on Columbia's campus.

No party or social group has a monopoly on compassion. Some groups do, however, show it better than others. In America today, as Kristof highlighted last December, few have been more effective at shining a light on human suffering than the Conservative right. You would never know that on Columbia's campus though, where they have shamefully let their embattled status come before such advocacy.