Conservatives begin to infiltrate the left's last redoubt

The inevitable slide of today's left continues...

...What accounts for the growing conservatism of college students? After 9/11, many collegians came to distrust the U.N.-loving left to defend the nation with vigor. As of late 2003, college students backed the war more strongly than the overall American population. Notes Edward Morrissey, "Captain Ed" of the popular conservative blog Captain's Quarters, these kids "grew up on . . . moral relativism and internationalism, constantly fed the line that there was no such thing as evil in the world, only misunderstandings." Suddenly, on 9/11, this generation discovered that "there are enemies and they wanted to kill Americans in large numbers, and that a good portion of what they'd been taught was drizzly pap." Yet a deeper reason for the rightward shift, which began well before 9/11, is the left's broader intellectual and political failure. American college kids grew up in an era that witnessed both communism's fall and the unchained U.S. economy's breathtaking productivity surge. They've seen that anyone willing to work hard--regardless of race or sex--can thrive in such an opportunity-rich system. "I'm only 20, so I don't remember segregation or the oppression of women--in fact, my mother had a very successful career since I was a kid," one student observed in an online discussion. "I look around and don't see any discrimination against minorities or women." Left-wing charges of U.S. economic injustice sound like so much BS to many kids today...

WSJ: Conservatives begin to infiltrate the left's last redoubt.