> I personally tend to lean more on the right here because I went to an "elite" institution and saw firsthand, plenty of times, the same kind of totalitarian ideological bullying and groupthink that the article describes.

I hear this kind of claims many times, and it always confuses me because I've had quite the opposite experience.

I've just received an AB from an "elite" institution (the one pictured in the Substack version of this article), and despite me being quite the textbook example of a Right Leaning White Male™ (except maybe that I'm not rich), I never witnessed the "kind of totalitarian ideological bullying and groupthink that the article describes."

Now, was I surrounded by mostly left-leaning peers? Absolutely. Did I ever feel coerced into keeping my opinions to myself? Never. As a matter of fact, I was given platforms to express my opinions in speaking and writing, and while the average reaction to them was forceful disagreement, it never felt disrespectful to me.

I've expressed my oppositions to a bunch of things happening at school (SGSO reform, unionization to name a couple) and I found the resulting conversations to be constructive in most cases. Sure, I arguably never changed anyone's mind, but that never was my goal. I've talked at length about issues like "progressive language" like Latinx/womxn terminology and personal pronouns, and I've never felt attacked in return.

What probably puzzles me the most, however, is that some of the forms of oppression that Bari Weiss talks about are so foreign to me that I really wonder whether I've been living in the same educational system as the one she describes. For example, in one article [1] she describes how some "feminists who believe there are biological differences between men and women . . . fear the illiberal left." In my four years of college, I've never once come across someone who suggested that there are no such biological differences--let alone witnessing oppression in the name of this idea. Sure, there are probably niche circles in which the idea has been discussed, perhaps even entertained; but the same can be said e.g. of Mormonism, yet I don't see anyone claiming that U.S. education is falling into the hands of Mormons.

Sometimes I wonder what makes my experience so seemingly different from that of many other folks on the conservative side. Maybe it's the fact that I'm international, which might make American interlocutors more accommodating of my different viewpoint. Or it could be that forceful disagreements (often garnished with insults and seasoned with various allegations of *isms) are the norm in the country I grew up in, so much so that I've grown to recognize them as inevitable--if regrettable--aspects of conversations about sensitive topics.

One thing that I did notice, however, is how many of my conservative friends were experiencing real anxiety around these topics, and stayed away from bringing them up as a result of the anxiety itself. As a matter of fact, I never joined any explicitly conservative social group, one reason being that most of the conversations going on in those circles were way too angsty and whiny for my tastes.

All in all, while I appreciate this kind of reporting for the light it sheds on a relatively unknown part of society, I really dislike how fear-based it is. I feel like it does more harm than good, by making conservative defensive and afraid before they've even had a real discussion with people they disagree with. Case in point:

>There is simply no possible way this country can survive when the value systems are so opposed to each other.

Nah, many countries (including the US) have been through far greater ideological clashes and got through them, if not unchanged.

That's not to say everything is rosy--if you ask me, problems abound; but exceptions are exceptions, no matter how alarming. Let's not stoop to crying wolf while there's time.

[1] https://www.deseret.com/indepth/2021/3/2/22309605/the-silenc...

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