The Little Brown Reader

Such, at any rate, is the impression you might get from following the news. A May article in The New York Times Magazine -- one whose author will doubtless burn in one of hell's warmer and more feces-filled concentric circles for coining the term "Young Hipublicans" -- claimed that conservatism is becoming mainstream on American college campuses. In a recent American Conservative editorial, Gavin McInnis, right-leaning editor of the painfully cool magazine Vice, spotted the same trend even among his core audience of Williamsburg hipsters. A study by the Harvard Institute of Politics found that undergraduates supported the war in Iraq by a ratio of two to one --a lower level of support than among the general public, but high for the college set -- and were about as likely to identify as Republicans as they were to call themselves Democrats. Jim Eltringham of the Leadership Institute, a group which aids conservative campus groups, offers anecdotal confirmation of the trend, reporting strong recent growth in student organizations on the right. At the same time, these young conservatives seem not to be plagued by the disdain for homosexuals or immigrants that sometimes cause libertarians to shrink from association with their adult counterparts.

In short, it seems as though Millennials—the post-Gen X cohort born after 1981—are leaning to the right, with a strong libertarian streak. Alas, it's not true.

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