It’s Been Quite Interesting Being a Conservative in a Liberal Bubble (Part I of II)
I am a conservative living in an overwhelmingly liberal bubble. This has led me to live quite an interesting life.
Take law school. At the end of my first week there, a random person walked up to me and said, “So I heard that you’re the new conservative in our class.”
I was rather flattered. During that week, I’d gone out of my way to avoid getting to know anyone, mostly because I didn’t care to be there. Yet despite my best efforts at being invisible, a liberal took notice of the sole conservative who contaminated his bubble.
I hadn’t known it at the time, but I’d stumbled into a school that’s notoriously one of the most liberal in the nation.
Apparently, the school had been like that for decades. My first boss, a conservative himself, attended the same school several decades before me. He told me of a story early in his first semester when he was booed into silence after speaking up in class and never spoke again in the remaining three years. I empathized by saying that sounded familiar, then we both gave a hollow laugh.
Of course, every bubble, no matter how strong of an effort at ideological purity, accidentally slips in a couple conservatives, and we always manage to find our own “safe spaces.”
For example, at law school, the five of us all knew to find comfort in tax law. At college, the conservative bunch knew to avoid the sociology department as a place filled with raging maniacs, but then could seek refuge in the political science department that was rumored to have a number of closet moderates as professors.
I always found it funny that liberals in my bubble don’t actually know how to insult a conservative, probably because it takes knowing one to insult one.
Soon after my secret came out that first week in law school, I inadvertently engaged in a political debate in an e-mail chain in which all of the school was copied. The next day the entire school body labeled me a Nixonian, but I couldn’t figure out why that was an insult; after all, only Nixon can go to China.
But alas, there is always an odd liberal or two who’s ok associating with a conservative.
One of my closest friends from college is fond of saying that he became my friend because he knew about the existence of Republicans but had never actually seen one, and he became fascinated with me because I was the first conservative he’d ever encountered. He can crack a good joke or two about Republicans, knowing very well how my perfectly functioning yet conservative mind works.
(continues to Part II)
