So I clicked over, half expecting it to be one of those blogbot things that automatically links blog posts on certain topics, since I've blogged about Obama's nicotine habit. To my great surprise, TCSB turns out to be the site of a slender blonde named Helen Rittelmeyer who identifies herself as a conservative, a Catholic and -- mirable dictu! -- a senior at Yale University.
Did I say "surprise"? It's more like anabolic shock. The admissions committee in New Haven is in sackcloth and ashes lamenting that an actual Christian got through the university's intensive screening process. But she's not only a Christian, she's a Catholic conservative, and we know what kind of malevolent vengeance those people have inflicted on Yale.Yet Miss Rittelmeyer not only slipped past the Argus-eyed Yale admissions committee, the fact that she still calls herself a conservative means that she's managed to thwart the university's cultural deprogramming/re-indoctrination process whereby 18-year-old freshmen from respectable Republican backgrounds are taught:
- Their parents are fascists;
- Their religion is a discredited myth;
- Their ancestors were genocidal troglodytes;
- Their nation is the source of all the world's evil; and
- The only way to atone for their privileged bourgeois upbringing is to become a bisexual pagan vegetarian environmental activist who pursues progressive social justice by firebombing ski resorts.
She's a survivor, in other words. She's endured the fiery inferno of enlightened tolerance, steadfastly (and bitterly, as Barack Obama might note) clinging to her guns, her religion, her antipathy to people who aren't like her. Now, she need only maintain her benighted bigotry for two more months before she will emerge from this ordeal as a fully credentialed member of the meritocratic elite -- and yet, a conservative.
Oh, what curses and gnashing of teeth this must induce in the Yale faculty. Harvard's faculty managed to purge a university president who transgressed against the egalitarian creed, and yet the combined professoriate of Yale can't muster the energy to block or eject a mere undergraduate?
Something must have gone terribly amiss, and Miss Rittelmeyer's matriculation will no doubt become a case study that Yale administrators will scrutinize during a special session of their annual June retreat in the Bahamas. (What the hell do you think they do with all that tuition, anyway?)
Understand, however, that Miss Rittelmeyer is not just one of these lightweight College Republican types who engage in a bit of campus mischief by saying less-than-respectful things about Chris Dodd. No, indeed, she is a genuine right-wing intellectual, a senior editor for the Yale Free Press and perhaps even (brace yourself) a paleoconservative.
Yes, you read that right. Miss Rittelmeyer has posted a very lucid discussion of paleoconservatism, a discussion free of any indication that she views palecons as atavistic degenerates:
This scattered post on the future of paleoconservatism is not necessarily meant to be taken in the context of the "Paleo Epitaph" flurry (on which Robert Stacy McCain has, I think, the best take), although it might make sense to put it there insofar as more than a few of us are Bright Young Paleos who, while certainly not up to the task of reenergizing the intellectual Right just at the moment (we've got finals!), at least take the task seriously.(Read the whole thing.) "Bright Young Paleos"! Somewhere, I suspect, the ghost of M.E. Bradford is smiling, and folks in Chattanooga may be startled to hear a deep chuckle from the vicinity of Forest Hills Cemetery.
Above and beyond all other hallmarks of her future greatness, Miss Rittelmeyer had the precocious wisdom to flatter the one right-wing journalist who is most vulnerable to the art of flattery.
Stay strong, Miss Rittelmeyer. And if you ever get down to D.C., the cigarettes are on me.
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