Liberals come in all shapes and sizes, from the anti-nuclear power protestors to the Code Pink crowd. They have many individual concerns that fire their political passions, but there is always an underlying philosophy that unites them, no matter their personal political projects. Because at heart, liberals all believe in the same thing; government should strive to meet al of the needs of the people from cradle to grave, no matter whether or not there is any actual authority for the government to do so. And when push comes to shove liberals recognize that they all need one another in order to achieve the big government goals they have set for the nation. It is rare to see liberals divided over matters of ideology and even rarer to see even the most contrarian liberals culled from the left wing flock.

Conservatives like to look on liberals and say that they are disjointed, or just a loose amalgam of different pressure groups seeking political power in order to serve their specific ends. That is very true of the Democratic Party in general, as well as the GOP, but what we often miss is the fact that liberals almost always unite when the need arises. Look at the current healthcare debate as a prime example; nearly any plan that is passed will eventually have negative impacts on union members and their healthcare plans. Yet the unions have set aside, for the most part, their individual concerns to push for President Obama’s plan in a show of liberal unity. And it is this type of unity that allows the liberals to carry the day on so many important political and policy fights in the country; they will stick together through thick and thin.

On the conservative side, however, that unity does not seem to exist. When people look at the conservative side of the aisle, they do not see a movement made up of people pulling together to reach a single destination. What they see instead is a much fractured group that can hardly stop bickering long enough to even make a show of opposing the left wing agenda being promulgated by the current presidential administration. “National defense conservatives” are at odds with “paleoconservatives” over national defense strategy, while “border security conservatives” clash with “free market conservatives” over whether we need secure borders or a steady stream of sla…uh…cheap labor. And it seems that every other conservative faction seems to have a bone to pick with the “religious conservatives”, who by the way, seem to always bear the blame for the electoral failures of the GOP. The ultimate unity of purpose that is found on the liberal side of the spectrum just seems to be missing from the conservative side.

What I have noticed among conservatives is that whenever conservatives start adding qualifiers to their ideological leanings, there is going to be some internecine battles about to be fought. It seems that many people that want to identify as conservatives also want to claim the mantle of “true conservatives” and wrap themselves in it, while diminishing their fellow conservatives. Case in point: After the 2006 midterm elections when the GOP lost control of the Congress, what was the loudest complaint from many conservatives? The complaint, which as echoed in some quarters after McCain was beaten by Obama, was that the “religious conservatives” or “social conservatives” had cost the GOP the elections, and that they should be jettisoned from the movement. Little time was spent on figuring out what conservatives could do to win back public trust, while finger pointing inside the conservative movement ran rampant. Many conservatives were more concerned with attacking other conservatives that they did not agree with than opposing the massive government intrusions into the financial life of the country.

What conservatives of every stripe should be doing is what the liberals always do when it counts: Focus on the unifying characteristics of their ideology instead of picking fights within the group. There are certain characteristics that should be part of the political DNA of every conservative: smaller government, fiscal restraint, strong defense, secure borders, judges who actually respect the Constitution, and a fair chance for everyone to succeed or fail on his own merits. Whether your particular passion is national defense or fiscal policy, all of the other conservative characteristics are there in you as well. If we can learn to put aside our petty fights and differences when big issues are on the table, we can stall the list to port of our ship of state, and maybe even bring her back to starboard. But we have to be unified to do it, because we are facing an adversary that is relentless, aggressive, and above all else, unified. Only with a similar unity from conservatives can the slide towards socialism be arrested; to continue on a fractured path is to condemn the country to the continued ravages of the left and its ideas.

So to borrow a phrase from the left: Conservatives of the world unite! Because as one of the Founders so succinctly phrased it, “Either we all hang together, or we will all hang separately.”

As I have made my trek through the system of higher education, I have known that mine was going to be a lonely existence on the college campus. It was going to be lonely because in the sea of liberal thought and ideology that permeates the universities in our nation, I self identify as a conservative. And it was going to be doubly so because I am a black conservative at an HBCU.

I started out at a community college and I had some experiences with liberals there. I had a history teacher whom I still much admire who believed that socialism could be workable…if just the right people were to try it. But she never tried to push her liberalism into the classroom, unless she was asked what her personal views on a subject or issue were; at that point she was allowed to answer freely because she never pretended to be the academic when asked those questions. She made sure that she always stressed the fact the personal views she shared with us were just that; her personal views, and not those of the college. That was honorable.

I had another professor there who was a professor of political science, a practicing lawyer, and an active Democratic politician in the community. He also never allowed his personal feelings to seep into this lectures about the American system, and he managed to never let slip one insult towards George W. Bush in any lecture. In fact, he admonished several students who did so by reminding them that no matter their feelings, Mr. Bush was the President of the United States and in his classroom that position would be treated with respect. He was honorable as well.

Here at WSSU, in this semester particularly, things have been far different than what I experienced at RCC. I have one professor who, not knowing that I was a Republican stood in front of the class and announced that Michael Steele was simply a token and that most black Republicans were ashamed of it. I sat there stunned and amazed at how brazen that was, and how uninformed. But in the spirit of being a student respecting the position of the professor, I said nothing. A couple of weeks later during a class discussion, one of my classmates who knew I was a conservative Republican from a discussion in another of our classes asked me to give the Republican view of the “stimulus” bill. You could have heard a rat peeing on cotton; it grew so quiet in the classroom. And it was even quieter when I finished explaining that the “stimulus” was actually very light on anything that would immediately help the economy and was simply a liberal “holiday tree”. Since that point the blatant Republican bashing in class has stopped, although my new class nickname has become “Republican”. But I can deal with that.

In another of my classes I was asked whom I voted for in the election after I said that the “stimulus” bill did a lot of creating jobs for government workers and making work for everyone else, but that it would not in the end pull us out of the tailspin we are currently in. After being asked why I voted for McCain, and if I was “For all the stuff McCain was for”, I answered that in a situation where I had to choose between someone I could never agree with and someone I could occasionally agree with, I chose the latter. I was then asked by my professor why I would vote for a Republican, and my succinct answer was “Because I am a history major.” When pressed on it, I laid out the sordid details of the Democrats racially divisive history from the days of Thomas Jefferson to the presidential election of 2008. When I was finished, my professor then asked me this, “But don’t you think people can change? Don’t you think the Democratic Party has changed since then?” And I pointed out that while I believed people can change, I see no real evidence that the Democrats have changed when a former Klansman still sits in the Senate, and both the current Sec.State and VeeP have been caught making jokes about Indians and 7-11 and service stations. And from that point on my professor and classmates have shown a new respect for conservative ideas when they are presented. That was my teachable moment, and I took advantage.

But more recently, in fact just yesterday I was denounced in class as attacking someone as if I were Fox News and of smearing someone with unsubstantiated charges. I would have been angry, but it was all too funny to me because I saw it coming. My class was assigned a book by John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man to read as part of an international relations class. I was suspect of the book to begin with because this class has been less about international relations than about the evils of American foreign policy, as seen through several different IR theories. So, I read the book (which I do not recommend, by the way) and in my review I ripped it apart. It lacked any specifics on how all the developing world was being ripped off by the bad old Americans; it read more like a bad John LeCarre novel than an honest memoir, with it’s talk of CIA assassins killing everyone who opposed US foreign policy; and the rehashing of the Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Bush-Saudi, and Iraq saving Venezuela from being invaded conspiracy theories. As I wrote it, I knew that no A was forthcoming, unless I joined the mush heads in class who loved it so much, mainly because all they know about IR they have learned in class. So I got my B and my anonymous denunciation and took it in stride, because I knew it was coming…but that’s okay. I can handle it and I could never trash my country just to get a good grade from a professor who came here from Africa to enjoy the fruits of freedom, yet spends an inordinate amount of time savaging the freest country on earth. What sort of idiot would I be to sell out to go along with that?

But as I go on through the trials of being a lone conservative voice in the liberal wilderness of the college campus, I want you guys to keep me in your thoughts and prayers. I am getting close to the finish line and I will not let the liberals deter me now!