First of all, a disclaimer: I tend toward the liberal more often than the conservative. Having said that, I don’t generally read liberal commentators, but almost always read George F. Will, a highly-respected conservative editorialist.

I will read George F. Will for a couple of reasons. One, I like his logical flow. I don’t always agree with his premises nor conclusions, but I cannot generally find a flaw in between the two.

But more important to me, George is an independent thinker. He is unafraid of disagreeing with other conservatives, and he will criticize elected conservatives. This independence is sorely lacking in the world, although it is very much needed. I mistrust anyone who always agrees with their party, regardless of their political stance.

But currently Mr. Will is contending that our colleges and universities are dominated by liberals, and that this is cause for alarm. I must take exception to his comments.

First, the Pentagon absorbs the largest share of the US Budget; if you consider that VA is part of our military budget, then the military budget is even a larger behemoth than we normally consider it. Not surprisingly, the military and the industrial lobbyists that support it have tremendous sway over our government. And this highly influential military-industrial complex is overwhelmingly conservative. But Will doesn’t object to that.

Likewise, huge conglomerates exert great influence over us, and they are almost uniformly conservative. They sell their wares– and their lifestyle– in the constant advertisements that surround us. In recent years, large corporations have also bought out much of our media, and so our news has also slipped to the right. That life-long educational input easily overwhelms the brief years of college, but conservative pundits are not so concerned about that partisan influence as they are about liberal college professors.

And our Churches, which ostensibly are our moral guides, are increasingly moving to the right. Evangelical churches, the fastest growing part of Christendom, overwhelmingly vote with conservative candidates. But Will doesn’t worry about those.

Are George Will and the other conservative writers worried that our colleges are overly partisan? Or just that it’s someone else’s party?

Then there is the imperative to produce independent-minded citizens, as well as the imperative of God-given Free Will. If we don’t expose students to as many viewpoints as possible, how will they learn to think? How will they every make their own choices, and exercise their Free Will? Where will our young people experience liberal ideas, if NOT in college?

That’s an important point. Before and after college, corporate advertising and corporate news will be the main sources of information for our citizens. So if our young people aren’t exposed to liberal ideas in college, when will they consider them? When else will they get an opportunity to truly reflect on different ideologies and decide– decide for THEMSELVES– what they believe?

Certainly Mr. Will is supportive of Providential free will, and the unfettered flow of ideas in a democracy.

It would be hard to argue that this liberal collegiate exposure has been detrimental to the conservative movement. To the contrary: despite many decades of dominance by liberal thinkers in our citadels of learning, in the past decade we elected the first unipartisan government since WW II– and it was conservative. This strongly suggests that neither the corporation nor the university dominate the mind of the citizen; her mind is her own. The citizen is exposed to diverse viewpoints, and this exposure strengthens the democracy, rather than weakens it.

Finally, if we consider what ‘conservative’ means– to conserve, to lean toward the traditional, to advocate the tried-and-true– then it is clear that our colleges absolutely must be liberal. If institutions of higher learning are, by design, our places of innovation, of theorization, and of experimentation, then it becomes clear that it is precisely the mission of the university to challenge the status quo.

Which means that a good university will always be liberal.

So with all due respect to Mr. Will, I would hope that he stops criticizing our universities for being liberal. If they were not liberal, they– and we– would not be doing our jobs.