The youthful rightist is heterodox, to which my experiences testify. Helen Smith, forensic psychologist and wife of Glenn Reynolds, has, inspired by the weblog of a high-schooler, urged her readers to "support young people who lean right — the new generation of nonconformists."
They could use the help. Much of the sociological and epistemological deconstruction from the Sixties devolution is regnant today, from the encouragement of solipsism to the academy's adoption of collectivist bases for knowledge. Of course, the relativist would have it both ways, so while a rightist is subject to the ostracism warranted by deviation — my friend was threatened with romantic breakup and peer rejection when he declared for George W. Bush — he still operates under the staid title "conservative," and at a disadvantage in a culture valuing that which is "progressive."
What is it like? The simplest demonstration is to introduce, in conversation with a group of people under forty years of age, subjects like the Second Amendment, economics or "global warming." The majority, politically unaffiliated, will probably affirm leftist positions on each — though some will do so with uncertainty, even reservation, the caricature of a lapsed Catholic. That is at once frustrating and encouraging: thanks to inculcation modern American youth is left of center, but remains only tenuously so.
