A conservative party

Mr. Roy is a student at the Yale University School of Medicine.

On a crisp autumn evening, some of the nation's brightest undergraduates file into a mahogany-paneled hall, where they take turns holding forth on the topic "Resolved, That Liberty Has More Value than Life." Dead white males from Socrates to Patrick Henry are scrutinized for insights. At lunch the next day, a leading authority on Leo Strauss engages the students in an exploration of Aristotle's Ethics. The scent of pipe smoke fills the air. And Hayek's The Road to Serfdom is required reading for the next week's dinner discussions.

At this point, most conservatives would expect to be rudely awakened by their alarm clocks, wistfully chasing away their dreams of an academic world in which the monuments of Western thought are cherished. And yet this dream is reality at Yale University, and like-minded collegians elsewhere are taking notes.

By a combination of historical accident and individual effort, there has arisen at Yale a conservative subculture teeming with life, as if an acre of tropical rainforest had sprouted in Antarctica. Conservatism at Yale is embodied by more than a dozen student organizations, each resembling a kind of political fraternity, with its own distinctive ethos. The feeling of embattled isolation, which can be overwhelming for many conservative students, is nearly absent in New Haven.

Even more striking than the quantity of conservatism at Yale is its intellectual quality. Most notable in this regard is the Conservative Party, a debating society which anachronistically holds that "reflection upon the world's greatest thinkers is the necessary precursor of statesmanship." Members of the Party -- the men attired in suits, the women in suits or dresses -- gather weekly for spirited debates in which philosophical, historical, and cultural topics are exuberantly investigated. Party members meet nightly for dinners where a passage of the Odyssey is as probable a topic of conversation as the day's political news.

The CP helps its members gain a thorough grounding in the Western tradition by advising them on course selection and by exposing them to authors not found in the Yale curriculum. According to Party chairman Sarah A. Maserati, "By the end of freshman year, Party members are expected to have taken a course in classical Western philosophy and to have read Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences, Michael Oakeshott's Rationalism in Politics, and Russell Kirk's The Roots of American Order." Each Friday, the CP hosts its Sir Thomas More Lecture: lunch at a private club, after which a Party member or visiting scholar leads a discussion on an academic subject of interest.

The Party's frequent gatherings forge strong friendships, fortifying Party members to withstand the surrounding multicultural torrent. And since those members range from Christian democrats to agnostic theocrats, with everything in between, they feel free to be themselves. Indeed, many view the CP as the model of how an erudite conservative minority can thrive on a liberal campus. "Most political associations -- including those at Harvard -- limit themselves to questions of policy," says Harvard senior C. Thomas Brown. "The CP goes beyond that, challenging [liberal] assumptions . . . at a more fundamental level." Plans are under way for a Crimson chapter of the Conservative Party; additional provinces may follow.

The CP selects its members by an intense process in which applicants' views are cross-examined for flaws and contradictions. "The problem with most conservative politicians is that they retreat from criticism," says Party officer Matthew Medearis. "No one graduates from the Conservative Party with that problem, because it is far tougher to defend one's philosophy inside the Party than outside it."

Conservative activists have flourished in the rainforest. One student successfully lobbied Congress to ban university discrimination against ROTC programs. Light & Truth, a student journal, gained national attention for discovering Yale's misuse of the $20-million Bass Grant for Western Civilization. Study groups and debating clubs cater to pro-lifers, Anglophiles, Objectivists, and Southerners. Anyone disenchanted with political correctness can find his niche.

Yale was once well known for producing Republican and conservative leaders: Henry Luce, William Scranton, and Robert Taft led the pre -World War II Conservative Party; Brent Bozell, William F. Buckley Jr., and Edwin Meese led the CP of the Fifties. But the achievement of today's Yale conservatives is possibly even more impressive, when denizens of the counterculture are broadly in command of campus life. Indeed, there might not be a better choice for the tradition-minded students than Yale, where God and Man still stand a fighting chance.

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