As the saying goes, Cornell is the easiest Ivy to get into, but the hardest one to get out of. The conditions here can be brutal, but they also offer an opportunity to sharpen your intellect and refine how you think about what you know, and more importantly, what you don’t know.
It is no secret that the vast majority of people on campus and in the city of Ithaca are solidly left of center, if not radically so. For all of the chatter about diversity, the one type of diversity that most crucially needs to be addressed has fallen by the wayside: diversity of thought. We can have every color, every religion, every socioeconomic background, every shade of gender and sexual identity along the continuum, but if these people, boxed into the Left’s social demarcations all think exactly the same way about the issues, then we have fallen into the dark abyss of groupthink. What is the point of having Universities sell themselves as beacons of intellectual inquiry if the end result would be the same as if we had all just gone to reeducation camps?
To address this issue from a conservative standpoint, only two things are necessary. The first is to know the facts. The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan summed it up succinctly: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
We all know that the Republican Party and the conservative movement at large have taken a huge hit in that arena, given the monstrously false claims that sucked so much oxygen from the news cycle and the broader economic message that I will not repeat them here. Once liberals and conservatives work from the same set of facts, then we can move forward to a genuine, and perhaps even productive, debate. This is actually trickier than one might think. For example, the Bush tax cuts resulted in more revenue flowing to the federal treasury in the following years despite lower marginal tax rates. This will never stop the Democrats from blaming Bush for anything and everything, but it should be noted that the Bush tax cuts resulted in greater-than-expected revenue to the federal treasury, not less, to correct one of the larger misconceptions floating around.
This leads to the second point: do not be afraid. What I mean by that is don’t let a fear of being unjustly labeled a racist or sexist or bigot or whatever hinders your expression of a conservative viewpoint, especially when you have facts to back up your position.
But also, don’t be afraid to admit when you might be wrong about something, and be open to other (fact-based) opinion. As impossible as it seems, liberals do argue with some irrefutable facts that we must address instead of dismiss. We cannot continue, and this goes for people on both sides, to dismiss the other viewpoint as being grounded in hate or ignorance or some other bad intent. Some people may come from that angle, but they cannot be allowed to dominate how we discuss issues with each other, especially when we know people of good faith from all sides.
I have met some incredible people on campus who are near-Marxists, and the hardest thing, but one of the most rewarding things, was to come to understand why they hold the opinions that they do. The exposure to their ideas helped me to understand better why I hold the opinions that I do. In short, you must know why you believe something, why other people believe another thing, and be able to confidently articulate the differences with facts and without fear.
Misha Checkovich is a graduating senior in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at mcc254@ cornell.edu