How Berkeley Changed My Political Philosophy

Berkeley Heroes

I came into this world surrounded by liberal Democrats. My parents are Democrats as were their parents and grandparents before them, all the way down the line to Ellis Island. My parents empathized with the disenfranchised and poor. The family faithfully subscribed to the San Francisco Chronicle and before I was a teenager my dad encouraged me to write a letter to the editor, castigating Nixon for  his "enemies list." As a high school student I was committed (and stupid) enough to wear a Carter button to school in 1976. When I went off to college a few years later I was unprepared for the inevitable challenges to my worldview and political philosophy. The university was a very liberal place. How could it change my belief system?

Berkeley in 1978 was trying to get over the fact that the 1960s were over. The place was desperately looking for a cause, and until the all-knowing people there found a good one they kept busy hating everything about bourgeois American life. They sneered at a suburbanite like me because I wanted to get my undergraduate degree and get out. Berkeley political correctness meant high density living, Trotsky lookalikes snarling on the street, dirt, drugs, grittiness, and poverty--and not the clean and cheery suburbs I grew up in. Berkeley wanted the year 1969 to go on forever. I wanted to graduate and pursue a career.

What I found most off-putting, however, was the intolerance of the place. Anyone with views other than those of the hard left was shouted down. Despite the students' 1964 free speech movement, conservatives rarely received the benefits of free speech at Cal. So it stands today.

Midway through my undergraduate experience I had a political science class with professor William Muir. I had never experienced lectures from a professor, an intellectual, who admitted working for Republicans, even (gasp) Governor Ronald Reagan. Professor Muir was bright, charming, and reasonable. His tactic for getting us to do the reading, "Do it or I'll call on you and embarrass the hell out of you" worked and I use it with my own students. I thought all Republicans were selfish boors. How could this guy be a Republican?

My cognitive dissonance didn't end there. Professor Muir gave us a reading by a prominent liberal that criticized using a meritocracy to reward people. People shouldn't receive wealth because they worked harder or did things better, the liberal argued. The liberal's argument made no sense to me. Perhaps I wasn't a Democrat after all.

It was time to explore and find what resonated inside me. I read and enjoyed Hayek, Will, Hirsch, von Mises, and Sowell. I learned that to be successful you must give something of yourself, something society wants. By my late 20s I considered myself a Libertarian-Conservative. My family was shocked. The university had indeed opened my eyes.