Conservative Teens: You'd be Surprised

'Right-wing' and 'teenager' are not a contradiction in terms. Picture by Simenon.

There's a thing about identity politics: it warps the mind. You end up thinking in neatly-delineating boxes, where you automatically assume that a person who is X cannot possibly be Y. It's called 'stereotyping' when not done by a suitably progressive government, and the net result of it - no matter who's in charge - is articles like this, where the existence of people who seep outside the boundaries appointed to their demographic is a source of genuine bewilderment.

"A new US magazine promoting a rightwing agenda to teenagers defies young people's natural desire to rebel," writes Victoria Bekiempis. I can tell you now, as a 'conservative' teen, that that's flat-out wrong: the reason that I'm a libertarian, rather than a modern liberal or even a social democrat, is the elitist attitude that those two ideologies exhibit. A long time spent reading newspapers, political blogs, and watching current affairs programmes - not to mention run-ins with prolier-than-thou activists in my personal life - has taught me that a great many modern 'liberals' tub their nose up at anyone whose views are distinct from theirs, and may regard them not only as wrong, but quite, quite mad.

Victoria Bekiemphis is guilty of exactly this in her own article, with her amazement at how teens could possibly hold such views, and the Nazi references throughout. Modern 'liberals' - and leftist ideologies in general - tend to take their supporters for granted and their critics for idiots. The comments are yet more evidence of the same: how many refer to this magazine's audience as nutcases, loners, or losers, simply because they don't have the political allegiance that 'liberal' commentors think they should have? Taking ideas and values that such narrow-minded people have claimed as their own and shoving them up their perfumed noses is rebelling, in its own right. Reading through the intoxicating judgementalism, unfounded allegations, and character assassination, I'm becoming ever more convinced that I made the right choice.