Hunter Steele White ‘27 is a prospective Government and History major. He is the Issues Director of Young Independents and works for Ayanna Williams for Williamsburg City Council. The views in this piece are entirely his own and do not represent either organization. Contact him at hswhite01@wm.edu. Credit to Arman Manternach ‘27 for editing and counsel.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
If we lived in any year before 2016, I would fit in perfectly as the stereotypical Republican. I am a son of rural Arizona, a neighbor of Senator John McCain, an avid outdoorsman, a gun owner and a born-again Christian. I believe in balancing our budget and paying off the national debt. I believe in a strong, active defense and foreign policy and comprehensive, humane immigration reform. I believe in a smaller, more efficient government, communal responsibility and compassion towards the less fortunate. Above all, I believe in our fundamental values as a nation: the Constitution, the rule of law and the truth.
The William and Mary College Republicans speaker event October 21, 2024 is evidence that the club that produced our esteemed Chancellor, Robert Gates, and served as a bastion of moderation and bipartisanship is gone. Its husk welcomed a traitorous January 6th rioter and has become a pawn of rising ideological dogma in our nation. It is no longer a home to me or the hundreds of other students within the political center and moderate right at the College of William and Mary.
While I know the young men and women of WCCR and know that many in its ranks are of upstanding character, I question why they aren’t doing more to expose their loudest members’ zealotry and confused worship of ideological purity. Liberals on campus regularly disagree with me on issues of policy. But, with the exception of the woke left, most can have a productive conversation and respect my perspective. Hell, we even agree on shared values.
But I’ve seen that in WCCR, its members decry civility. They see any form of dissent as a threat to themselves and conflate moderation with suppression of their values. I find it entertaining how similar their behavior is to the extreme left they so despise.
While a bold few of their own members decry inviting a Proud Boy to their meeting, they shout down the opposition as caving to a “woke agenda” on campus. I am not entirely sure how simply not inviting a traitor to your meeting suppresses “conservative values.” Is it not against conservative values to provide a platform for a man who bludgeoned and injured police officers? Who tried to overthrow a legitimate election? I certainly think it is. It seems that they confuse not relishing controversy with weakness.
Many of our peers in WMCR exist in an echo chamber. They keep to themselves and consume the same media. Moderates and nay-sayers are being tuned out and replaced with feverish groupthink and ideological conformity. I am always of the opinion that someone’s position can be changed through good conversation. But that good conversation cannot happen when you refuse to acknowledge the perspectives of others or simply say their sources or opinions are “deep-state propaganda.”
They’re unwilling to accept criticism or change their views in light of new information. Anyone who calls them out is automatically a leftist or “doesn’t have what it takes to win.” You will not win elections or the hearts and minds of the people if you belittle them for disagreeing with you.
Ironically, this delegitimization of dissonant voices to protect their own ideological comfort is the same strategy deployed by their opponents on the extreme left. None of these people want consensus; they want to feel that they are right and you are wrong. WMCR no longer tries to win undecided and moderate students to its side with reasonable conservatism. The views of its members are rarely supported by facts, and they choose to peddle an alternate reality rather than accept that their positions are political landmines and reform their platform.
Today, real conservative values like limited government, respect for others and fiscal responsibility are nowhere to be seen in this organization. What has replaced them is far worse for our community and the future of politics in America. Populism, isolationism and the perversion of truth has corrupted WMCR, perhaps beyond saving. It is too divorced from reality to see the immense consequences inviting a traitor has on its reputation and ability to win new supporters.
Unlike WMCR, I believe real conservatives have conversations with our left-leaning friends to understand and respect one another. Real conservatives don’t invite a man who broke into the Capitol and beat up cops to their meeting because they feel he’s been “marginalized.” Real conservatives stand against lies and deceit. Real conservatives are willing to set aside some of our political preferences to govern a country full of ideological diversity and desperately in need of strong, bipartisan leadership.
Many real conservatives, like me, have become Democrats or Independents. Real conservatives have chosen to support the woman who will protect our institutions. Real conservatives have accepted that our Republican Party, the party of Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt and John McCain, is gone. The party and actions that replaced it, and the thug the WMCR invited to our campus are, simply put, un-American.