Having gone to graduate school at IU, I would say that Bloomington is the most left-wing town in Indiana, and perhaps even the Midwest after Madison, WI and Ann Arbor, MI. Nonetheless, conservatives had an active subculture there. The conservative activist Balint Vaszonyi ran for mayor. Though he lost, I met a lot of people on the campaign of the paleocon and traditionalist conservative variety. Also, the two largest used bookstores were owned by a libertarian and a conservative. Nearby is Bean Blossom, IN, home of the annual jazz music and bluegrass music festivals. The town is full of agrarian conservatives- "crunchy cons" in the term of Rod Dreher, or "reactionary radicals" to use Bill Kauffman's description.
Also, I had a professor who fought in the Hungarian resistance who was also close friends with Vaszonyi. He was a staunch anti-socialist, and I loved talking politics with him and a handful of European right-wingers that were in my graduate program.
I loved my time in Bloomington. Perhaps these New York prep school kids will have a conservative awakening similar to the one I experienced there.
1 posted on
09/09/2008 7:17:09 PM PDT by
oblomov
To: oblomov
IU is the "alternative" university for folks with roots in the Balkans ~ that's where I first met Serbs, Croats, Montenegrans, Bosniaks, etc. And, due to early Hungarian immigrants, the state has always been quite open to vowel challenged Eastern Europeans anyway.
Guys from the East Coast, in that light, ain't no thang!
Of note, up until last year IU was the only place in North America where you could study any of the Sa'ami (Lapplander languages). Noticed a lady now teaches something about them at Ohio State.
There are over 25 schools in Europe that teach something of these languages.
Then there are the (this is not a joke) the other 180 languages currently available to study there. I think you need them to run libraries or something, or maybe it's the Air Force intelligence program. If you are really into studying languages, this is your place.
2 posted on
09/09/2008 7:35:27 PM PDT by
muawiyah
To: oblomov
Big story at IU a couple of years ago when the college Republicans had a bake sale with prices based on racial quotas.
It was hilarious seeing the lefties throw hissy fits over it.
Several of the CRs posted on FR at that time.
11 posted on
09/09/2008 8:27:00 PM PDT by
sausageseller
(http://coolblue.typepad.com/the_cool_blue_blog/)
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson