What, me, a radical?(In real life: first-person America)

DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA -- One day last year when Catholic neo-conservative Father Richard John Neuhaus came to speak at Duke University, I overheard a divinity school professor in the hall talking to a colleague who planned to attend the lecture. "You'd better bring some rotten tomatoes," she said. "The people from First Things--they're bad, they're just bad. They're unapologetically capitalist."

This view of capitalism as evil and incompatible with faith is the norm today in many college seminaries. Capitalism is seen as the corrupter of the world (which was a sort of Eden before grubby businessmen started fumbling in their tills). America is viewed as the heartland of capitalist evil.

Future ministers are also taught that patriotic songs like "God Bless America" are anathema to Christianity, that religion blended with nationalism is always undesirable. Flags in sanctuaries are deemed "idolatrous." Even Thanksgiving is viewed skeptically, for its supposed links to the genocide of American Indians. In the religious ivory towers, absurd, extreme views like these are the rule.

The societal orthodoxy under which I was raised was founded on patriotism, fear of God, respect for the past, and personal responsibility. The attitudes that prevail among academic elites today draw on different principles: Shame of country, ambivalence toward God, disdain for the past, and complete individual license. These are no longer fringe bohemian views; they are part of the conventional wisdom, truisms of the powerful.

And there are now numerous ideas that cannot be mentioned on college campuses without causing anger and agitation. Take a positive view of American history in most classrooms today and you enter a verbal firestorm. Call for individual accountability for one's own actions, and you will be branded heartless. Criticize "alternative lifestyles" and, well, you know what happens.

Almost every professor will play any game possible in order to increase his or her own salary. Graduates and ...