Tag Archives: May

Despite its official mission branding statements that emphasize academic excellence, intellectual curiosity, and diversity, the sub rosa of Carleton College is ferociously liberal Democrat — something like 7:1 — which challenges claims in its “marketing materials”.  One can trace the origin of its political homophily with the Democratic Party’s roots the 1849 with the territory’s founding and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party emerging from 19th- and 20th-century immigrant settlements. Scandinavian (especially Finnish) and other European immigrants settled rural and Iron Range areas, bringing cooperative traditions, socialist ideas, and a strong emphasis on education and mutual aid. They established consumer cooperatives, workers’ halls, and educational programs promoting literacy, labor organizing, and progressive values (which, to the far less ferocious partisans of limited central government, were regressive and contradictory to the American ethos of self-reliance).  These networks fueled a powerful third party backed by farmers, miners, and urban workers.  A cacophony of splinter groups eventually merged to forge Minnesota’s dominant expansive government ethos, blending agrarian populism, labor activism, and community organizing.  In the fullness of time the citizens of Minnesota effectively recreated the restrictive constitutional monarchies its founding stock sought to leave behind.  Way up there in the snowy Great Plains of America Carleton College remains one of the most ferociously liberal Democrat colleges in the United States and among the most beautiful (Skinner Memorial Chapel).

Relata: Universities Are Creating a New Dark Age | Lord Nigel Bigger