When I was organizing conservatives in college it surprised nobody that the two biggest groups against the left were mutually exclusive.

The Young Americans for Freedom went by the Sharon Statement and allowed huge differences in how it was interpreted. The one thing they required, though, was that one believe in God.

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was at the top of the charts then, as it has been recently. They called themselves Objectivists and claimed only one point of view, but their arguments were as furious as any other group’s.

But the one thing that you could NOT do and claim to be an Objectivist was, of course, believe in God.

On the left there are differences of means but not of ends. If you are a Christian Socialist your ends are the same as those advocated by Communism, Social Democracy, and Marxist Anarchism.

The end is “from all according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

The left agrees this end is difficult to the point of near impossibility, but it IS the end of the entire left.

No one was surprised that the fundamental credo of the two anti-leftist groups were exactly opposite. It was taken for granted that the ideal society of the young, Catholic backbaygrouch would be a shrieking nightmare to the Objectivists, and vice-versa.

I have said before that you have to disconnect your Knee Jerk Button when you read BUGS. Whatever else may be said of Randian Objectivists, they are NOT conservatives in any reasonable rendering of the word.

I formed an anti-leftist coalition, and in that time and place any anti-leftist was a conservative, just as in a European country where 99% of the population are either Catholic or Lutheran, all the other denominations are called “sects.”

On campus all opposition to the aims of the left came under one label. The fact that the two main groups were mutually exclusive did nothing to the fact that they were automatically classified together in Mommy Professor’s domain.

This fact, which we never THINK about, is proof that the campus is, indeed, Mommy Professor’s domain.

The left does, indeed have a single aim. Its ideal is “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” A leftist priest and a Marxist have no difference on this goal with an agnostic social democrat.

We accept that anyone who does not accept this goal is classified, without question, in the media and on campus, as a “conservative.”

It is sitting there like an elephant in a living room, the assumption that there is one Direction, one Faith, toward which our society aims, and all opposition to the One Direction has been openly classified as a single Heresy all our lives.

But nobody notices.